Of the more than 1,300 people who died because of Hurricane Katrina, more than 70 percent were over age 60.

The elderly population of the New Orleans area was hardly overwhelming: perhaps 15 percent. But they made up almost three-fourths of those who died.

How can people still claim that the era of ageism ─ discrimination against the elderly ─ has passed. These stark facts should have scandalized public officials and the general public more than ever before.

With the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us this week, we can seize the opportunity to reflect on these deaths. Moreover, we can ask what is being done to protect us against other disasters taking a similarly large toll of older people.

I will not soon forget the photo of sick old people, mostly women, lying on flimsy stretchers, with their legs exposed, aside or on the baggage area conveyer belts as they awaited evacuation from the New Orleans airport. And accounts of the drowning of 34 residents of St. Rita’s Nursing Home will continue to haunt many of us who read about it.

A recent issue of Public Policy & Aging Report focuses on disasters, both natural and man-made, and their impact upon the older members of the population. Several knowledgeable contributors claim that the nation is still badly prepared to safeguard elder citizens when such events strike again.

Veteran readers of these columns may recall two previous ones that I wrote about catastrophes that victimized many elders. The first was the heat wave in Chicago that claimed the lives of more than 700 older residents in July of 1995. An excellent book by Eric Klinenberg of New York University analyzed the reasons for that disaster.  

The second took place in Paris when an astonishing ten thousand people, most of them elders, were estimated to have died during a heat wave that engulfed that city in August 2003. Though Paris experienced very hot weather this summer, officials seem to have learned in the interim how to take better care of their oldest citizens.

Despite the lessons learned from these human and natural disasters, they have sparked too little planning and research on the subject. “Older adults represent a blindspot in disaster planning and research,” according to Johns Hopkins professor Thomas Glass.

“In times of disaster,” Glass says, “older adults, many of whom may be functioning well in their communities, are challenged beyond their reserves.” He regrets that “little attention has been paid to the question of how best to plan for and respond to the needs of older persons in a disaster.”

Hence the continuing debacle for elders in New Orleans.

Even now, a year later, “very few recovery initiatives have specifically addressed the needs of older adults,” reports Jennifer Campbell, director of the Hurricane Fund for the Elderly. In fact, she says, older people without money and family have been explicitly told not to return to New Orleans.

Another academic, Share DeCroix Bane, emphasizes the mental health needs of elders who have been displaced. She feels concern about both “the initial chaos of the disaster and the ongoing stress of the aftermath.”

For those fortunate enough to have survived, stress about the loss of their homes and neighborhoods must be a continuing problem. In fact, more than 1,300 elders in Louisiana who used to live in the community now reside in nursing homes. For them, normal living in their later years has been shut off, even as a possibility.

A journalistic colleague, Paul Kleyman, recalls covering the story of the 1989 Loma Prieto earthquake in the San Francisco area. He tells of rescue workers trying to contact many elders cut off from food, potable water, medication and other forms of help. “Without a map of where to find vulnerable people, he remembers, “rescuers had to go door-to-door, sometimes not finding elders or people with disabilities for several days.”

Kleyman also reminds fellow journalists that “most disaster rescue and recovery plans hardly─if at all─mention older people.”

I see the failure of governmental and other agencies to include elder citizens in disaster planning as a failure of imagination. Like many other adults, most planners cannot see themselves ever being in the same situation as their seniors.

Instead, if they think of them at all, these professionals implicitly consider people much older than themselves as a race apart. Their consciousness does not envision older people as their future selves. This inability serves as a solid mental block that prevents them from working out what a civilized society must do for its senior citizens.

But many of my age peers could do more to cultivate people of all ages in the communities where we live. We especially need to make friends with our juniors who will remember us in our times of need. This reaching out I do not consider selfish because those younger people who do help us will benefit also.

Being compassionate brings its own rewards.

Richard Griffin