By Nell Hahn, Louisiana Advocacy Center, Director of Litigation and Systems Advocacy

Deaf section for Hurricane Katrina evacuees at the Houston Astrodome.

The Louisiana Advocacy Center has about 65 employees, the majority of whom lived and worked in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina made landfall. We also have a large branch office in Baton Rouge and small offices in two other Louisiana cities. I am the Director of Litigation and Systems Advocacy and I work in the Lafayette office which was mostly unaffected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; however, the New Orleans office was not as fortunate. Not only did Hurricane Katrina result in the office’s closure, several staff members lost their homes and most tragically, one of our staff members lost her life.

After the hurricanes, our New Orleans staff were scattered over eight states and due to the breakdown of communication systems in the region, it was several weeks before we were able to locate all of our surviving employees.

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, representatives from our office engaged in emergency evacuation and sheltering activities, which included participating in New Orleans’ evacuation and sheltering plans. We also circulated lists of “things to do” to prepare for an evacuation and personally experienced many actual evacuations. However, during that final week of August 2005, we were reduced to watching TV with horror andshame as the images of elderly people, people in wheelchairs, and young children showed how inadequate and/or poorly executed those plans were. As a person designated to “protect and advocate” for people with disabilities, I felt personally responsible.

Helping Evacuees in Shelters

“...we can take the lessons learned and use this knowledge to better meet the needs of people with disabilities during an emergency or disaster...” Photo from Associated Press, September 2, 2005

In those shelters where we were able to gain access, we quickly found that the needs of people with disabilities were being neglected. Upon an evacuee’s arrival, a determination was made as to whether he or she needed immediate or intensive medical attention. If an evacuee was determined to require that level of attention, they were sent with one companion to a “special needs” shelter that was staffed with medical personnel. If they were not determined to need this level of care, no information regarding whether they had a disability or needed special accommodations was elicited or recorded. Thus, in the general population shelters, there were many people with disabilities whose needs were unwittingly neglected if they either did not need the intensive medical attention available in “special needs” shelters, or refused to be separated from friends and family by entering the “special needs” shelters. Shelters were often not physically accessible to residents with mobility limitations; there were no modes of accessible communication for deaf or blind residents; and few accommodations were available for people with cognitive disabilities. While many volunteers and other Red Cross personnel were caring and helpful, what was missing at the management level was an understanding of disability issues, and appropriate training of staff.

Our immediate work in shelters was of the most basic kind. We assisted residents in acquiring wheelchairs and air mattresses, registering for post office addresses, obtaining transportation to clinics and banks, locating family members, and arranging transportation out of the shelter. We also distributed information to the evacuees on available community resources. We surveyed shelters for accessibility problems, using checklists intended to capture critical access issues. When critical problems were identified, such as an inaccessible onsite medical clinic in one shelter and an inaccessible portable shower facilities in another, we took immediate steps to ensure the situation was corrected.

As we became more organized, our shelter work expanded. Volunteers arrived from other protection and advocacy agencies around the country from such places as Idaho, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Virginia. Our own staff, despite being scattered and displaced, put together flyers to provide specialized information on resources for evacuees with disabilities on housing, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), disaster food stamps, unemployment, transportation, Medicaid, and special education. These flyers were posted on our Web site, and distributed at shelters and in FEMA’s Disaster Recovery Centers.

We sent the national office of the American Red Cross a memo outlining the results of shelter accessibility surveys, which included proposals for the Red Cross to make its shelters and other services more accessible to people with disabilities. This memo also identified issues with the application process for financial assistance.

Working with FEMA

Tanisha Blevin, 5, holds the hand of fellow Hurricane Katrina victim Nita LaGarde, 105, as they are evacuated from the Convention Center in New Orleans, La., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2005. Hundreds of people waited several days to be evacuated Photo from Associated Press, Eric Gay.

We met with the FEMA staff member assigned to address issues affecting people with disabilities and we supplied her with a list of disability organizations, names and phone numbers, and a written list of the following specifications and requirements:

• Need for accessibility of Disaster Recovery Centers;
• Need for outreach to nursing homes;
• Need for accessible temporary housing; and
• Need for accessible units in all low-income housing built with government assistance and to reserve these units for people who need accessibility features.

We also attended regular FEMA Housing Task Force meetings and FEMA invitees often attended meetings of an ad hoc disability housing group we organized.

Since our staff has regrouped, we have reorganized our legal teams to respond to hurricane-related questions, and are attempting to assist with housing resources. We have also established a fund to assist persons with disabilities who have been affected by the hurricanes.

Enlisting the Support of Local and State Government to Help Meet the Needs of Evacuees with Disabilities

During the first week of September 2005, we initiated dialogue with key local and state level organizations responsible for addressing the needs of people with disabilities who were displaced and made the following recommendations and requests:

• Louisiana’s Medicaid Director take necessary steps to ensure that Louisiana Medicaid recipients have their Medicaid cards honored by Texas Medicaid;
• Louisiana’s transportation directors and Lafayette’s mayor grant temporary Para transit eligibility to “visitors;”
• Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reserve housing vouchers and low-income accessible housing for people with disabilities;
• FEMA and HUD provide assistance in locating accessible housing and funding for accessibility improvements;

Health and Human Services (HHS) delay the rollout of Medicare Part D for Katrina evacuees; Provide transportation assistance for people with disabilities to access medical care; and Agencies cooperate in order to prevent the potential institutionalization of evacuees with disabilities who would otherwise prefer to live in community settings.

Looking Beyond Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

Since the storms, our priorities have changed. We are working to ensure effectiveness of evacuation plans for people with disabilities from Louisiana parishes and institutions in the event of an emergency or a disaster. We are making certain that people with disabilities have equal access to disaster assistance, including accessible temporary shelters. We are ensuring that areas rebuilt after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are fully accessible to people with disabilities and that sufficient affordable, accessible permanent housing will be available to them. Lastly, individuals with disabilities who were institutionalized as a result of Katrina and Rita must be located and granted the opportunity to live in community settings rather than institutions.

After experiencing first hand the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we know how difficult it can be to be prepared for a disaster; however, now, with this experience behind us, I think we can take the lessons learned and use this knowledge to better meet the needs of people with disabilities during an emergency or disaster throughout the entire nation.

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