Disaster tourism

Disaster tourism is the act of traveling to a disaster area as a matter of curiosity.

Hurricane Katrina

Disaster tourism took hold in the Greater New Orleans Area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There are now guided bus tours to neighborhoods that were severely damaged and/or totally destroyed by the flooding.

Some local residents have criticized these tours as unethical, because the tour companies are profiting from the misery of their communities and families. The Army Corps of Engineers has noted that traffic from tour buses and other tourist vehicles have interfered with the movement of trucks and other cleanup equipment on single-lane residential roads. Furthermore, during the first six months after the storm, most of these neighborhoods lacked electricity, phone access, street signs, or access to emergency medical or police assistance. Simply traveling to these neighborhoods was hazardous. Some residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard parishes were less than welcoming to tour buses in their neighborhoods and sometimes outright hostile.