Our hypothesis is people chose not to return to their homes in New Orleans after the hurricane and wanted to start a new chapter somewhere else, like Columbia, where it did not affect them as much. They wanted to be able to try and go back and reestablish themselves or just move on to another place. Some people left pets, and some left families behind, and it was hard for some to leave and make sure they were good before focusing on others. This leads to our thesis that people have ups and downs after something traumatic happens but it depends on how they deal with the situation after and decide if they are going to heal or hurt more.
People who have been through a lot when it comes to hurricanes or natural disasters have to hold a certain mindset when building from the ground up and when they have no foundation. People have two different ways of going about dealing with hard situations. After something terrible has happened to them, they can either build up and learn or break and become more hurt than they were when it first happened. The hurricane pushes families closer together and some further away from each other.
In the article of EBSCO Information Services, Inc. People have to learn how to survive in ways that others cannot. Anything that happens during a hurricane is a shock to some people who do not have power, making life hard for them overall. It hurts hospitals and everything associated with power, and it hurts people who don’t have the financials to survive and have the same mindset when it comes to losing something they could never see themselves without. Hurricanes significantly affect people and their perspectives, and it is a big thing that affects not just buildings but people.
Just like in the book salvage the bones, people have different ways of coping or changing the way they are when they are in a situation that can affect them negatively in the long run. People have many things going on in their minds, and it can be hard to focus and think straight when you have many emotions going on in yours. People have different struggles, and those struggles can lead to people having a better life than they did before. They often have more vital goals and achieve more when they have had something taken away from them or gone through something so terrible they could not change. People have so many emotions that can be used for good when natural disasters such as hurricanes hit people’s homes. It’s not so much that they are sad that they have no place to live, but people are unhappy they have to start fresh again, which hurts people. It’s like starting all over again. Some people take starting over to be a good thing and have a fresh start and create new memories with people they have been with during the moments before the hurricane hits.
There are many ups when it comes to starting over, and it builds many characters for those who start over and change their mindset. It has been a thing for us humans to become stronger after something challenging for us. We push and become stronger mentally and physically. People get to come together, and The hurricane helps to bring them, people, together. It can lower the temperature and help build up the coastal areas of the islands, making the island wider. The winds can oxygenate the near-surface waters and help life return to the places where the red tide once existed. Hurricanes and tropical storms can bring drought-busting rains. They can perform the same cleansing function in maintaining the conditions needed for healthy coastal forests, particularly in swampy mangrove forests. Hurricanes can break up bacteria and red tide that lurk in the water. As tropical cyclones move across the ocean, the winds and the waves toss the water’s contents. The tropical cyclone rain is too much of a good thing for any drought area. The hurricanes have the power to pick up substantial amounts of sand, nutrients, and sediment on the ocean’s bottom and bring them toward those barrier islands

In both of the sources I read, the people being interviewed both worked at hospitals or shelters, and both had leadership roles at their jobs. Basically they both worked in public places for people to get help before and after the hurricane. The first source was an interview with Shirley Bertolasi who is a nurse who was working at St. Patrick’s in Saint Charles Louisiana during the time Katrina hit. When looking at the aftermath of the disaster, Shirley said that people came in soon after it was over. They came by foot, by car and a lot of people had to come via ambulance. She says that as an effect of the storm, their trauma room was down so they had to set up a cardio trauma space in another room but she was still short-staffed and only had one doctor. No one thought this storm was going to be any different than the ones that had happened in the past and because of that many people were not prepared for how horrendous the outcome was. Mrs. Bertolasi stated that she started seeing older and younger people suffering from dehydration and that as soon as they found out the shelter across the street had a nurse she said she had IV fluids, Pedialyte, and bandages over. The DMAT, Disaster Medical Assistance Team, showed up and was able to relieve them and help out. Shirley says that the DMAT saw roughly 400 patients per day from the time they showed up to the hospital, and the max capacity for the ER was set at fifty-five(Bertolasi). She also talks about how some people were abusing the situation and trying to use the aftermath of the hurricane as a way to get free drugs, but they suddenly didn’t need them anymore after they asked for insurance cards and informed people they would be receiving a bill. Another thing Shirley mentions is that they added rubber boots and air mattresses to a list of stuff to add to a preparation list along with radios or lights that are powered by hand-cranked batteries because while they may not last very long they can at least offer a little bit of light when they need it.
In the second source, the person being interviewed is Louis Gomez, who was a registered nurse, and RN, and held the title of Utilization Manager. Louis worked at American Medical Response at the time of the storm which was a shelter for people who were special needs or disabilities. He said that when they first heard of the storm they just assumed it would be like the previous storms’ and it would not be as big of a deal as it was, but he said that they learned the severity of it when the roof started coming off and the power went out. He said that when all of it started happening, after a few days when water started to go down the sewage drains another nurse and I had to go take mop buckets out in order to be able to flush the toilets, but with no power not much was able to be done. He said that he was stuck in the shelter for about eight days and at that point, there were almost 1,000 people staying in the shelter, and with that many people they did not have enough resources. Since they were lacking the resources they needed and wanted in order to assist everyone in the building, Mr. Gomez says that they tried to focus primarily on those with special needs. He also says that the AMR was able to have some relief help come in and set up tents for people who were staying there and they were set up in the parking lot. He even talks about how he is surprised the building survived due to how much water had gotten underneath it but how thankful he was that it did indeed stay up and did not fall because of how many people were in there. At the time this interview happened, Louis said that they were still getting calls and they even had a helicopter.

After a traumatic event such as a hurricane or any natural disaster, the aftermath is overlooked and not talked about enough. The news covers the surface but in reality there’s more to it than what we are shown. There is the environmental factor in this that affects many people’s lives and their individual experiences and after a natural disaster are difficult for outsiders to understand. We are told about stuff like loss of electricity, homes being destroyed, and life’s changing but there is also a big impact towards nature and environment which is an aspect that can easily be brushed off. The Hurricane History Bank Project as an oral history collected as a part of the project used, “The interview of Alva Singleton” as my source in order to show the side of a person who went through this crisis. Singleton goes on to talk about her experience and thoughts about the hurricane. She speaks about the effect it made and the aftermath that the disaster made at her home town.

Singleton goes on to talk about the increase in mosquitoes during certain times of the year and an onslaught of the insects after Hurricane Katrina. She said there was definitely more and they were inundated by mosquitoes for the time being. They sprayed but it still seemed it didn’t make much of a difference. The interviewer goes on to ask about her home and streets to know what type of  damage it had received.   She talked about how her neighbor’s son remained at home during Katrina and he ended up on his rooftop, “ he said that it was a combination of wind and water”. Water had  started to come in and then the wind started to come right after but it wasn’t certain when exactly it started. The neighbor knew that it was a combination of wind and water that destroyed the homes and streets around them. Many people had to break windows in order to reach the roof for a safe spot because if they’d stayed inside they would have drowned.” The wind was so strong that it blew open doors and parts of roofs were ripped off. Trees intervened with people getting around places and caused more damage to homes and streets. The trees blocked many exits that affected people’s ability to reach safety. Trees being down impacted wild life because they are home to many animals. Many people aren’t able to afford getting trees off their homes. In another oral story, “Jacqueline Luck”, explains that there wasn’t anyone to do the job in the first place. The hurricane didn’t only affect people but also the environment and wildlife who live on trees and roam around. These animals have nowhere else to go and they now have to work  hard to survive as well as many people did. In the end, we are all in it together and have to help each other during these very tough situations. There was nothing many could do but wish and pray for the safety of others such as neighbors and loved ones that couldn’t be reached for the time being.

Prior life experiences overall weights on one’s ability to be resilient in situations such as hurricane Katrina. No one can predict their future, although some are more prepared than others for tragedies that could possibly happen. People ultimately had two choices, become mentally defeated and leave things how they were or bounce back from Katrina while developing a resilient mindset if not already had one. For most people in New Orleans, it was almost second nature to not let life have a stronghold on them. With supportive family members, neighbors, and local authorities they worked together to restore moral and livable housing. Some stayed in New Orleans and rebuilt, and most others traveled to significantly less impacted areas to rebuild.

People’s houses and local businesses took a significant amount of damage, some undertaking unrecoverable wreckage to their house, others less fatal. Some people describe the exterior of their houses to be fine, but the interior was gutted out like the body of a car with no engine or seating. Things like clothes and furniture were scattered throughout the streets of the neighborhood, and some valuables were unable to be found. There were even situations of families losing items of sentimental value causing it to emotionally take a toll on them. Others were not so fortunate with their homes being utterly demolished.
Although New Orleans folks were put in this dire situation, many found the moral to bounce back from Katrina. One form of resiliency is physically restoring, another is sustaining and preserving a mindset. To adhere to these requirements, people banded together in small collectives of family and friends to help salvage their homes and clean the neighborhoods up as much as they could. Although this horrific event damaged their areas, it created an opportunity for high-paying manual labor jobs to clean up the areas. Due to the top priority of restoring the neighborhoods, there was a high demand for workers. This opportunity encouraged people to do more than intended knowing they could have some extra money to help support their personal situations. Some people took their religion up and had faith God would turn things around for the better.
Losing China in the storm made Skeetah feel wrecked with guilt, but fueled him to go out and search for China as best he could. One could say a number of people took the same intuitive approach as Skeetah to salvage their belongings, as Skeetah did to look for China. A majority of the residents decided to move to a new area for more suitable living. Before they could move on, they went back to their wrecked property to see what they could recover. The family did the same, as they traveled back to Papa Joseph and Mama Lizbeth’s house to discover the damage done and search for food to maintain during the aftermath.
Overall one’s ability to be resilient in detrimental situations is backed by the will to withstand mental and physical pressure. People could choose to fold under the circumstances or allow it to build them and make them stronger for future dire scenarios.