The Katrina crusaders
Financial Times, 8/28/07
Sharon Hanshaw was out of town when Hurricane Katrina tore through Biloxi, Mississippi in 2005, flattening houses, damaging infrastructure and washing a giant casino barge across US Highway 90.
When she returned to discover she had lost her home and the beauty salon she had owned for 21 years, she found solace among women who had begun meeting regularly to talk about life after the storm.
Last January she helped found the group Coastal Women for Change to give residents a voice in decisions about the future of their community. “There is no affordable housing, no childcare, and limited transportation,” says Ms Hanshaw, CWC’s executive director. “But there are casinos.”
On the eve of the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, more than 200,000 people are still displaced and tens of thousands are living in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers. To make matters worse, bureaucratic ineptitude has held up billions of dollars in aid.