When the Floods of Compassion Are not Enough: A Nation's and a City's Response to the Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina exposed serious deficiencies in the social support safety net at the federal, state, and local level. This article explores the impacts of the disrupted safety net through participant observation and interviews with service providers and evacuees resettled in one southern city. Their stories illustrate how vulnerable low‐income groups struggle to cope with disaster within the context of inadequate larger support systems and the legacy of racism. The data also illustrate the limits of the local resources and response, given the years of retrenchment and underfunding and increasing dependence on nongovernmental sources of support. The authors explore some of the implications of this trend for evacuees' long‐term recovery and social work intervention. Keywords: DisplacementHurricane Katrinaracial traumasocial policysocial services ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was funded by National Science Foundation Grant Number 0555113, and supported by grant 5 R24 HD042849, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Health and Child Development.