Environmental Injustice in the Disaster Cycle: Hurricane Harvey and the Texas Gulf Coast

We apply an environmental justice lens to synthesize knowledge of disparities experienced by Hurricane Harvey survivors based on race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) across the disaster phases. We focus on the Texas Gulf Coast, which hosts the largest petrochemical industrial complex in the United States and experienced Harvey-induced flooding in 2017, precipitating a natural-technological (na-tech) disaster. We review studies that have examined race/ethnicity- and/or SES-based disparities in each of Harvey's phases (i.e., mitigation, preparedness, physical impacts, health impacts, response, and recovery). Before Harvey, racial/ethnic minority and low SES populations had constrained access to resources for mitigating flood/hurricane hazards and exhibited less disaster preparedness relative to White and higher SES populations. The physical and health impacts associated with Harvey disproportionately affected minority and low SES groups. In addition, minority and low SES populations experienced heightened challenges in responding to and recovering from Harvey. Disparities documented within each phase of Harvey likely cascaded across this event for minority and low SES survivors, accumulating disadvantage in a manner that compounded their experiences of injustice. Patterns of na-tech disaster injustice in Harvey reflect preexisting racial/economic segregation and inequality along the Texas Gulf Coast and mirror patterns observed in Hurricane Katrina. Such disaster injustices derive from features shared by many U.S. Gulf Coast communities, including the presence of weak planning institutions, exploitative industries, degraded environments, spatial segregation, and stark inequalities. Thus, ameliorating regional disaster injustices requires tackling those root causes, while simultaneously improving organizational capabilities for disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.