Ruth Bennett woke up at 1 a.m. and looked through the doorway of her independent living apartment in Walker, about 20 miles west of Baton Rouge. It was Aug. 13, 2016, and rain had been pouring down for two days. Bennett was worried about her car flooding.
She saw water creeping up to the parking lot, but her car looked safe. She crawled back into bed.
Two hours later, one of the employees of Southern Pines Retirement Community was pounding on Bennett's door. Not only had Bennett's car flooded, the facility was surrounded by water. The employee told Bennet to grab what she needed, including her medicine.
"In two hours it had come from nothing," Bennett recalled recently. "It was very frightening, especially when you're old."
The elderly and children are among the most vulnerable populations to extreme weather events. That's in part because they often do not have the ability to mobilize quickly or on their own, and they're at a greater risk physiologically and psychologically. These trends were noticeable in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina .
Consider these key findings from several studies:
- Seventy-four percent of the deaths related to Hurricane Katrina were among those age 60 and older, and 50 percent of these were among people over age 75, according to a 2006 study .
- In the year after Hurricane Katrina, displaced students in Louisiana public schools, on average, performed worse in all subjects and grades compared with other students. In addition, displaced students experienced a variety of problems related to attendance, academic performance, behavior and mental health, according to a 2010 report .
- More than 5,000 children were separated from their families after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The last missing child was reunited with her family 6 months after the storms, according the 2010 report .
- Three years after Hurricane Katrina, serious emotional disturbance persisted in 11.5 percent of children and adolescents, compared with an estimated 4.2 percent pre-hurricane prevalence, according to a 2010 study .
Extreme weather events, like the Louisiana flood of 2016 , are becoming more likely because of climate change , scientists say. So doctors who work with aging people and children are getting involved in the climate change discussion.
"Pediatricians have served as advocates for children on the issues that affect their health, their prosperity and their future. And I can't think of another issue that would have a greater impact than the changing of the climate that we all live in," said Dr. Samantha Ahdoot, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University at Inova Fairfax Hospital.
As water surrounded the retirement community where Bennett lives, it gushed into schools in Livingston Parish . Eighteen of the district's 44 schools were damaged. For months, students from flooded schools were educated in gyms and on alternative schedules at nearby campuses. Three schools have not been re-opened.
Students from these schools continue to be taught on a temporary campus in Denham Springs , until the school district figures out how to move forward with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Rich Wentzel, the Livingston Parish Public Schools Superintendent.
Last week, Casie Richardson, a first grade teacher at Denham Springs Elementary, prepared her temporary classroom for a new class of students. "This is their home away from home," she said of her classroom.
The Louisiana flood of 2016 reaffirmed that for her. Richardson's own home was flooded during the storm. She, her husband, and their two young daughters were living with her in-laws when she returned to teach 20 days after the storm.
Richardson taught her class in a gymnasium alongside other elementary school teachers in the months after the flood. Thin partitions were all that separated the classes. She still remembers the first time it rained while she taught in the makeshift classroom.
"When you're in a gym you can hear every bit of rain, thunder, commotion," she said. "You could tell the kids were real antsy."
Richardson's partner teacher gathered the students together and read them "Thunder Cake," a book about a grandmother who calms her frightened granddaughter during a thunderstorm by baking a cake.
"She could feel how tense she was and she could see it on the kids," Richardson said of her teaching partner. "I just feel like experiencing it myself helped me give more of a compassionate side to what the kids were going through."
Talking to her students helped Richardson to better understand how to talk to her oldest daughter about the flooding, she said. Richardson asked her students how they wanted their classroom to be decorated as they prepared to move onto the temporary campus. The students overwhelmingly wanted Richardson to keep the jungle theme that she had in her classroom before the storm. But more than anything they expressed gratitude for being able to have input in the new space.
"It made me think, 'I need to bring this over into my own child's life and let her have an input in our own house,'" Richardson said. "It helped me to realize that I need to make it her space."
Richardson's effort to give students input in her new classroom is a great example of how adults can help children cope after an extreme weather event, Ahdoot said. "Recreating a sense of normalcy and control is an excellent idea by that teacher," she said.
The school district's first focus was providing the basic needs for its students, Wentzel said. The district gave away 10,000 school uniforms and provided free breakfast and lunch to all students. The goal was to restore a sense of normalcy, he said. "It's evident from the students' test scores they did a really good job," he said of the district staff.
Though some populations are more vulnerable to extreme weather events, there are ways to level out the playing field, said David Filiberto, a research associate at Cornell University. Filiberto's research focuses on the impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations such as those with disabilities, the aging and indigenous peoples.
"Older adults should have an emergency preparedness plan," he said, adding that preparations should include a means of evacuating and or sheltering in place. Older adults should also identify a person who can check on them before the storm, he said.
During the Louisiana flood of 2016, Cookie Johnson stayed on past her shift at Southern Pines Retirement Community. She's worked at the facility as a cook for 22 years and, normally, her shift ends at 2:30 p.m. But on August 13, she stayed into the night. When the waters started to rise around the facility, she was there to help evacuate residents from the independent living apartments into the main building of the facility.
While her own home in Denham Springs was flooding, she stayed behind to help. "I did what I do," she said. "I went into the kitchen and fed them. I kept them entertained."