Panel talks about storm implications

Panel talks about storm implications

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

Nearly 50 people attended a panel discussion Sept. 23 as Hurricane Rita bore down on the Texas coast. The panel was scheduled to talk about the social, political and environmental impact of Hurricane Katrina, the devastating storm that hit the Louisiana-Mississippi coast just three weeks ago.

The panel ended up discussing the possible outcomes of a hurricane hitting the Houston area as well.

The panelists consisted of Houston Mayor Bill White; Philip Bedient, the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering at Rice; Robert Stein, the dean of social sciences and the Lena Gohlman Fox Professor of Political Science; and Stephen Klineberg, professor of sociology. The panelists were introduced by Susan Bischoff, associate editor at the Houston Chronicle, and moderated by James Pomerantz, professor of psychology and director of Scientia at Rice.

While working to evacuate the Houston area with a hurricane looming, White said flexibility is key during emergency situations. “We’ve learned from Hurricane Katrina that we’ll have a greater impact on the outcome of these situations if we organize ourselves ahead of time,” he said.

White said in an emergency situation, people have to help each other to make it work. “In a major metro area like Houston, we’ll never have an emergency response big enough to substitute for neighbors helping neighbors,” he said.

Bedient has worked on surface water problems for more than 29 years, including major floodplain studies, water quality assessments and hydrologic modeling for a number of watersheds in Texas, Florida and Louisiana. He said the flooding after Hurricane Katrina was so detrimental in New Orleans because most of the city is below sea level. “The good news for Houston is that we are above sea level,” Bedient said.

He showed maps of the city’s bayous in the cases of various storm surge heights. He also said highways I-24 and 288 could be covered with water if the area received 12 to 24 inches of rainfall, similar to the amount the city recorded during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. “Rice is definitely in a good place,” he said. “It’s very high and stays dry.”

Conducting research on the political implications of such large storms, Stein interviewed voters right after Hurricane Katrina about which government officials had done things right, and who was to blame for the things that had gone wrong. Before Rita was even on the radar, these same voters said they did not know who was responsible for managing emergency response in a major disaster.

Stein said it’ll be interesting to see how people see the role of the federal government in natural-disaster situations. “The debate will now be whether or not the federal government should be the first responder,” he said. “Local officials received very high marks after [Hurricane] Katrina and it’ll be interesting to see how they’re perceived after [Hurricane] Rita.”

Klineberg has researched the Houston community for more than 20 years. He said the outpouring of volunteerism shows a high level of civic engagement that Houston had been lacking in previous surveys of the city. “Houston has always been the city with the lowest civic engagement in the past,” Klineberg said. “But volunteers after Hurricane Katrina proved otherwise.”

After Katrina, Houston received positive coverage in the press, he said. This has not been the usual image of the city.Hurricane Katrina also brought to light the prevalence of poverty in this country — it’s real and it’s true, he said. “No country has experienced such a sharp redistribution of resources from poor and middle class to the rich and super rich,” Klineberg said. “Inequalities are increasing, and so far we’ve paid very little attention to those issues.”

Klineberg said Hurricane Katrina only highlighted this tension, and Hurricane Rita could possibly do the same. He stressed the importance of paying attention to Houston’s poor.

Klineberg also said it’ll be interesting to see how many people from New Orleans return to the city since many people have already been absorbed into the Houston community.

The panel discussion, “Hurricane Katrina and Houston: Implications for our Future,” was co-sponsored by Rice University’s Scientia and the Houston Chronicle.