Dealing with Katrina and facing the future
(CNN)—Hurricane Katrina’s survivors face homelessness, unemployment and worry-filled sleepless nights, according to a poll of those who sought relief from the Red Cross.
According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted in cooperation with the Red Cross, about a third of the 1,510 respondents were homeless, a quarter were out of work, and more than a fifth were still separated from at least one family member.Roughly 60 percent said they had trouble sleeping and felt depressed; about two-thirds reported feeling anxiety. The most difficult thing cited? The loss of everything they owned.
The respondents came from a database maintained by the Red Cross of 463,172 households in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama that have contacted the agency looking for assistance.
The poll, taken by telephone between September 30 and October 9, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, unless otherwise noted. For New Orleans respondents, the margin of error was 5 percentage points.
More than two-thirds of the poll’s respondents said they evacuated before the hurricane. Nearly one in five people evacuated after the hurricane, and 15 percent chose to ride out the storm.
Most who did not evacuate before the storm hit—47 percent—said they didn’t think Katrina would be so bad. Only 8 percent of respondents said they had no transportation to get out. That question had a sampling error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.
Those polled were among the hardest hit by Katrina. About half are African-American and about 60 percent are female.
Source: CNN.com © 2005 Cable News Network
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Filed under: Hurricane Katrina 2005, Society and Culture, Perspectives
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