UNITY Releases Report on People Still Trapped in Katrina’s Ruins

August 24, 2010

The Abandoned Buildings Outreach Team of UNITY of Greater New Orleans has released a detailed report of the Team’s findings and recommendations from 18 months of combing the city’s abandoned buildings in search of elderly and disabled survivors of Hurricane Katrina, “Search and Rescue Five Years Later: Saving People Still Trapped in Katrina’s Ruins.” 

 

Thus far, the team has found 154 people, nearly all disabled Katrina victims, living in abandoned buildings without electricity or running water — most with unrepaired flood damage, often with gaping holes in the walls and roofs. New Orleans presently has over 55,000 abandoned commercial and residential buildings – the highest rate of abandoned buildings in the nation, and searches of abandoned buildings on random samples of census blocks indicates at least 3,000 people are living in these conditions.