It’s an indelicate question but one that needs to be asked: Should New Orleans be rebuilt? Or how much of it should be?
At a press conference with the governor and legislators just now, vows were made: “We’re going to be reinventing New Orleans…. Can and will New Orleans be rebuilt? Absolutely!”
But… Having visited the city often in my last job, I was always struck by its poverty and its lack of a workable economy. Tourism is pretty much the only industry. The food is great. The attitude is fun. But big companies had left.
And… Does it make sense to rebuild homes and offices in a place that can be destroyed all too easily, putting thousands of lives at risk? Is that the right thing to do?
And… Is that the best use of our tax and insurance dollars? Everytime the Mississippi floods up river, there are those who say that we should stop paying to rebuild that which has been destroyed before. And, in fact, we have invested government money in moving people away from certain danger so we can stop paying to rebuild. It’s an investment in their safety.
I’m not suggesting that what’s left of New Orleans should be bulldozed and abandoned. But I will suggest that, indeed, the city may need to be reinvented. How?
Perhaps it should go with its strengths and be rebuilt as a tourist destination before all its restaurants have branches in Vegas. Perhaps it should be smaller and rather than investing in rebuilding, the money should in some cases be spent on relocation.
What should become of New Orleans?
(Please pardon this repeaeted comment from an earlier post but this is important.)
http://www.RedCross.org is very slow. Hopefuly that means their getting alot of donations.
Network for Good has a page of donation links to charities (including the Red Cross) mobilizing to help: http://www.networkforgood.org/topics/animal_environ/hurricanes/ .
I just made a Red Cross donation via NetworkForGood’s cart there very easily.
Let us all remember one thing abou this. God is punishing them for thier decadent lifestyle!
It’s not like New Orleans ever made sense in the first place, an eternally crumbling town built on the edge of apocalypse in a miasma of sweat and disease. By all means rebuild it! The fact that it makes no sense is one of its greatest attractions — and unlike other cities that make absolutely no sense (LA, Phoenix), this one actually has a soul.
Absolutely, it should be re-built. As Chris says above, it has a great big soul. The history, culture, music – alone! that has sprung from that bathtub demands a re-build, and not some sterile, squeaky clean Celebration, FL version two hundred miles upriver, but right there. I think we all need a reminder of our own inherent absurd but beautiful fragility. Yes.
Um. no Jeff, it isn’t a question that needs to be asked, at least not while the city is dying before our eyes.
“Indelicate” isn’t the word. Could we at least wait until the bodies are recovered before playing “I told you so” and worrying about tax dollars?
The irony of course is that the one part of the city yet to have been adversely impacted by the flooding is the French Quarter. Back in the days before the Army Corps of Engineers chained the Mississippi River to a fixed course the locals knew damned well not to build anything you’d miss on a floodplain.
Absolutely N.O. should be rebuilt. If we can spend $200+ billion dollars rebuilding someone else’s nation surely we can do better for one of our own cities.
chris & kelsey… well said… but let’s use disney’s money to do it.
YES it should be re-built. And I don’t say that about all the beach houses on barrier islands that were never meant to be so densely populated. New Orleans is responsible for a disproportionate amount of the soul of our country. We NEED New Orleans to be re-built.
Hopefully it can be done in a way that better honors its physical environment as well as its human inhabitants.
Better yet, should Iraq be rebuilt? That could be throwing good money after bad as well.
I’ll personally wait until the people are rescued/evacuated, the dead are buried, and the water recedes before worrying about the future of New Orleans. That isn’t just because I think we need to respect those that are being and have been affected by this, but because pondering about the future of New Orleans does nothing to improve the current situation.
I was surprised at how small New orleans Actually is. Less than a half million people? I had simply assumed there were a whole lot more.
I think the city should rebuild, but very carefully. The slums that Katrina destroyed should stay destroyed. Depression and poverty do not equal soul.
New Orleans was a geographical time bomb. The potential for this to happen again is very high. Just as Los Angeles builds in anticipation or earthquakes, New Orleans must anticipate flood. It needs to rebuild with a close eye on what is safe, what can be made safe, and what should be abandoned.
Yes, The City of La Nouvelle Orléans must be rebuild.
It’s a “Memory Duty” like the rebuild of Varsovia…
A Nation with no memory is a Nation with no future.
Building cities for humans is better than making a non-sense War in Irak !
Have a great day
Maybe we watch the flood waters recede and bury the dead before we go meta on this one?
I wonder if you’d be so quick to suggest abandonment and relocation of New Orleans if the people affected were predominantly white rather than black?
Good question, but the wrong time to ask it. The hurricane has passed, but the disaster is only getting started. You dont ask people to pick out new drapes while the fire department is still putting out the fire.
Sections of Southern Louisiana, Missouri and Alabama will likely be uninhabitable for some time, and its very likely that due to dioxin there may be may parts of these areas that are never going to be re-inhabited.
From an eerily prophetic December 2000 article…
I don’t understand why the people didn’t heed the mandatory evaculation order. Even if I didn’t have a car I would have walked to the SuperDome. The only explanation I can think of is that they weren’t well enough informed which is a failure of their local government.
Considering it will be impossible to get property insured there in the future and the pollution and bad memories stuck in the mud, it’s fairly safe (and sad) to say that it won’t be rebuilt.
I was surprised at how small New orleans Actually is. Less than a half million people? I had simply assumed there were a whole lot more.
I think it depends on your definition of what New Orleans is. Boston’s only got ~600,000 if you only count who’s in the city proper, yet many of the municipalities in the Greater Metro area that would be included in the population count of most other cities make the total number of people more like 4 million.
According to the extremely useful website Nationmaster.com, the N.O./Metairie/Kenner metro area amounts to 1.3 million, making it the 39th largest such region in America.
Am an artist and have been working on a book for 25 years, I have walked, taking photos of every inch of N.O. over 3000 . THIS TOWN HATES CHANGE I MEAN HATES … Yes the poor need new housing hopefully this is a way to find work . If you take the time to read the history of N.O. this is just a bump in the road,in 1853 more than 40,000 had the yellow fever about 10,000 people died that summer. Those levees were built from the PEOPLE WHO HATE CHANGE , this time next year Mon will be Red Beans & Rice Day …MY HEART IS WITH YOU NEW ORLEANS.
Isn’t it up to the people of New Orleans whether to rebuild or not?
No, let’s not rebuild New Orleans. Hurricanes are only part of the problem. The city sits on rever delta sediments, which means the street level surface is constantly sinking due to soil compaction. New sediments, rather than being allowed to replenish the land (and the important coastal buffer) are instead flushed out to sea by channelizing the river. As new silt clogs the mouth of the Mississippi, the levees are extended yet farther into the Gulf, which has the effect of flushing sediment yet farther into the sea. Meanwhile, the ancient delta deposits, robbed of fresh sediements, are eroding.
So not only is the land sinking, but the coast is eroding ever closer. In a few decades, New Orleans will be an isolated bowl/isthmus/ditch set several miles offshore in the Gulf, with sea waves crashing directly against a levee which must be built ever higher as the land sinks ever deeper. Once a century the bowl will be flooded by another Katrina and all will be lost again.
It’s insane to flush more money into this bowl of futility. Let’s cut our losses and relocate the population, rather than perpetuate the French Folly with limitless tax and disaster subsidies.
Well, I wouldn’t have written this now except that senators and congressmen were promising to write legislation to this effect tomorrow.
And if we care about the people who died there, then perhaps we don’t want to subject the survivors to this risk again.
Gunther: Give me a friggin’ break. The race card has been played so often it’s tattered. And perhaps you could be accused to saying it’s OK to risk people’s lives in this flood bowl just because they are poor and black. Give it up.
DB
“It’s insane to flush more money into this bowl of futility. Let’s cut our losses and relocate the population, rather than perpetuate the French Folly with limitless tax and disaster subsidies. ”
I agree 100%. I assume you are talking about Iraq?
I love visiting New Orleans and will probably do it again. It’s still a very valid question because as far as I know there has not been a single viable proposal that will save the city in the long run. Also count me among those who think that the future of hurricanes is much brighter than that of the coastal population centers that they will be visiting thanks to ongoing climatological trends.
Jeff
As a southerner I hate to see old things go away. But for the most part N.O needs to go away. It would be neat to see the city reborn as a small tourist/hi-tech area where most or all residents live in and around downtown and the french quarter…get rid of the sprawl…let the wetlands come back. Stop the never ending sinking problem
Me, I think it should be rebuilt, but on thick stilts with deep pilings. Also, no more levees and pumps; perhaps Newer Orleans infrastructure can be at one with Lake Pontchartrain, with canals and gondolas, like Venice or Delft. Wouldn’t that be cool? You’d barely be able to tell where the city ends and the suburban bayous begin. You could call them suburbayous.
Let me illustrate with a roughly equivalent proposal how stupid it is to rebuild New Orleans
(1) Pick an spot between two islands about halfway along the chain of Florida Keys. Draw a rectangle around the spot, maybe thirty miles long by 10 miles wide. The line defing the rectangle will probably be in open water; nonetheless, build a wall from the sea floor to maybe fifteen feet above the surface — a total of maybe 50 feet high.
(2) Pump out all the water from this huge bathtub.
(3) Build a city on the dry bathtub floor, and move about a million people in. Wait for the next hurricane to drown them.
Repeat steps (2) and (3) about once every 100 years.
THAT is how stupid it is to rebuild New Orleans now, given the effective total destruction of city’s existing real estate.
Except it’s even stupider, because New Orleans has a huge elevated aqueduct (some call it the Mississippi River) running down the centerline of the bathtub.
Metarie/Kenner/New Orleans….you right Jersey. It all seems one large city but the soul is downtown NO. My favorite food in the south was in a hole-in-the-wall in Kenner. Shame.
I hate this. And yes, if I could put it all back tomorrow for the people, so be it. I don’t know Jeff, too soon. Just hope they figure a way to get all those people out. That looks to be a major.
A couple of days ago, New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Now it’s just a disaster.
No, it should not be rebuilt to what it was. We are supposed to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them.
Agree with dude who said if we can spend at least $300 billion to fuck up and fail to rebuild Iraq/Afhganistan (not too mention hundred billions more for too many weps to count), then we should be able to rebuild something that keeps Big Easy alive, baby.
You gotta also agree that you’d have to be a dumbfuck or rich asshole to rebuild below sea-level.
Again, like the friggin tsunami, and even 9/11, the magnitude of this disaster only grows and feeds a concise armegeddon symbology. Its obvious the end of the world is nigh mothafuckas — unless the HEAD of BIG OIL is ripped off its bootlickn’ lackeys reeducated — “cultural revolution style”. Hardlabor and 24/7 loudspeakers and big screens with “Ellen” and “Rosie”, and Malcom X, Queer Eye,”ACLU All-Stars Lectures, Hosted by Noam Chomsky”, Sri Chimnoy-type muthafuckas, Dixie Chicks, Pygmy shamans, etc., etc. Their labors would be redeeming, so that upon death, their lives will have actually been helpful.
And of course nonexistant global warming has nothing to do with freak weather (”oh, it goes in cycles and there’s no proof” – these muthafuckas need to be fed to the animals).
But while everyone’s just taking it up the butt (in a bad way) and whimpering about bargain gas prices (Chris Rock, keen as always, is right on message appealing to dumb, greedy, evil voters by hammering on gas prices)
But anyway, you just gotta wonder how intelligent it would be to design Newnew Orleans in its present location, when God obviously doesn’t want it there.
But I really wanna see CNN cover the area of New Orleans where I live. For the past two days I’ve been chillin and blogging from my generator-run survivalist treehouse perched near the zoo. I’ve got my binoculars on a group of people putting little outboard motors on floating coffins and other impromptu rafts who are goin round lootin and shit Road Warrior style. And, of course, the animals in the zoo have escaped their cages and made my neighborhood an all you can eat cajun buffet. Man, this blog writes itself.
The horror. The horror.
We should ask the question now, and the answer is no. New Orleans should not be rebuilt. To address Brett Rodgers, it should be up to everyone, because our tax dollars will be used to rebuild this folly. When the Mississippi River flooded the Midwest about a decade ago, they moved whole towns that were built in the flood plain. That is what should be done with New Orleans. Keep the French Quarter around as a small tourist attraction, and move everything else. The only other option I can think of is to fill in the areas that are under sea level. I don’t know where the dirt would come from, or if this idea is feasible, but rebuilding the whole city again under sea level is a bad idea.
If the people of New Orleans, and the state of Louisiana want to rebuild, then power to them. But, it’s time for the federa gravy train, for disasters, to stop. Ironically, just after I posted to my own blog on this subject, I read your post. I’m tired of using my tax dollars to pay to rebuild areas that are clearly going to be disaster zones again. Don’t get me wrong, I abhor the loss of life, empathize with those who have lost there life’s work and personal belongings. But, it’s not like they hadn’t been warned. They were living BELOW sea level, on a coast that has been on the receiving end of numerous hurricanes. Why should the rest of the nation pay for their foolishness? Federal flood insurance needs to go away. It just encourages foolish behavior, and hides the true cost of living in certain areas.
New Orleans is one of the United States’ most important sea ports.
There has to be a city there.
Chicago was rebuilt after the great fire. San Francisco was rebuilt after the great earthquake.
The rebuilt New Orleans will be a big improvement over the old version — as were Chicago & SF. Just keep Bourbon St. the way it is.
I asked the same thing earlier today on my blog. I think it is something to consider. It might not be what people want to think about, but it is a concern given the city’s unique vulnerabilities. In 1993, these same questions were asked about communities along the Mississippi River when it had a “100-year event” because there were events, albeit not as large, happening quite frequently. Many people were encouraged to relocate.
New Orleans has been lucky, but it may enter a period of being unlucky. Is that something tax payers want to pay for?
After reading all the comments, one is left to wonder if the better question is whether the businesses which are currently being systematically looted by folks in the Big Easy would ever want to return to reward the generosity of those who chose to disobey mandatory evacuation orders.
These businesses provide much needed employment and economic life to a city of millions, most of the economically challenged. These businesses are being repaid tonight by being blatently robbed in the presence of police, firemen, other rescue personnel and, not inconsequentially, hundreds of news video cameras.
Quite stunning how some people are willing to destroy their own communities for the sake of a few pairs of Nike shoes or a 13-inch black and white television lifted from the local Wal-Mart.
I’m quite struck by the video of the looters.
They all seem to have something in common.
And before Gunther goes off on his high horse … the thing the looters seem to have in common is not that they are all black … the thing they seem to have in common is that none of them mind very much whether the crimes they are committing against their own neighbors make the CBS Evening News.
As someone who was born and raised in Louisiana and watches these scenes of devastation fighting hard to swallow the lump in my throat as I watch my home state drowning … tonight, I am ashamed to say I am from there.
I say rebuild, west of the Mississippi on higher ground.
do not rebuild it
rebuild the loop
and the port
forcibly remove everyone from the coastal areas of louisiana, alabama, and mississippi, and tell everyone that there will be no aid to anyone affected by further weather events. cut your losses on this poor, lawless city.
I lived in New Orleans up until a few months ago. (NO, I’m not psychic.) I bartended in the French Quarter and at a few places in the adjoining Marigny. I lived there for five years and published my Web magazine from there, of course.
There will always be a New Orleans, until global warming takes away the rest of the coastal United States, Manhattan *island* (where I also used to live) first. Get over it, folks.
New Orleans is for us was Beirut was for the Middle East before the 1970s. It’s an adult theme park that America needs to save its consumerist soul. You all go there to do what you’d never do in your own home towns. You collect the Mardi Gras beads like children collecting candy and come back with stories to tell your grandchildren.
When New Orleans was first built, the architect/engineer in charge told his patron it was madness. The world can use a little more benign madness, don’t you think?
If New Orleans is to be rebuilt, it should most definitely be rebuilt differently. I think Alan’s comment above is constructive. Some part of the old city can be preserved, but much of the formerly functioning areas of the city should probably never be made functional again.
On a side note, I think the “if we’re blowing money in Iraq, why can’t we blow money on New Orleans?” arguments have a false premise–namely, that we are accepting that Iraq will require our reconstruction and security resources indefinitely. That’s obviously not the hope of the administration. (The debate over whether those hopes are unfounded or not is another issue all together.)
We KNOW that New Orleans (as it was) would require continual infusions of massive resources into the indefinite future to continue existing. This might well be justified for some cities (like some in earthquake prone California, for example) that have productive economies. With all due respect and amiability to those that called it home, New Orleans was a poor and, some might argue, municipally dysfunctional city.
As it appears that we will be rebuilding from almost literally the ground up, if we rebuild, it would be remiss to rebuild New Orleans as it was. It might carry the name, but a practically new city should arise.
What Dennis Mosher said. Surely you’ve noticed the vast amounts of industry around NO by now. If not, pick up your local fishwrap and read the business section. If that’s too much trouble, peek out the window at the gas prices. Good grief. The number of petrochemicals alone make it moot. There’s banking & there’s tourism, too. I can’t believe the question would even be asked. Leave it to a Yankee.
Did anyone ask the same question when the cities of Oakland and San Francisco were severely rocked by an earthquake not so many years ago. Will the same question be asked when the San Andreas finallt gives and Los Angeles is destroyed. New Orleans is older than our nation and it is the soul of my home state. I am heading there in one hour along with my bay boat. My brother in law is riding shotgun. This city will be rebuilt. God bless New Orleans and the generous people of the U.S.
Responding to Benjamin Whiskey, and nodding in agreement with Lou Herbert, disasters happen. There are plenty of cities that live dangerously, so to speak, not least of which is New York for its financial center and high population. It’s up to the residents of that location whether to rebuild or not. If you don’t like your tax dollars spent on it, fine, write your congressman. But the precedent is there, and it’s assinine to favor one natural disaster with your tax dollars and disregard another. Miami should maybe relocate? Or as Lou suggests, how about LA? New York, for the terrorist target that it is?
The discussion is a bit ridiculous because few politicians would abandon a city in such great need.
Oh Jeff, please. Brett’s right. Now’s not the time to ask. And your reasoning — that Congress was ready to write a check tomorrow — isn’t sound. Even if they passed a law tomorrow, who knows if the south would actually see the money. Go back to worrying about the WTC site.
In these times of American hyper-partisanship, even the response to an act of God like hurricane Katrina is revealing.
For the full story, see:
“Hurricanes, Divine Retribution and the Right.”
This is not a 100 year event. New Orleans hash survived for 300 years.
New Orleans will survive, in tact. This is a disgusting, pathetic bit of rhetoric. Someone has been watching too much cable news. Did Wolf Biltzer get your panties in a bunch?
You’re not going to be able to legislate New Orleans away. It is one of the oldest cities in America. It is older than America, with dedicated citizens, old families, it is a working city. Those are not second homes, those are working homes. These are not vacation condos. The Gulf Coast is a working coast. It is vital to the U.S economy. Oil, refineries, shipping, river transport, drainage.
Where else are you going to put it? How about we pave over some of Connecticut and build a few refineries?
We still can’t move the Gulf reserves, though.
The question is whether or not Louisiana is going to get serious about restoring the costal wetlands that have served to protect New Orleans for all these years. There’s a reason New Orleans has survived for so long, and a reason that it has become vulnerable now. The citizens of Louisiana have been grappling with this issue for a long time, and now, hopefully, the nation will make the investments necessary to protect this vital infrastructure.
It amazes me how in the midst of disaster such a question can be asked. As if you’ve suddenly become aware of the threats to this region, and oh, I think I’ll have to decide whether or not it lives or dies. Please review these coments, and tell us, Yankee, what fate you’ve chosen for this bothersome bit of news.
What a ridiculous question. As someone mentioned upthread, would we pick up and leave Los Angeles after a massive ‘quake? Would we deny them Federal Disaster Aid? I mean, they DID choose to build their city on a fault line, after all.
And St. Louis. Man, the next time they flood because of record snowmelt upriver, let ‘em swim for it and abandon the Gateway to the West in place. It’ll only flood again.
Seattle? Hey – they KNEW there were active volcanos nearby. Why should the federal government pay for the ash cleanup?
For those who would deny Federal Aid to flood victims…think about who helped to create the problem we’re seeing in New Orleans. By forcing the levees higher and higher along the river to protect commercial shipping and communities near the river, the corps of engineers has helped to create this problem. They petitioned the Bush administration for money last year to help solve it, but were denied because we are currently spending all our money rebuilding Iraq.
The “looting” loop CNN keeps playing shows blacks leaving a store carrying…
Diapers. Candybars. Water. More diapers. Yeah, they’re really depraved. Most likely, they are stealing the items they need to survive. What would you do if you were unable to evacuate? I’m really shocked by how many people in the last few days who react like this to massive tragedy.
Shame on the massively and disproportionately poor in New Orleans for not having enough money to afford a car like everyone else – a car they could fill for a hundred bucks, and drive to Houston to stay in a $90/night hotel for four weeks.
And shame on the people in this thread who think we should abandon the most historically rich city in the United States, cut off federal aid to flood victims, and convict some of the poorest people in the nation because they broke into a drugstore and stole a package of pampers.
Well. First, it Is too soon to ask.
Second, the question itself may be a moot point. I’m sorry to ask another pesky question, but will it even be possible to rebuild? Efforts to plug the dyke have failed and have been abandoned at last report. When the pumps fail, it’s reported that 9 more feet of water will fill the tub. According to the lengthy article cited by Jeff a few days ago (it seems like years now), science says the only realistic way to drain the tub is to dynamite 1/2 mile of the levees. That’s doable, obviously. But I don’t know the area well enough to know where the water would drain To at that point – back into the same lakes or river the levees were supposed to keep out? Pumping (alone) apparently would take eons. Maybe it’s all pretty easy and ‘doable’? If so, please disregard my question..
My main concern Now (aside from little matters like destroyed lives, including immediate family members) is how the rest of those there are going to be evacuated, with only one egress point available, with no way to even communicate to them (bullhorns from boats and helicopters?) the status of the failed levees or the Newest order to evacuate. And there’s that matter of those 10,000 in the dome surrounded by a rising moat. Better bring in the amphibious vehicles and boats. How many can they carry at a time? What about the other 10’s of thousands with no way out? Will there EVER be a body count for this tragedy?
Talk about ghosts from above ground crypts in NOLA…they now have much more company.
A three foot shark has been spotted, as were cops stealing shoes at Walmart without batting an eyelash. And then there’s the celebrated-with-fanfare, multi-million dollar, newly-built levee which ended up failing and drowning the city (correct me if it’s not the same levee section)…. O the memories of all stripes many of us will always carry for magical NO.
Emeril was no dummy to ‘expand’ to Vegas. Fact is, NOLA is ALREADY a distributed city. From the million or so who already evacuated and lost their homes, livelihoods and all earthly possessions, to the patients being ferried to hospitals all over the state, to those walking out on foot to who knows where…. By the time it’s drained and fit for rebuilding/habitation, the distributed will have already rebuilt their lives somewhere else.
Perhaps a french quarter reunion some day would be nice. Muddy glass bottom boat tours, complete with alligators and crawfish feasts.
Who can even bear the thought of no more NO? I cannot. But it may not [ultimately] even be feasible to resurrect this particular piece of our heart.
…I need to find some wedding pictures and pics of my three neices for my sister and her husband, who just lost too many layers and pieces of their lives to count. But memories of the heart are the most precious of all. And if that’s where NOLA ends up, one way or the other she and her ghosts will live on.
Oh God. A prison uprising now…people carrying rifles in the streets…fires. It ain’t so easy in the big easy any more.
will it even be possible to rebuild?
Good gawd…it’s been THIRTY SIX HOURS.
Yeah, sure — I say we go ahead and dynamite all the levees and just inundate a 300 year old city, seeing as how we haven’t been able to bring the psychos to heel AND dry everything out in time for the Labor Day revellers.
Christ, people make me tired sometimes.
Jeff,
Since you’ve been to New Orleans so often, I’m surprised you forgot to mention the port. There will be a port somewhere near the mouth of the Mississippi for reasons that should be obvious. If there is a port of this size, there will inevitably be a city around it. Does a port have to be literally in the exact same location? Perhaps not, but who’s gonna move it and why? Also there is much other commerce in New Orleans with the oil and gas industry. The city itself has been rife with corruption and has chronic economic problems, but it is ignorant to speak of only the city and not the metro area which is not as economically bad off but wouldn’t exist without the city.
The question is really the planning that should go into the reconstruction. That is unclear and is too soon to know. Yes, New Orleans has many problems, but to simply say it’s federal money down the drain and I’m not spending my tax dollars for this is silliness. I’m a small government advocate, but if government doesn’t exist for these kinds of efforts, then what is it existing for? Repeal the pork barrel highway bill and divert it to this effort. Or better yet, declare a moritorium on allowing Robert Byrd to spend anything. Soon there’ll be plenty of money for New Orleans.
New Orleans (or some substitute) is vital to the economy of the country. Sure you can bulldoze the city and tell everyone to go live someplace else or tell them to go to hell-as some in the comments are implying. But there will be a port somewhere in that area. A large port will create a substantial city. So call it whatever you like, but there will be a New Orleans.
Scott, please. Read the lengthy article Jeff originally provided re what would be feasible alternatives if the basin filled. Too tired to find and quote sections to you now.
I’m on your side as I think she MUST be rebuilt if at all possible.
Peace. Prayers.
Oh God, again and again into infinity. I agree with RightofCenter in an earlier comment in which he/she said we’re getting (something to the effect of) staged or sugar coated news. I had thought the same..
I just saw pictures of the state of I 10 outside NO on Nightline. Hence the ‘only one way in/out access’ at this point…
God please help the current survivors of Katrina.
Before talking about rebuilding, first someone needs to get the Mayor to find a way to evacuate the people who can’t drive. I have not seen a single announcment on how they are going to get them out – or what people should do it they don’t have a car and want to leave.
Why weren’t buses and trucks commandered before the streets were flooded out today? Why were’t pick-up places arragned tonight for trucks and buses to get people out before even more streets are closed?
And why did Nagin say again tonight that if it wasn’t for last night’s breaks – all utilities would have been restored in one to two weeks?
Brady – The streets are closed. There is no way out of New Orleans right now except for helicopter. (I’m watching the feed off of WDSU.) People are being told to seek higher ground, or to stay put, if they are high enough above sea-level. The best coverage I’ve found is at http://wdsu.com/, the have a streaming news broadcast, and the coverage is measured, responsible. Interviews are long and detailed, I heard Nagan’s entire interview from last night, for example. He, Nagan, reported that no actual work was done on the levee yesterday. Someone redirected the helicopter that was going to drop the 3,000 lb. sandbags.
for Pat Robertson And Jerry Faldwell.
oh my God… New Orleans like Sodoma and Gomorra?? …what means decadent lifestyle?
I think that the spirit who live into tha american people help to rebuilt the beautiful New Orleans.
(sorry for my bad english)
Valeforn (from Italy)
Do you know, I seriously doubt that the native Orleanaise are going to ask anyone’s opinion about whether they rebuild or not. As one who accepts the good the bad and the ugly of her hometown and lives there anyway, don’t I just expect they’re going to come back and maybe build a little sounder homes. In some countries, houses are built on tall piers – like in the bayous. Good planning.
Of course New Orleans will be rebuilt and it will be even better than before. Its in the human kind, in human nature to rebuilt that city…
Can anyone imagine by the time the next earthquake hits San Francisco, what everybody knows but when, we would tell those people they have to relocate? 10 million people from California? And then 15 million people from L.A. to, because it could happen there to? No way.
To give up is not the american spirit or the american dream.
Greetings from Germany, love to all of you, sorry that I can’t be there to help, Simona
link
http://www.comics.com/creators/othercoast/archive/images/othercoast2915650050801.gif
What about sending in all those riverboats that are running gambling operations, to pick up and ‘evactuate’ the stranded people in NO?
Maybe even some television ‘preachers’ would relent.
This is what I love about the Internet, people can seriously have a non-debate. It shows how much time we Americans actually have on our hands.
New Orleans will be there 300 years from now, too. There’s a lot of love in and for the Crescent City. Folly sure. Love is full of folly. We need, as I said earlier in this thread, a little more benigh madness in this world. That other kind of madness led to the Corps of Engineers not being able to get funded to complete their work on the levees to begin with. The money was needed to rebuild Iraq, instead, some of us thought at the time.
“The Gulf Coast is a working coast. It is vital to the U.S economy. Oil, refineries, shipping, river transport, drainage.
Where else are you going to put it? How about we pave over some of Connecticut and build a few refineries?”
Alan, I particularly loved that sentence about paving over. Too true. All these nasty ole refineries and rigs can’t ruin the landscape for the loudest shouters about the “price of oil”. They sure a lot uglier than those offensive windmills. Don’t build a refinery around us and polute the air!! Don’t ruin Alaska with them. Don’t go nuke. On and on but we want cheap oil. Yep, I suspect we will do NO a grand favor and rebuild.
I’m sorry, Eileen…I didn’t mean to pick on you. It’s just WAY too early for punditing about how/why/when to rebuild. This kind of knee-jerk talk results in rushed decisions, made with incomplete information.
So where in the country… in the WORLD… are you gonna live? Tsunamis. Hurricanes. Tornados. Floods. Droughts. Earthquakes. Mud slides. Dust storms. Blizzards. Wildfire. Extreme heat. Extreme cold. I defy you to name ANY location that is not susceptible to a hundred year, or even a ten year event.
Before we abandon New Orleans, we should seriously consider whether the cities Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago should be allowed to exist. All three are foul holes prone to both natural and man-made disasters, and by ANY standard merit the bulldozer.
As a horse racing professional and fan, yes rebuild New Orleans.
But beyond that petty reason, I still think it should be rebuilt. Like many people said before, if we are going to dump money into Iraq, Florida, New York City, Israel, and the entire coast of North Carolina, we can rebuild people’s homes in the Big Easy.
And oh where are the Lousiana and Mississippi National Guardsmen? 50% of them are in Iraq rebuilding their cities (per washingtonpost.com.)
It makes no difference about whether New Orleans should be rebuilt. It will be. It was not just a pointless town. It was a major US sea port. It has one of the only harbors to allow the giant super tankers (idiot). Those who think New Orleans was just a tourist trap are ignorant idiots indeed. Wait till the full impact reaches you in your landlocked hill countries. 25% or more of US trade passed through that spot. The other ports are already backed up with shipping that has to wait in long lines.
New Orleans should be abandoned and perhaps turned into some sort of ‘Atlantis’ theme park. Actually half the city should be dredged up to fill in the other half to where it is above sea level – then the newly created hole should become part of a new harbor. But hey, while we are at it – using logic, why is it everyday millions of Americans drive past millions of other Americans driving the opposite way going to work? Why not pass a law penalizing businesses that hire employees who live more than 20 miles from their location? In short order the population would shift to match the correct fit, and the USA could save billions of barrels of oil every year. Ah, but logic has never played a role in civilization since the fall of the Peruvian Empire.
Look on the bright side, this destruction will create 10 to 15 years of construction jobs on a massive scale. It will serve as a magnet for every hammer swinger and saw-man from coast to coast. In short order you will see the illegal immigration drop off in your area as Mexicans head south to where the work is. And better yet, many of the banjo-strumming white-trash that populates your areas will likewise march toward the sound of the air-hammers thundering in New Orleans.
Just to throw more gas on the flame. I wonder how much better the situation would have been if our Army reservists had been available to help instead of off fighting a war against the people we were “liberating”.
I agree with Dennis. It’s hard to believe that all of you who want New Orleans to cease to exist because of the monetary cost to the country forget that it’s one of the most important ports in the country and is home to a large portion of the domestic oil industry.
If Boston could fill in the Back Bay in the 1800’s then New Orleans can fill in as well and rebuild on top. Just leave the French Quarter alone. It seems to be doing fine as it is.
Also, this rebuilding could be a blessing in disguise. You could argue that one of the reasons there’s so much crime in N.O. is because of the Broken Window theory (see: The Tipping Point). If it’s all rebuilt and pretty and smelling good, maybe crime will drop. And the rebuilding jobs will give people something to do and a way to make money.
“Why not pass a law penalizing businesses that hire employees who live more than 20 miles from their location?’
Because we’re not a totalitarian state? Some of us actually believe in freedom!
Look on the bright side: at least the streets don’t smell like piss now.
Interesting comments, but they really don’t matter. New Orleans is going to be rebuilt, just like all those houses on the Florida barrier islands. People aren’t rational about things like this; never have been, never will be. Might as well get used to it.
How about we rebuild Detroit instead? Detroit is now the nation’s most impoverished city, beating Newark, El Paso, Atlanta, Miami, and Long Beach. If we rebuild it, I promise it won’t be destroyed in a hurricane.
Why not finish draining Lake P. and then move the city UP above the lake this time. You always want the water bodies BELOW where you live.
Or with the new eminent domain take in a few square miles and build it right this time. Just move it up a bit. Galveston rebuilt the entire island up 17 Feet after the 1903 ‘cain.
With the 26 Billion coming from Insurance that would be a start and require everyone to build in the new city North and away from the coaset. Taxpayers are starting to catch on to this scam. And it becoming tiresome.
I’m with you on this one, Jeff. And now is precisely the time to be discussing this, while the nation’s attention is fixed upon it. If we wait a few weeks, until everybody is resettled and there has been time to bring back sentimentality over every brick, the talk will become less about public safety and more about taxpayers’ burdens.
I like the idea of turning it into a touristy (Vegas style) city. I wonder if anybody would consider, though, allowing the water to run through it, as an American Venice? That could solve the flooding concerns, and at the same time, control growth and its accompanying environmental problems. They could build a tighter, smaller levee around the old French Quarter, if necessary, and let the rest of the city flow.
If they are going to rebuild this city, then they should raise the ground level by 12 feet. It’s not a smart idea to be stuck at sea level between the gulf and a giant lake. Every historical landmark and building could easily be jacked up to the new city level. Most everything else should be used as land fill.
Explain how to “rebuild” Detroit, please. If you’ve got an answer for that one, I’d love to hear it.
I’m for the middle road here.
By all means rebuild it. I can’t imagine our nation without NO. Its simply unimaginable. God what a loss for us if so.
Just build it better. Abandon the low ground whereever possible. rebuild on higher ground.
Itmay not be an informed opinion but I am in the camp with those who realize the importance of the soul that NO has and that soul emanates from it precisely because it isnt plastic and masterplanned etc.
Dublin Ireland was once a filthy mess but it was one of the most wonderful and fun places I have ever been. I liked how mucky it was. It was genuine at the very least. Now its all gleaming and clean. You can breath clean air in the pubs. The magic has mostly fled. It breaks my heart to even think of NO rebuilt as some kind of Disneyfied resort. Rebuild it folks. I’m willing to pay for it as long as its rebuilt smart.
BTw.
I glad that new low income housing for the poor folks of the city will be have to be built. If there is any silver lining to this and if it isnt crass to suggest it, this would be it. Would to God that a storm like this wasnt necessary for this to happen.
First, I’d like to say that my heart and soul goes out to all the people who are suffering in the great city of New Orleans.
I’ve never been to New Orleans, but like many people around the US, I enjoy the food, music/culture, and know a little about the history of New Orleans.
I agree with the people who have said that it’s important to rebuild the city of New Orleans.
I don’t think its a question of if the city will be rebuilt, it’s probably a question of how it can be done. Even if this means that just the French Quarter and a couple of other areas survive and nature takes back the rest. We’ve go to let go if we have to (of course that’s a hell of a lot easier for me to say several hundred feet above sea level).
The city will be be rebuilt and what you think or say about how, why, where etc will be of little of no interest to those politicians who will get big tax bucks to doi the rebuilding. I would suggest putting Haliburton in charge of it. They seem central to any financing and rebvuilding that takes place.
Chances are, the “new” New Orleans will look an awful lot like the rest of America. If you think people are going to rebuild creaky mansions, forget it. It is lucky that the French Quarter survived, because that is going to be the only place left that looks distict. Lets hope the “spirit” of New Orleans lies in its people, because the buildings are going to start to look like everywhere else.
But… Having visited the city often in my last job, I was always struck by its poverty and its lack of a workable economy. Tourism is pretty much the only industry. The food is great. The attitude is fun. But big companies had left.
What does any of this have to do with Katrina? I suspect a large part of No’s economic issues are rooted in La adherence to Napoleonic code instead of British common law.
I don’t think it makes any econonmic, logical, safety sense to rebuild New Orleans. The next hurricane that levels it could be 100 years away or just next summer. There has to be a safe place in Louisianna that the people of New Orleans can be relocated to.
Not Venice, San Antonio. Jeff, what would you think of letting canals run Thru It in NO. Sounds like a good plan. And a good use of the victims, to let them sign up to put in canals, as the CCC did for San Antonio.
Of course, I also like the concept of sending the riverboats that now house gambling operations in to pick up victims.
What we should do is bomb the levees, let the water find its natural level, then rebuild. But we won’t.
How many years have people been aware of the potential of a levee break? Bush Co. cut off funding for the levee to help pay for the bombing of Iraq, where will they yank the $$ from this time to pay for this relief effort? These guys are penny-wise and pound-foolish. It’s gonna cost 100x as much as building proper levee’s now.
“History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.” – B.O.C.
Go Go Godzilla indeed.
Gunther said: “I wonder if you’d be so quick to suggest abandonment and relocation of New Orleans if the people affected were predominantly white rather than black?”
So, because most of these people are black, they should be condemned to live in a below sea level, flood prone area which has no industry (jobs) except tourism, subject in future years further cataclysm?
The historic area has fared relatively well. It sits high enough that it could be protected from future clamity. Rebuild it. The rest of the city was mostly a poverty stricken slum, prone to disaster. Let nature have it back. Rebuild the rest of the city in a location less prone to natural disaster, more prone to viable industry, and the poor blacks won’t be so poor.
If we are going to spend billions of dollars to rebuild (we will, and rightly so), why not do it right? Relocate.
Alan G., I agree. How on earth would one rebuild Detroit? Let me ask the question another way, if we could only rebuild one city, which should it be: New Orleans, which will surely flood again, or Detroit, which will continue to drain the taxpayer dollars in welfare and other ways if it goes on as is?
It’s a thought experiment, not a real question.
Why on earth would anyone want to rebuild New Orleans? I’m tired of subsidizing all these idiots that live in disaster prone areas. We’ve spent 12 Trillion dollars rebuilding disaster areas over the years… and for what? We understand that with oceans becoming warmer that these areas are just going to be pleted harder and more regularly every season.
The risk equation is changing, and it will cost more to rebuild New Orleans and make it safe than it would probably cost to house twice the popluation elsewhere.
I’m maintaining a blog list of bloggers asking the tough questions regarding the rebuilding of New Orleans. There’s precedence for relocations established during the 1993 Mississippi floods.
Bloggers on the list are advocating a humanitarian, yet responsible discussion on the future of New Orleans.
[And no it's not to early to be discussing this when politicians might succumb to the emotions of the moment and start making all types of promises to rebuild a city located in a floodplain]
Db’s sentiments above (http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2005/08/30/should-new-orleans-be-rebuilt/#comment-3456) just about hit the mark dead on on the arguments against rebuilding.
Please point any like-minded bloggers that would like to be added to the list over my way at:
http://porkopolis.blogspot.com/2005/08/discussions-on-alternatives-to.html
Part of what has to be done is contact Senators and Congressman to let them know there’s another way to help those in need.
Porkopolis
I feel very fortunate that I was able to visit NO twice in a six-month span a few years ago (and once as a child with my parents, not as fun that time). It was one of the most enjoyable times I have ever spent visiting another city. The last time I was there we got to go to a huge warehouse where many of the Mardi Gras floats are kept, I can only imagine they haven’t held up very well.
So while I feel great sorrow and sadness for the people and city of NO I couldn’t help thinking about what they should do. I can’t fathom the complexity of pumping the water out, rebuilding the levees, rebuilding the city. I live near Grand Forks, ND that experience something similar but on a much smaller scale a few years back. They’re still rebuilding and they had the fortune of having the water leave on it’s own. How the hell do you pump all that water out?
Anyway. My first thought was just leave it, let it flood but at the same time let people move there if they want, offer no gov’t help, nothing…let it turn into some crazy Waterworld/Mad Max/Escape From New York society. A couple decades from now we’d have one of the craziest cities in the world. But I came to my senses and realized that wouldn’t be the safest or sanest thing.
That’s when I, like a few earlier posts suggested, thought of turning it into an American version of Venice. Don’t try to beat nature, take what it gives you and work with it. If you insist on building your city in a hole surrounded by water, embrace it and build on stilts.
So even with saying that I’d have to say it may have been a tad early to start talking about this…but what are you gonna do?
Not only should it be rebuilt, but it should be made better. Thats like asking if the twin towers should be rebuilt. Of course they should, taller and stronger than before. The same can be done for New Orleans…
Put me in the “No” column on the question. It’s folly to treat Mother Earth with such hubris and contempt.
Oh Lord, lose the black-white racial argument. This country abandoned poor blacks decades ago. The question is: can NO be abandoned without rich whites losing their minds?
Rich whites left Newark, Detroit, El Paso, Atlanta a long time ago and nobody cared one whit.
Please, people. Let’s not let our romantic notions get in the way of reality. It’s great that we have wonderful memories of New Orleans…but it’s gone! To equate the rebuilding of New Orleans wth reconstruction of something at the site of the the twin towers (two buildings) is ludicrous. Our lack of education, common sense, and grasp of economics is showing. Rebuild it somewhere above sea level, for God’s sake. Otherwise, this will happen again at some point, folks. This was predicatable — and predicted — by people with a brain and knowledge of basic science. Get a grip and move forward. Let’s not wallow in our horrible errors in judgment. And by the way, to place this at the door of our dear leader Bush is to again show the limitlessness of ignorance and political partisanship (please note, I’m a life-long Democrat). The potential for this very catastrophe has been known for decades — through administrations of both parties — and absolutely nothing has been done by any of them. So get your head out of your hind-quarters. Excessive partisanship is what will sink us all if we’re not careful.
Right on, Mugsiewugsie!
Because people are still being rescued and the dead have not yet been picked up, I would suggest that this topic be shelved for a while.
There are questions that need to be asked and addressed. Now is not the time.
I have this feeling…..most of the people who post here, voicing their opinion that NO should not be rebuilt do not live in Louisiana or any southern state, for that matter. Are you not familiar with our undying affection for lost causes?
Furthermore, it’s necessary that a city should stand at the mouth of the Mississippi River. How it’ll be rebuilt – that’s another matter. Even the people that’ll cry for New Orleans may not want to see it in the same form, or when it is rebuilt (undoubtedly to be much uglier and more modern) will not visit it. New Orleans is over as we know it – however, every liberal, northerner, “rational” poster on here should know the people of Louisiana (or the south) will not give a flying sh** about rationalizations and all this tax-related selfishness…..we’ll build it back if every body has to come out with his/her hammer and piece of plywood, on our own dollar.
that is the meaning of loyalty. we’re a people with a past, not rootless chaff floating around, feeding off new environments like parasites without leaving anything valuable there. Preserving the past is the responsibility of the current generation.
Well, you made me do it. I had to write an requiem from New Orleans, since so many of you want to see it gone. Then I got angry. (oops!) Didn’t mean to, but I started thinking about some of the things I read here about that city and the next thing I knew —
You can read it here if you wish.
Right on, RB,
It’s just too soon. First things first!
I wish your post, Jeff, had been titled How Do We Save the Living? As always, I respect your blog and what you choose to post, but come on……! How about all the issues this spawns regarding Automatic Mobilization in any region of the country related to natural disasters or other crises? What about Automatic provisions for providing food and water – without waiting for the Salvation Army or Red Cross to somehow get their lunch wagons through rubble or God knows what – which should be actuated within 12 hours by land, air or water? I see a lot of ‘lessons’ to be learned here, long before we focus on questions of rebuilding.
How about a master plan regarding how we deal with looters and other predictable results of people in trauma without resources?
Why not put the brains in this forum to work on saving what’s left of the poor souls in NO before we focus on questions of resurrection.
Just let it die. New Orleans is sinking more and more each decade, and this will happen again. Condem the whole thing, plow it under, and rebuild somewhere higher. I understand the history, the culture and attachment that people have to the city, but if it were moved to higher ground and a planned city with a better and more organized infrastructure could be built , the business and employment would return.
Sure, go ahead an rebuild it. But not with taxpayers money. I don’t think the insurance companies should have to insure them- why should ever US homeowner who pays insurance have to suffer because people choose to live in an environmentally unsuitable place that offers no productivity to the US economy!
I think that db (August 30th, 2005 at 9:12 pm ) said it best – effectively that no matter the glorious historical significance, New Orleans was built in an extremely unfortunate (unworkable, dumb) location. This neo-con (me) is forced to side with the “don’t build major urban centers in swamps” crowd (especially if you are going to put them under sea level).
I sense that we’re going to be getting into the half-trillion plus dollar range either way (cleaing up and rebuilding in place VS. cleaning up and rebuilding above sea level), and I can’t see investing this much dough in a losing proposition.
Fate may have put NO there the first time, but I sure hope we’re not foolish enough to put it back below sea level the second time.
Over the past three days, I have watched floodwaters destroy my home. We have not buried our dead, and the ghouls already want to abandon New Orleans.
I will not have a home for the next three months; if we don’t rebuild New Orleans, then can I and 1.2 million of my neighbors come live with you? Can we relocate our refining capacity and petrochemical facilities in your backyard?
I am tired and frustrated, so I really don’t want to talk about logic; I want to scream and curse at those who don’t want to rebuild my city. Do you think you’re immune to natural disaster? Are you so blessed that earthquakes, flood, terrorist attacks, blizzards, and tornadoes avoid you like the plague?
But let’s be logical for a moment: The U.S. needs a port in south Louisiana, unless you forget about using the Mississippi River. For those of you who only want to rebuild the port above sea level, then we’ll build a second port north of the Port of Baton Rouge. I hate to remind you, but most of the Gulf Coast is under sea level.
For those of you who want to plow New Orleans under and salt the ground, how much of opinion is based upon your knowledge of the city (and its economy–oh yes, one of the largest ports in the world provides no economic benefit to the United States) and how much is based upon seeing the looters on rampage around Canal Street? The dark part of my heart wants your home to suffer the disaster specific to your region so that heart-ache replaces your fat smugness; instead, I hope and pray that you will never have to go through what I am going through.
RXWhite: My heart goes out to you and I’m sorry that I have nothing more to offer than those empty words.
I’m not sayiing that New Orleans should be abandoned. But I am asking whether rebuilding it as was is the best solution and whether it is responsible to put people at this risk again. So I’m asking how it should be rebuilt.
First, let me say to rxwhite and every other person directly affected by this disaster how very sad and concerned I am at the dangerous predicament in which they find themselves, not to mention the horrific loss they have suffered. I have watched the news constantly with tears in my eyes, and yes, I immediately made a substantial donation to disaster relief.
I will state unequivocally that these people need immediate and long term solutions to the difficult problems that they face.
That said, here is my question. And to repeat myself, I can well understand and appreciate the desparate circumstances faced by those affected and this is not meant to seem at all insensitive to their needs and desire to get back to their homes and neighborhoods just as soon as possible.
There are tens and hundreds of thousands of displaced people. It will cost billions and take years to rebuild the homes directly in danger of a repeat disaster (living 20 feet under sea level, one can never feel comfortable that it will not happen again in our lifetime). There is the immediate need to house all of these people, provide them with food and the means to survive and thrive. Just dealing with the evacuees/refugees or whatever the latest politically correct term is to describe the victims will cost more billions. And for how long? I doubt that there will be anything like normalcy for a very long time. When faced with the magnitude of the problem, the facts are sobering. Just safely restoring power to the neighborhoods will take months and millions of dollars.
There is existing housing stock throughout the US that is vacant and otherwise for sale. These are great homes in wonderful communities that can immediately accommodate these folks. Rather than putting an unprecedented strain on Houston, Tennessee and other adjacent areas and their school and public welfare systems, each of these areas around the country could absorb the handful of students and families without much of an effect on their local economies.
From a cost and efficiency standpoint, does it make sense to spend the restoration money instead on the immediate relocation of these folks to areas where they can quickly get on with their lives, rather than placing them in what will certainly be intolerable conditions for months until who knows what happens with their homes? Remember also all the businesses that were closed and will never re-open, so the local economy will be in a state of ruin for ages. Tourism, the largest or second largest industry in the area will likely not rebound for years.
How long will it take for the neighborhood that needs to be rebuilt to also have the new grocery stores, schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure needed to sustain those homes?
This disaster creates a terrific dilemma for our citizens, lawmakers, those affected and those far away — what is the best solution for everyone, not just those directly affected, but as well those who will pay the price in economic terms as well? It is very hard to find the correct balance between bringing people back to their homes and the costs. I do not envy the task of those who must make these very difficult decisions.
marly
“Preserving the past is the responsibility of the current generation.”
No wonder the south is so backward… it’s one thing to be a keeper of history, and a completely other thing to be so disgustingly sentimental, it eclipses your ability to be reasonable. When people are calling to rebuild before they’ve even done the math, that’s just stupidity.
On Chrismas Day 1974 the northern Australian city of Darwin was hit by Cyclone “Tracy” The city was flattened and the population had to be evacuated to cities to the south of Australia. An ex Australian army general was called in to administer the city under almost martial law. The city was rebuilt with Austrlalian taxpayers money and today has a population about three times it was in 1974.The buildings there are built to resist cyclone damage and the city of Darwin is now a thriving and vibrant place. In 1963 the US Navy established a submarine communications base at Exmouth in Western Australia and all the accomodation unuts were cyclone resitant Early tis century a cyclone went very close to Exmouth and none of the houses were damaged.
It would be a a shame that your country with all its weathly and “yankee” ingenuity were to desert and abandon Nouvelle Orleans
New Orleans definitely needs to be rebuilt if for no other reason than Houston doesn’t want to keep the gang bangers that are currently coming here with the storm refugees. Selfish or not, this Houstonian wants them to be able to go back as soon as possible.
What a BRILLIANT(!) idea. Let’s spend a trillion dollars to rebuild a city on the Gulf Coast BELOW sea level. As Forrest Gump’s mama used to say, “Stupid is, as stupid does.”
Just declare the New Orleans bowl Lake New Orleans and make it a monument to American stupidity. Rebuild on high ground.
I think that “benjaminkwhiskey” had it right. We need to rebuild around the French quater and what little of New Orlean’s is above sea level. Try to preserve what history we can, but to expect it to be anything like before is just stupid.
I have been to New Orleans several times and loved every bit of it, but it is a place not meant to exist. With most of the city lying below sea level you would just be asking for death and destruction to come again were you to rebuild in those areas.
This is nothing like the Chicago Fire or this Australian city and its Cyclone. Those are isolated incidences not likely to happen again. The pleople of New Orleans have known that their city lies in an area bombarded by hurricanes every year. They knew eventually “the big one” would come allong and take the city with it. Why would you rebuild knowning it would happen again?
You want to spend billions of dollars and give people homes in the city again. Then their deaths when this happens again (even if it is another 50 years) will be on your head. Yes, not rebuilding is partely about money, but it is also about saving lives.
The weather world wide has been “over active” in recent years. Our world is going through some changes and I believe we will see more drastic weather like this. I wish New Orleans still stood. I was relieved when it seemed they had been spared. But then the worst happened and we can not change that sad fact.
Would you let your government try to make money by playing russian roulette? That is what we’ll be doing if we rebuild New Orleans.
Be realistic about this. Sentiment won’t save lives.
If we rebuild New Orleans, I will be convinced that humans are a terminal species.
“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”
“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.” Lincoln
We must (in the present and in the future):
1. Stop trying to play God and beat Nature
a. I don’t care how charming it is, you don’t build a major city in a hurricane-prone, silt-fed delta and expect it to flourish. Last time I checked, sea levels were rising, hurricanes were stronger and more frequent, and New Orleans was SINKING.
and
2. Refuse to allow emotions dictate our decisions and instead rely on pure, natural reason.
a. I understand it’s a difficult thing to do, especially in this day in age. But above all, people need to stop, reflect, and act out of reason. We need to think with our minds and not with our hearts. Our minds cannot falter but our hearts can lead us astray. If you disagree and think we should rebuild New Orleans, think of the millions of people that will be hurt and disappointed the next time this happens. And it will be YOUR fault.
Of course, I think we’ll rebuild New Orleans because we’ll build those damn levees higher, pray for clear skies, and tell God to go screw himself because us humans are the best damn thing this Earth has ever known and all the natural laws that He’s created are bullshit compared to our destiny…
Now I love Amos Moses and his allogator hunting ways… but I’m not going to pay him to lose his other arm out in the Bayou so I have to feed him his weight in groceries for the rest of his life.
Imho this is the most ridiculous question to be asked in this time of emergency matters. Normally, only a real troll would post that kind of stuff. But ok, I’m a fan uf NuAwlins, let’s do it.
Firstly, ‘Is that the best use of our tax and insurance dollars?’. Well, let’s see if YOUR dollars are needed, Jeff, or if La could handle it alone.
‘The total gross state product in 2003 for Louisiana was $140 billion’ (wiki). The MSM quotes damages of about 25 billion dollars. Regarding this numbers (damages 18% of gsp), I guess that it should be possible for La to finance the reconstruction, if they wouldn’t have to send the taxes to Washington. Then it would be up to the people of Big Easy and the parishes to decide if the want to use THEIR money to rebuild, ok?
Secondly, I assume that you are living in NY now. Did you ask this question in regard to ground zero after 911? You seem to have lived in SanFrancisco, too. Did you engage in a discussion if it was right for the 1906 californians to rebuild the city in the same earthquake zone?
Thirdly, maybe you should concentrate on the question why the Bush administration prevented the people of Louisisiana from using more of THEIR tax dollars for flood prevention. It seems, repubs thought they have a better use for that money.
Everyone’s right – and wrong.
First, I need to say how hurt I feel just looking at the pictures. The ruination is unfathomable. People will have strange thoughts, & being a musician, a bass player, I wondered how many basses were lost in this. It’s not trivial – sometimes a detail you care about brings the tragedy close to home.
The key is to look at this tragic disaster as both a regional & a national prooblem, because it is both. Of course, we need a port city at the Mississippi, & of course it is insane to build below sea level. A smaller, smarter New Orleans needs to be planned for. So does relocation.
Anyway, I identified myself as Clevelander to invite everyone to consider the Great Lakes. We are seismically sound, we are the greatest fresh water supply in the world, and our climate is temperate, though winter takes some getting used to. Here in Cleveland, housing is affordable & we are home to one of the world’s great orchestras & art museums. We have bautiful parks. When the southeast floods over & the southwest is parched to ruin, we’ll still be here.
Lastly, for people to be relocated, jobs need to be relocated. I have complete faith that ingenuity & unselfishness will rule, or do I? – these two things being in short supply in our nation’s capital.
Interesting point of note, in the several press conferences I have heard given by the Federal officials responding to the disaster, including that of our Commander in Chief, not one of them has talked about rebuilding. Every word spoken is limited to rescue, recovery and providing relief.
I think we should rebuid the city with gondolas and make it like Las Vegas to repay the other states that helped rebuild it.
To some of you people that think we can “just raise it up a few feet” where are we going to get all of that dirt from? I agree with the people that say it is a good idea to rebuild it in the same place and build the buildings strong enough to withstand a category 5 hurricane.
yes it should
west side locos
(1) Pick an spot between two islands about halfway along the chain of Florida Keys. Draw a rectangle around the spot, maybe thirty miles long by 10 miles wide. The line defing the rectangle will probably be in open water; nonetheless, build a wall from the sea floor to maybe fifteen feet above the surface — a total of maybe 50 feet high.
(2) Pump out all the water from this huge bathtub.
Just let it die. New Orleans is sinking more and more each decade, and this will happen again. Condem the whole thing, plow it under, and rebuild somewhere higher. I understand the history, the culture and attachment that people have to the city, but if it were moved to higher ground and a planned city with a better and more organized infrastructure could be built , the business and employment would return
(3) Build a city on the dry bathtub floor, and move about a million people in. Wait for the next hurricane to drown them.
Repeat steps (2) and (3) about once every 100 years.
THAT is how stupid it is to rebuild New Orleans now, given the effective total destruction of city’s existing real estate.
Except it’s even stupider, because New Orleans has a huge elevated aqueduct (some call it the Mississippi River) running down the centerline of the bathtub. You gotta also agree that you’d have to be a dumbfuck or rich asshole to rebuild below sea-level. And of course nonexistant global warming has nothing to do with freak weather (â€oh, it goes in cycles and there’s no proof†– these muthafuckas need to be fed to the animals).
But while everyone’s just taking it up the butt (in a bad way) and whimpering about bargain gas prices (Chris Rock, keen as always, is right on message appealing to dumb, greedy, evil voters by hammering on gas prices)
But anyway, you just gotta wonder how intelligent it would be to design Newnew Orleans in its present location, when God obviously doesn’t want it there.Before talking about rebuilding, first someone needs to get the Mayor to find a way to evacuate the people who can’t drive. I have not seen a single announcment on how they are going to get them out – or what people should do it they don’t have a car and want to leave.
Why weren’t buses and trucks commandered before the streets were flooded out today? Why were’t pick-up places arragned tonight for trucks and buses to get people out before even more streets are closed?
And why did Nagin say again tonight that if it wasn’t for last night’s breaks – all utilities would have been restored in one to two weeks?
Like many people said before, if we are going to dump money into Iraq, Florida, New York City, Israel, and the entire coast of North Carolina, we can rebuild people’s homes in the Big Easy.
And oh where are the Lousiana and Mississippi National Guardsmen? 50% of them are in Iraq rebuilding their cities.
Let’s use disney’s money to do it.
Just let it die. New Orleans is sinking more and more each decade, and this will happen again. Condem the whole thing, plow it under, and rebuild somewhere higher. I understand the history, the culture and attachment that people have to the city, but if it were moved to higher ground and a planned city with a better and more organized infrastructure could be built , the business and employment would return
And i also think that the government needs to get off there ass and help there people out not saying in just New Orleans im saying across the United States in general.Yeah NewOrleans just got hit pretty hard and im sorry for there loss but they gotta move on the best that they can even if they did loose there house and car and all there personal belongings and move to a different state.But if it was vise versa and i was in this situation id want the government to help me get my home rebuilt and help me threw everything.But personally it isnt my problem so im not gonna stress it or get all worked up for it there is nothing i can do as a citezen of the U.S i have no say so in the matter and im not fased in any way by Katrina so like i said i really dont care no one i know lives there so it doesnt botther me but i gotta feel for the people and there familys and friends and kids all homeless and have no supplies.I mean everyones gotta feel for them at least a little bit i mean everyone gotta start all over from nothing and thats really hard so i dont know its pointless to spend billions to rebuild it if its just gonna happen again and again and keep spe
[...] There’s a good discussion going on in the comments under my post asking how New Orleans should be rebuilt. [...]
Maybe just maybe they won’t be able to rebuild New Orleans. It’s in a vulnerable location and there is nothing but mothing to stop a big storm coming in to the same area next month, next year – every year for the next ten years.
The big re-insurers are going to be looking at this very hard. The biggest, Munich Re, has been talking about not re-insuring risks in unstable climate areas for some time.
Without re-insurance, primary insurance doesn’t get written. Without primary insurance banks don’t lend for construction.
Looking at TV news on CNN, Fox etc out heart goes out to the victims. But the sight of grossly overweight people huffing and puffing out of their SUVs at gas stations in unaffected areas and bitching about gas prices is not edifying. You Americanos are going to have to undergo a paradigm shift. How are you going to pay for reconstruction whilst waging war on the peoples of the ME? How are you going to pay without raising taxes.
You have around a million people without homes, business and infrastructure. This is serious.
You have a President who cannot even read a speech about the disaster without stumbling. You have got problems.
Some one has got to explain to me why we as the citizens of this great land have to rebuild the corupt & decidedly worst designed city in the world next to the Neterlands.
To Build a city below sea level is not wise let alone profitable.
If we the citizens of the United States are taxed to rebuild New Oleanes than I say move it to higher ground or build a sea wall that can withsand a catigory (5) storm.
To Rebuild in the same place is asking us all to render un to Cesar for the folly of Rome.
If money is to be spent it should be to relocate the inhabitants to higher ground & move the City else where.
This port is not feasable the way it is; Time to move on!
After all the French built it where it is how smart could it be to keep it there!
These same questions will be asked when Las Vegas runs out of water or when the New Madras fault–potentially worse than the San Andreas–devatates cities up and down Middle America. Will our answer be the same?
The point is simple. You can rebuild all you want, but it will not be New Orleans. It may have the name, but this high-quality cyclone-proof housing being discussed cannot possibly be paid for by the residents of the slums that were destroyed. These people cannot possibly pay for this type of housing, and if you think anyone is going to provide it to them gratis, you are mistaken. Even if they did, this would not create a New Orleans even remotely like the one that was before it. You would be building an entirely different city that would not welcome many of it’s poorer residents back.
People are already wondering what effect Hurricane Katrina will have on the US economy. So far, most of the discussion I’ve seen has focused on very simplified Keynesian or GDP-based views of the economy, in which the resources that go into rebuilding New Orleans and the surrounding regions count as a net addition to economic activity.
As far as the national accounts go, this may be right. As the name says, GDP is a gross measure, which means it takes no account of depreciation, including the massive destruction caused by events like hurricanes. Depending on how things like insurance payouts are counted, there could easily be an increase in measured GDP. The main lesson from this is that, if you’re interested in economic welfare, don’t look at GDP.
But I don’t think the old-style Keynesian story, in which a reconstruction effort brings unused resources into use and thereby stimulates more economic activity, is likely to be applicable. I assume any injection of funds will come primarily from the national government, which is already running massive deficits, to the point where its capacity for fiscal stimulus is pretty much exhausted. The impact of any further expenditure will almost certainly offset, in part by cuts to other areas, but even more by tighter monetary policy and upward market pressure on interest rates.
The immediate reaction of oil prices shows how tightly stretched the entire market has become, but I don’t think the effect on supplies will be great enough to have much effect in the medium term (say in six months time). However, that’s just a guess.
The real problem I haven’t seen discussed much so far is what will happen if, as is now predicted, it takes three to six months to pump all the water out of the city of New Orleans. In the absence of well-designed and large-scale intervention, that would imply bankruptcy for the vast majority of private businesses based in the city. This in turn would imply unemployment for many people who might otherwise return, and a whole lot of second-round effects working through supply chains. It’s unclear what kind of economic activity will survive, beyond a tourist market centred on the French Quarter (apparently relatively undamaged).
Even in the best of all possible worlds it would be hard to design a policy response to a disaster of this magnitude and duration. In practice, based on recent past experience, I think we’re likely to see some impressive rhetoric, a lot of gigantic boondoggles as favoured interests cash in on the reconstruction program, but not much effective alleviation of hardship or coherent thinking about sustainable economic recovery.
And the question is totally baseless. The Vieux Careé, or French Quarter, the motor for tourism in NO, isn’t seriously devastated. The Michoud works (space technology) is ok. I guess the same is true for many other job engines – except the casinos. Part of the damage will be covered by the insurances (and, Jeff, it’s the job of the insurance cos to calculate the risk and the premiums, if you don’t want your dollars to be used for NO, cancel your insurance).
I guess that many citzens won’t return after this experience. though, so NewAwlins will automatically be smaller. Not to mention the people who died in this preventable disaster.
But for the courageous citizen who will return and rebuild or stayed and struggle to get their business through the catastrophe (like the incredible team of DirectNIC), who is this Jeff Jarvis to deny them their right?
I keep reading a recurring statement on this board. Arguments for not rebuilding NO and then the people that say we shouldn’t build any city that gets hit by a natural disater (flood, fire, earthquake). Here is my take on why NO doesn’t need to be rebuilt.
In most of the above scenarios, the locations where these disasters occur can start a rebuilding and recovery effort practically the next day. NO is still evacuating as we speak after 4 days. After other hurricanes, bulldozers, insurance agents, utility companies, and chainsaws are starting to do their job. After 4 days, south Florida (also hit by Katrina) has dried out and their residents are getting the help they need. They aren’t having to wait for 9 weeks for their area to be drained and for the Army Corp of Engineers to evaluate levees or health officials to determine that it’s safe to return. The same day that the San Francisco earthquake occurred, they were jackhammering the bridges and moving the rubble away. I don’t see that happening in NO.
NO’s location is a mistake. We all make them and sometimes they get us into trouble. Trying to justify rebuilding by saying it’s survived 300 years of existence doesn’t mean we should rebuild there again and perpetuate the mistake. NO’s location compounds the problem with a hurricane, nowhere else can that case be made.
Clevelander, really a gr8 country where you live. Oly thing that seems to be improvable is the lection management. Don’t your countrymen just have some old coins to spare for people in need?
Concerned, just think about that NO would be ok if the repubs hadn’t slashed the funds for flood prevention, ok?
Should N.O. be re-built: NO.
Instead of pumping Federal dollars into re-building a city, (which will have to re-built again & again) money should be pumped into our school system and programs to help the poor. Get them food, jobs, good education, etc. Where will this $ come from?
Should our troops be pulled out of Iraq: YES! That will bring home lots of Federal dollars!
Concerned, you miss the point. NO would be mostly ok now if the repubs hadn’t slashed the funds for flood prevention, ok?
I really hope the people who are writing about how stupid it is to rebuild New Orleans because the geography isn’t sustainable aren’t writing from anywhere in California, anywhere in the desert, anywhere in Florida, or anywhere in Tornado Alley. Oh wait, that doesn’t leave anything left except possibly the Northeast and the Rockies. Since we’re discussing stupid places to build a city, how about Las Vegas? Or Phoenix? Can someone tell me one redeeming reason to live in Phoenix? At least New Orleans has some usefulness. Would it really be that hard to fill in 12 feet of dirt before we build? If Bostonians could do it in the 1800’s I really don’t see why we can’t figure it out in 2005.
Whether or not we should rebuild New Orleans seems like such an asinine question. Of course we should. You people act like it hasn’t been standing for 300 years. You act like it gets hit by a hurricane every year. San Francisco and LA face the same threat level as far as destruction capability goes. I don’t hear anyone saying we should bulldoze those cities. Can we stop having this discussion now? It’s completely stupid to even talk about. There’s no question it’ll be rebuilt. And while we’re doing it, maybe we’ll give the wetlands back which have been New Orleans natural hurricane buffer from day one.
Concerned, just think about that NO would be ok if the repubs hadn’t slashed the funds for flood prevention, ok?
Catherine, the best post yet! Thx
Leslie, gr8 that your care for the poor. It’s the poor that are suffering most from Katrina. What’s your idea where to settle them? Alaska? I guess there are no hurricanes there.
Michoud= 2,000 employees – in the scheme of things – nothing
Off Shore Pundit, you make some good points. Eventually, the market will answer Jeff’s question. Insurance premiums for buildings and assets that aren’t secure from hurricanes and floods will go up. Some already pressed businesses will compare the costs associated with the risk against the cost transferring their business and costs and opportunities at other locations. Of course, some will decide for transferrig. The inhabitants will make their decisions, 2, especially the poor folk who won’t be able to afford the premiums and ace the risk of losing all their belongings every few years.
I respectfully protest your conclusion that the nation’s too hard pressed to support the desaster recovery. It could be accomplished by a simple shift of assets currently dedicated to much less urgent tasks, like building monster bridges in Alaska for populations of a few hundred, who even bemoan the consequences of the pork project on their community.
As for the readers who don’t want to support the hurricane victims if they chose to stay in NO, Biloxi, Gulfport etc: Isn’t it contradictory to complain about high gas prices and at the same time deny help to the states where the ‘missing’ oil and fuel came from, so they can get their act together again asap?
Gray, is that the same funds that built the new levee that failed?? Flood prevention is not the same as flood elimination.
Catherine, in the past 100 years, how many times has there been a need for federal disaster money for Phoenix, Las Vegas, LA, San Fran to rebuild? NO is hit/brushed by a hurricane every 4 years (on average) and can expect a direct hit every 13 years. What natural disaster is expected as often as that for any other US city?? FYI: http://www.hurricanecity.com/city/neworleans.htm
The $26 billion estimate is for the “insured” claims. The government is estimating over $100 billion for uninsured and infrastructure expenses.
Earthquakes, while devestating, doesn’t do the mass range of damage that a hurricane does. After getting a few miles away from the epicenter of a quake, the worst that can happen is your stuff can shake off the walls. So for an LA earthquake to have the financial impact that Katrina has had on NO, it would have to occur right under the city’s center (on average of every 13 years!).
Michoud = builds tank that loses foam and dooms shuttles for NASA.
Concerned, ack, the shuttle tank really isn’t a product to be proud of. But it’s not their sole line of services.
As for flood prevention , I read several accounts that the levee was bound to be reinforced, but work couldn’t be done because of an unprecedent slashing of the engineer corps budget. I’ll post a link as fast as I can google that. Maybe there’s a lil delay, buzzmachines spam filter doesn’t like my comments (?).
‘Earthquakes, while devestating, doesn’t do the mass range of damage that a hurricane does.’ The earthquake of SF 1906 cost $400 million damage and countless lives. Dunno how much the dmg is in nowadays dollars, and not sure if life is cheaper today. The impact range may be several hundred miles of coastline, if an earthquake sparks a tsunami, haven’t we learned that recently?
Same article, an even more telling quote:
‘One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday. ‘
Hmmmm..
I hope you are aware of the fact that hurricanes can hit New York, too.
Depending on how one hits it would drive a 20+foot storm surge over Manhattan flooding the entire island. It would flood the subway system, play havoc with water/sewer/elecric/telecommunications systems. It would ruin just about everything on the first and second floors of every building on the island.
Long Island is right up there with NOLA, Galveston and Wilmington Delaware as one of the most “endangered” areas in the US. A direct hit from a Hurricane could rip the island in two, wipe out Fire Island and level thousands of very expensive homes of the elites.
You are also aware of the fact that the Hudson river valley is actually a semi dormant fault. It, like it’s relative near New Madrid, doesn’t go “off” often, but when it does it goes with a big bang.
Now the question is….
Do we rebuild Manhattan?
To All of you out there who are condeming the west coast for earthquakes I would like to remind you that an earth quake can cause massive damage to buildings not built to with stand the force put on it.
A storm surge from the gulf coast can cuse severe damage even to a well built building.
For all of you out there who say fill it in, Whats 12′ of dirt? well if you try to do that be prepired for every member of the siera culb to be laying infront of the bulldozers ready to protest.
Face it folks it time to cut our losses & make the area a real nice wet land area & let the storms come in & do damage to swamp land, instead of multi million dollar ifastructure that will never be able to withstand mothernature’s furry.
P.S. this storm was not part of “Global Warming” to think that man can cause an effect on this planet with burinig fossil fuel is ludicris.
(1) one just one volcano blowing off puts out more green house gas than every drop of oil products burnt since the invention of the gas engin.
This was a bad storm just like the ones that happened back when the spanish concored south america & lost so many spanish Ships off the coast of florida & the bahamas.
Wake up people its’ time to move ON.
Or we could build another city at a better location, and call it “New New Orleans”?
If they rebuild, they need to follow the advice of the engineers — raise the level of the land.
I am a traditionalist and really like preserving history, but let’s be realistic here. New Orleans should never have been built there in the first place. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and untold millions of tax dollars were wasted with all the levees and pumps, obviously. Let’s call it quits and bulldoze and build the city in a better location. Rebuilding will only spend us all to the poor house, and in the future put thousands of more people in danger when the next “big one” hits. Let’s spend the money instead on relocating the poor and giving them decent living conditions.
New Orleans should not be rebuilt – at least not where is presently located – which is underwater (before Katrina). If a developer proposed building a new city today where New Orleans is located, provided the developer could get billions of dollars of government subsidies (no one could ever do it with private funds), no one would even begin to support that proposal or even give it any serious thought. Everyone from the free marketers to the environmentalists would oppose the idea as insane. Even if the developer could find private funds, the developer could never get the permits and insurance to do the project. New Orleans needs to be “rebuilt†on higher ground further inland or the taxpayers will be spending billions of dollars rebuilding the modern day Atlantis waiting for the day mother nature reclaims. As noble as it sounds for politicians to claim “ We will rebuild itâ€, common sense (I guess that’s the problem – politicians and common sense in one sentence) says to relocate the New New Olreans above water.
Rebuilding will be the call of noone else but captalist that can make sense of it.
Why not allow Lake Ponchatrain to drain into the “bowl” also known as NO and rebuild it where the lake is now?
All of you who are speaking against rebuiulding NO: If it’s properly secured, NO can last even thru a class 5 hurricane. Most of the Netherlands are below sea lvl, and they still exist. And if you think, the northern sea is a sunshine coast compared to the gulf of mexico, you haven’t been there. Somewhere an official stated that complete class 5 levees would cost about 2 billion. That’s just a percentage of the actual damages and could easily be accomplished by cutting the pork out of the energy bill. I guess flood protection is a bit more urgent than some monster bridges in Alaska that even the locals don’t want.
Besides, how much would it cost to transfer all the endangered buildings and infrastructure that survived Katrina to a ’secure’ place? You did propose this, now give us the numbers. Just one hint: NO’s harbor is important for the nation, it would hinder sea trafic somewhat if it was transferred some 100 miles inland.
I want to add an ethic argument, too. It is perfectly possible that NO could have survived mostly undamaged, if the repubs hadn’t slashed the funding for levee works at Lake Pontchartrain – the very same place where the levee did breach: ‘One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.’
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
You want to virtually add insult to injury by punishing the citizen of New Orleans for the criminal neglect of the Bush administration and the GOP controlled house? You ought to be ashamed.
Could it be that GOD is punishing those who refuse to keep his commandment.t We all know that some states hit by the hurrricane practice acts of proversion daily. Is it not ironic that this weekend in New Orleans homosexuality fornication and other proverted acts of sexual conduct would have been taken place. Maybe just maybe GOD is tired of disobeidence. Remember there was another flood that wiped out a nation of people because of thier refusal to live holy.
Im from Louisiana and I love New Orleans. I grew up loving the city and It breaks my heart to see this happen to the crown jewel of the state. I believe it should be rebuilt but it should built with absolute consideration of the area surrounding it. This can be done and should be. With time and money New Orleans can be made whole again. Granted it will never be the size it once was and probably never should be.
You people who argue against rebuilding have no basis for saying it should not be rebuilt simply because another disaster could happen again. Maybe next time San Francisco falls victim to an earthquake, we shouldn’t rebuild that city either. Maybe the residents of Kobe, Japan shouldnt have rebuilt that city after the 1995 quake. I know a great plan is needed to restore New Orleans but this is the greatest country the Planet. We should protect our history at all costs.
All of you who are speaking against rebuilding NO: If it’s properly secured, NO can last even thru a class 5 hurricane. Most of the Netherlands are below sea lvl, and they still exist. And if you think, the northern sea is a sunshine coast compared to the gulf of mexico, you haven’t been there. Somewhere an official stated that complete class 5 levees would cost about 2 billion. That’s just a percentage of the actual damages and could easily be accomplished by cutting the pork out of the energy bill. I guess flood protection is a bit more urgent than some monster bridges in Alaska that even the Alaskans don’t want.
Besides, how much would it cost to transfer all the endangered buildings and infrastructure that survived Katrina to a ’secure’ place? You did propose this, now give us the numbers. Just one hint: NO’s harbor is important for the nation, it would hinder sea traffic somewhat if it was transferred some 100 miles inland.
I want to add an ethic argument, too. It is perfectly possible that NO could have survived mostly undamaged, if the repubs hadn’t slashed the funding for levee works at Lake Pontchartrain – the very same place where the levee did breach: ‘One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.’
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
You want to virtually add insult to injury by punishing the citizen of New Orleans for the criminal neglect of the Bush administration and the GOP controlled house? You ought to be ashamed.
Wow… what is wrong with you people?? New Orleans was destroyed because they have gay people there??? That is by far the stupidest thing I have ever heard… Never mind all the innocent people that you see dying on the street, or the thousands of people starving and homeless… lets focus on the gay people because it’s their fault?? I seriously hope a hurricane comes and takes you out if you feel that way. GROW UP!
Interesting comments, all. To Aldo & others, as a native Floridian, I can say this: N.O. is NOT the only city in the US built in a mosquito-infested, near or below sea level, hurricane-prone swamp. In fact, nearly ALL of FL fits this description. AND the southern & central parts especially, were developed by Northerners, so should we say that “Northerners are backward”, like you are saying about Southerners? Really, what a prick.
I do not think the question is IF New Orleans should be rebuilt, but CAN it be rebuilt.
IF they can drain the city (assuming it does not rain) then they will be left with a chemo/bio hazzard. HOW do you clean that up?
HOW do your tear down 60,000 homes and rebuild them when no one has a economic reason to move to New Orleans?
Maybe I am wrong, however the winners will be the residents that are first to realize that their NO homes and lives are gone and begine anew in a different region.
Let nature reclaim her….New Orleans RIP!
I don’t think that it is foolish to live in San Francisco or Miami, because 90% of windstorm damage and earthquake damage can be defeated with good engineering and tough building codes.
But, it’s folly to think that humanity can or should “freeze” the current position of a river as mighty as the mississippi into one current place for all of eternity with a system of pumps and levees.
Rivers change position, and that’s a fact that New Orleans residents were well aware of, before the pumps and levees were built in 1960. Obviously 1960’s engineering was not up to the task of its lofty goals, and the city is worse off today for the attempt. So, I’ll restate the question is more friendly terms:
Should the “bowl” of levees and pumps be rebuilt, or should “New” New Orleans exist the same way that “Old” New Orleans did?
It should be rebuilt, but more so, it should be replanned. Dirt needs to be brought in and areas FILLED to above sea level, just like Boston’s Back Bay, which didn’t exist until it was filled in. In the places with the worst flooding, 20 ft, I don’t think that many houses will be structurally sound once the place is dry, so bulldoze or move those structures, and rebuild with quality urban planning.
Ricky,
The city actually withstood the hurricane. It was the rising flood waters and breach of the levee that caused the problem. You may recall that the morning after, everyone was breathing a huge sigh of relief that there had been relatively limited damage to the city. Matt and Katie even said this morning how ironic it was that they had said those things, not knowing that the real damage was yet to come.
# ricky Says:
September 1st, 2005 at 10:20 am
To some of you people that think we can “just raise it up a few feet†where are we going to get all of that dirt from? I agree with the people that say it is a good idea to rebuild it in the same place and build the buildings strong enough to withstand a category 5 hurricane.
To follow on Nekretaal’s point, take a look at the huge hydro dams and how they are constantly being monitored for leaks and breaches — the engineers will tell you that it is only a matter of time. There just ain’t no way to hold back all of that water forever.
New Orleans is a city of soul, and a major seaport. A MAJOR influx of commerce comes both in and out the mouth of the Mississippi. That said, SOMETHING should be in or around that area. However, it will never be the same. How could it be? Why would you want it to be? Louisiana is a swamp, it just is. Come to terms with it. There are many cities in the world build on marshland and wetland. but they dont build RIGHT ON TOP. You’ll find them suspended on pilings, or in the trees, or floating. Go ahead and rebuild New Orleans, but consider building it as a floating city, able to quickly adapt to the changing water around it. Put houses on pontoons, businesses on stilts, whatever. Let’s try a new approach to simply building on dry land. Swamp is never dry land. Instead of cars, use boats. And I’m sure utilities can somehow be adapted to fit the situation. This will not only draw tourism to all the old venues, but create new attractions, much like the canals of venice. Don’t fight the bayou, use it.
I think it would be great to see NO rebuilt. But who is going to foot the bill? If all the money spent on keeping the place afloat over the years had been spent on relocating there would be a lot fewer bodies and a lot less damage. And it’s not like nobody knew this could happen. Come on, levees and dikes to keep out the force of mother nature? Who are they trying to kid? Take this catastrophe as a message. Rebuild the areas that make sense are are above sea level. Relocte the rest.
You go Jesse. A Floating City in America would be fun!
Should we rebuild a city where people turn against people and locals cannot do something as simple as drop leaflets to alert people as what the plan is so that they know they are going to receive help? The civil disorder and violence is due to the disorganization and lack of information to the evacuees… we distributed leaflets to the Iraqi people before bombing… why are officials not dropping leaflets from the helicopters to peoples in the superdome on the bridges letting them know exactly what the plan is to evacuate and provide them the aid they need. Billions of dollars spent since 9-11 on FEMA first responder communications—where is it… this is foretelling of how the government is truly ill-prepared to deal with crisis… not to mention the clear message to terrorists – the US is vulnerable and cannot respond to crisis within its own borders.
93% of the people who are donating earn less than $60k, where is the money from the Basketball players, entertainment industry … they can spend tens of thousands on things that are unnecessary.. why arene’t these entertainment people’s donating a couple of hundred thousand personally to support these people in need.. who for years have spent their money to support them.
Has it occurred to anyone that this was an act of terrorism? N.O. survived Katrina. I suspect Al Quaeda operatives sabotaged the levees.
Oh, and that’s another thing that someone else pointed out to me as being very peculiar — given that the city is located 20 feet under sea level, and given the very real possibility that at some point the levee may breach, either during a hurricane, terrorist attack or some other means, and given the potential consequences of such a breach, did the City, State, Feds not have a disaster plan in place long before the hurricane was even a blip on the weather radar?
crazyworld –
I believe that there are several prominent entertainers who are going to bat this weekend in a three day music marathon on MTV, VH-1, etc. I am assuming that they are all personally putting in money, their time, etc.
Bush has given his opinion on rebuilding.
From an AP wire story
“You know,” he said, “we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed. And there’s no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.”
[...] The issue is what is to be done now. At Buzz Machine, Jeff Jarvis has this to say: I’m not suggesting that what’s left of New Orleans should be bulldozed and abandoned. But I will suggest that, indeed, the city may need to be reinvented. How? [...]
I am angry.
Look, I’m glad some people are thinking ahead. There are plenty of people praying and not enough THINKING. New Orleans will exist. Will New Orleans’ citizens? That’s a good question.
Why live in a sinkhole? Why live on a swamp? Money? Heritage? Oil? Love? Food? People livED in that city. I must emphasize the past tense. THAT… we know for certain. What we knew is out the window, floating down the street The math, the english, the french, whatever- it’s out the window. New Orleans as we know it is GONE. But…I believe in a New(ER) Orleans. Learn from the problems of the past, don’t leave ignore it.
I fear the city will become a poverty haven in the future, after a rebuilding process, where the poorest of the poor will congregate with implicit acceptance by a majority of people. Look, for all the greatness and rich cultureof that city, it has more than it’s fair share of indigence. As is, New Orleans’ future can go uphill…or down. We know the effects of the latter. WE KNOW THE EFFECTS.
The geography, the history…move the damn city a few miles on higher ground. Don’t tear down anything unnecessarily, and I DO mean tear down that which is unfit. Rebuilding the city proper is foolish. Yes, the historic French quarter survived…It is also above the water line…THIS IS BASIC CRAP. DON’T TOUCH THAT WHICH IS FINE. TEAR DOWN THAT WHICH IS NOT. If that means radically altering a city’s apperance, great. Change is good.
The unfit conditions of the people must be eliminated in any city. No one should be in poverty and be forced to live on UNFIT land (call this land habitable, I DARE YOU), but…look at the facts, look at the truth. POOR PEOPLE’s houses are underwater. Or, if they had houses…No one should be ignorant of the fact many poor people STILL TRAPPED IN THE CITY are in APARTMENTS. That is UNACCEPTABLE. As for the port? The port will exist, BUT YOU DON’T BUILD PORTS ON SWAMP. Most likely a few miles upstream. where the people will start over.
It angers me that people resist the idea that change is impossible, that change is even stupid or “unthinkable” Like this disaster was “unthinkable.” If a DIME of my money is invovled (of course it is, unless you were born…last neversday) I expect 10 says. A penny for each thought. By the way, I’m poor (I’M POOR, hater!), and I FEEL for those people. Pumps that don’t work…levies that fail…bridges that collapes…
We can do better. We must. Rebuild, and upgrade. Forgive the past, but NEVER forget the future!
I am SO angry!
what about planes with flying banners? bullhorns? there are too many ways to communicate without electricity
As to where the people of N.O. should be re-located; I can’t say for sure. But I think, definetly to higher ground, away from a big body of water. Maybe Baton Rouge or further north. It scares me when I walk around the Back Bay in Boston, I could never live that close to lots of water!
No, no, no, no, a million times no. Why the hell would anyone in their right mind want to rebuild in a muddy bathtub that’s below sea level? If you want to visit Bourbon Street, either get your diver’s certificate or a glass bottom boat. If we must rebuild, do it 75 miles upriver and leave the delta to nature.
New Orleans: bye-bye!
Bye, a city of pick-pockets, prostitutes and bell-hops. I ain’t gonna miss you. And it is only too obvious that you will never be back: you are not a Berlin or Nagasaki or Dresden to lift yourself up by the bootstraps. Your men are lazy and your womanfolk is not of the Truemmerfrau material either. Your history may have been picturesque, but it is too distant to stir anybody living. Rest in Peace
ABSOFRIGGINLUTELY!! REBUILD NEW ORLEANS!!
I was HURT when I first heard that question. I don’t feel like now is the time to be asking.
I’m from New Orleans – but have lived in Seattle the past 20 years… and I feel like my hands are tied… like I’m being ripped off and can’t do anything about it… it pains me to see that city in such distress.
We all knew the city was below sea level – I remember asking, as a child – why were there sea shells in the street… mixed in with the gravel. The thing is… everybody knew there would be floods, but noone expected it to get this bad – I KNOW… but it’s the truth! You know how people are… I mean look,
In Washington… we have an active Volcano… Mt. St. Helens… you would think that stops people from building houses near it – but it doesn’t. AND Seattle is built on a fault line. Every time we get an earthquake… everyone worries – could this be the big one they warned us about?
Someone mentioned Global warming on this forum… GOOD POINT… we KNOW it’s happening… but, are we really REALLY doing anything about it – to prevent it, or at least reduce the effects? Doubt it.
San Francisco might fall into the Pacific Ocean at any moment – people are still living there though – aren’t they?
So knowing all this… how can people really sit there and point a finger at New Orleanians and say… ya shoulda coulda woulda?? Puhleeze… if you do.. you’re a hypocrite.
AND, don’t forget… that much water shouldn’t have got into the city in the first place! Much of that was due to human error… err umm.. neglect. Not to mention… someone forgot to comply with an order to drop sandbags to plug one of the breaches – so it got worse. If those levee’s wouldn’t have broke… it wouldn’t be that bad. Not only that -but why couldn’t we have built higher levee’s anyway?
New Orleans needs to be rebuilt… there is wayyyy too much history and culture there for us to go letting it drown…
Sorry for the long post. Some said i better than me in fewer words…
>=o( I can’t help it tho – I’m a little flustered.
From the looks of things right this moment, you may question if they should rebuild New Orleans for these people. Rape, Murder, Looting. Humanity at its best!
It is true that New Orleans was beautiful… but now it looks dead. And the few glimmers of life that remain are being snuffed out by criminals in the streets.
http://nathanokuley.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=146#146
…. Just re – read my post, and saw some more of these awful comments people are making… and I am truly sick to my stomach.
Some of you guys are just plain evil and unfeeling… HOW UGLY! Sheesh… do u like… start burning when you walk past a church? Do several voices come out of your mouth at once when you speak? Green ooze drip out the side of your mouth by any chance??
I dunno… I kinda feel sorry for u- that’s really too bad.
Hmm… I wonder if a hundred thousand white people were trapped without food or water would the Federal Government start a massive military rescue mission… probably so. The Federal Government’s response or lack thereof to this is criminal. No, New Orleans should not be rebuilt in the same location. Find a small town with all the right attributes (nearness to interstates, trains, etc. Create a long range plan and develop it into the New New Orleans. If Brazil can create a capital city out of the jungle, surely we can recreate New Orleans in a better location.
I agree there needs to be a serious financial and emotional analysis as to whether New Orleans should be rebuilt in its current location. These people are just being set up for another disaster and unimaginable psychological trauma. Why not use some of that money to build an economically viable city on higher ground and let that area remain swampland and a tribute to all those that perished. I know it is not the kindest discussion to have right now, but it needs to seriously be discussed or else the whole region, if not much of the country could end up in a situation as bad or worse than the Great Depression. Mother Nature has already made this decision, let’s stop fighting her!
[...] First it was Jeff Jarvis: Does it make sense to rebuild homes and offices in a place that can be destroyed all too easily, putting thousands of lives at risk? Is that the right thing to do? [...]
Would the Federal Government start a massive military rescue mission for a hundred thousand white people? I would certainly hope so. They are doing it for the blacks (and whites and Asian and Hispanics) now. Why has it taken so long? You underestimate the scale of this disaster caused by the Muslim extremist attacks on the N.O. levee system. Then when help does arrive, some whackos start shooting at them.
Hmm… I wonder if a hundred thousand white people were trapped without food or water would the Federal Government start a massive military rescue mission… probably so.
Whatever the case, there would be a black man sitting in a lawn chair complaining about it until the 3rd rolls around.
I think the white cop tried helping, and he changed his mind after the black looter shot him in the head, while robbing the asian owned store.
Speaking of building a city in the jungle, you may be able to solve all our problems if that had been true 200 years ago.
So, we should abandon the Big Easy because of flood history?
By that logic, Japan should simply pack up and leave, since Earthquakes wrecked havoc there for thousands of years.
Because of the Great Fire, the Illinoisans of 1888 shouda just packed up and left, forgetting about the whole Chicago thing,right?
Indonesia should simply move to Austrailia, since another Tsunami will simply wash it all away…
See, walking away doesn’t solve your problems…….
Instead of looking at the Katrina disaster as an end of the city,look at it as a “clean sheet” . Keep in mind in the 1880’s Chicago was TOTALLY destroyed, yet still, they learned the lessons of bad construction, and here stands Chicago today, a proud, gleaming city of millions.
This can be the NEW New Orleans,a new opprotunity to build a new, rebuilt, stronger, tougher, better, cooler city …….WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY!
So, we should abandon the Big Easy because of flood history?
BAH HUMBUG!
By that logic, Japan should simply pack up and leave, since Earthquakes wrecked havoc there for thousands of years.
Because of the Great Fire, the Illinoisans of 1888 shouda just packed up and left, forgetting about the whole Chicago thing,right?
Indonesia should simply move to Austrailia, since another Tsunami will simply wash it all away…
See, walking away doesn’t solve your problems…….
Instead of looking at the Katrina disaster as an end of the city,look at it as a “clean sheet” . Keep in mind in the 1880’s Chicago was TOTALLY destroyed, yet still, they learned the lessons of bad construction, and here stands Chicago today, a proud, gleaming city of millions.
This can be the NEW New Orleans,a new opprotunity to build a new, rebuilt, stronger, tougher, better, cooler city …….WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY!
I found this and thought it might help the discussion.
Currently, 40% of all coastal wetlands in the United States are located in Louisiana, and 80% of all wetland loss in our nation occurs in Louisiana. From 1930-1990, the Mississippi River Delta lost more than 1,000 square miles of land, approximately the size of New Jersey.
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2000/E/200004870.html
There are a couple of pretty creepy maps showing the amout of wetland loss on this site:
http://www.publichealth.hurricane.lsu.edu/convert%20to%20tables/Louisiana%20Coastal%20Issuestf.htm
And about that tall, well built levee system…..
“Over time, delta settlements have grown and expanded, and levee systems have been built, repaired, and then built even higher around the Mississippi River and elsewhere to protect them from flooding.
While increasingly necessary for flood protection, the levee system has, as an unfortunate consequence, also disrupted the geology and hydrology of the Mississippi River deltaic system and other tributaries. Levees have cut off the normal overflow of sediment from the Mississippi River which would otherwise gradually rebuild the coast.”
Does the black man and woman wonder why they don’t have much opportunity? Look at all of the looters and rapists and gunmen, THEY ARE ALL BLACK! When will these dumb sunsabitches quit acting like animals? They should shoot everyone of the looting, low life folks of any color that are not helping.
Only the sentimental and just plain ignorant would call for NOLA’s rebuilding. Come on? Even given a complete rebuild with the most advanced engineering used in construction will not remove the risk of this happening again a year from now,,,,or next month. I love NOLA but we must be rational and realistic.
Does anybody think it will be any different at the new HOUSTON AFRODOME?
GET REAL.
Is it our responsibility to take care of all of these looting dead beats?
Ship them back where they came from.
New Orleans should be rebuilt.
Lets use more sophisticated pump systems unlike antiquated things down there now and lets raise the levee fifteen feet.
Global warming is junk science.
I think that New Orleans should not be rebuilt. It is sitting in a trap of being destroyed again!!! Yes there is history, but the history is gone now, its still there but a memory, you can’t rebuild historic landmarks!
The historic core of NO is the Vieux Carée or French Quarter, Amanda. It seems not to be flooded yet and has minor damage so far. That’s from the Times-Picayune, NOs newspaper.
Why New Orleans must be rebuilt
GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT09.01.2005
New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize
By George Friedman
The American political system was founded in Philadelphia, but the American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. That farmland produced the wealth that funded American industrialization: It permitted the formation of a class of small landholders who, amazingly, could produce more than they could consume. They could sell their excess crops in the east and in Europe and save that money, which eventually became the founding capital of American industry.
But it was not the extraordinary land nor the farmers and ranchers who alone set the process in motion. Rather, it was geography — the extraordinary system of rivers that flowed through the Midwest and allowed them to ship their surplus to the rest of the world. All of the rivers flowed into one — the Mississippi — and the Mississippi flowed to the ports in and around one city: New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the barges from upstream were unloaded and their cargos stored, sold and reloaded on ocean-going vessels. Until last Sunday, New Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American economy.
For that reason, the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 was a key moment in American history. Even though the battle occurred after the War of 1812 was over, had the British taken New Orleans, we suspect they wouldn’t have given it back. Without New Orleans, the entire Louisiana Purchase would have been valueless to the United States. Or, to state it more precisely, the British would control the region because, at the end of the day, the value of the Purchase was the land and the rivers – which all converged on the Mississippi and the ultimate port of New Orleans. The hero of the battle was Andrew Jackson, and when he became president, his obsession with Texas had much to do with keeping the Mexicans away from New Orleans.
During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn’t come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn’t flow out. Alternative routes really weren’t available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.
Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina’s geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added value to the region since Jackson’s days, was at risk. The navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist, and it was not clear that it could recover.
The Ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, POSL is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products — corn, soybeans and so on. A large proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 17 million tons, comes in through the port — including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on.
A simple way to think about the New Orleans port complex is that it is where the bulk commodities of agriculture go out to the world and the bulk commodities of industrialism come in. The commodity chain of the global food industry starts here, as does that of American industrialism. If these facilities are gone, more than the price of goods shifts: The very physical structure of the global economy would have to be reshaped. Consider the impact to the U.S. auto industry if steel doesn’t come up the river, or the effect on global food supplies if U.S. corn and soybeans don’t get to the markets.
The problem is that there are no good shipping alternatives. River transport is cheap, and most of the commodities we are discussing have low value-to-weight ratios. The U.S. transport system was built on the assumption that these commodities would travel to and from New Orleans by barge, where they would be loaded on ships or offloaded. Apart from port capacity elsewhere in the United States, there aren’t enough trucks or rail cars to handle the long-distance hauling of these enormous quantities — assuming for the moment that the economics could be managed, which they can’t be.
The focus in the media has been on the oil industry in Louisiana and Mississippi. This is not a trivial question, but in a certain sense, it is dwarfed by the shipping issue. First, Louisiana is the source of about 15 percent of U.S.-produced petroleum, much of it from the Gulf. The local refineries are critical to American infrastructure. Were all of these facilities to be lost, the effect on the price of oil worldwide would be extraordinarily painful. If the river itself became unnavigable or if the ports are no longer functioning, however, the impact to the wider economy would be significantly more severe. In a sense, there is more flexibility in oil than in the physical transport of these other commodities.
There is clearly good news as information comes in. By all accounts, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which services supertankers in the Gulf, is intact. Port Fourchon, which is the center of extraction operations in the Gulf, has sustained damage but is recoverable. The status of the oil platforms is unclear and it is not known what the underwater systems look like, but on the surface, the damage – though not trivial — is manageable.
The news on the river is also far better than would have been expected on Sunday. The river has not changed its course. No major levees containing the river have burst. The Mississippi apparently has not silted up to such an extent that massive dredging would be required to render it navigable. Even the port facilities, although apparently damaged in many places and destroyed in few, are still there. The river, as transport corridor, has not been lost.
What has been lost is the city of New Orleans and many of the residential suburban areas around it. The population has fled, leaving behind a relatively small number of people in desperate straits. Some are dead, others are dying, and the magnitude of the situation dwarfs the resources required to ameliorate their condition. But it is not the population that is trapped in New Orleans that is of geopolitical significance: It is the population that has left and has nowhere to return to.
The oil fields, pipelines and ports required a skilled workforce in order to operate. That workforce requires homes. They require stores to buy food and other supplies. Hospitals and doctors. Schools for their children. In other words, in order to operate the facilities critical to the United States, you need a workforce to do it — and that workforce is gone. Unlike in other disasters, that workforce cannot return to the region because they have no place to live. New Orleans is gone, and the metropolitan area surrounding New Orleans is either gone or so badly damaged that it will not be inhabitable for a long time.
It is possible to jury-rig around this problem for a short time. But the fact is that those who have left the area have gone to live with relatives and friends. Those who had the ability to leave also had networks of relationships and resources to manage their exile. But those resources are not infinite — and as it becomes apparent that these people will not be returning to New Orleans any time soon, they will be enrolling their children in new schools, finding new jobs, finding new accommodations. If they have any insurance money coming, they will collect it. If they have none, then — whatever emotional connections they may have to their home — their economic connection to it has been severed. In a very short time, these people will be making decisions that will start to reshape population and workforce patterns in the region.
A city is a complex and ongoing process – one that requires physical infrastructure to support the people who live in it and people to operate that physical infrastructure. We don’t simply mean power plants or sewage treatment facilities, although they are critical. Someone has to be able to sell a bottle of milk or a new shirt. Someone has to be able to repair a car or do surgery. And the people who do those things, along with the infrastructure that supports them, are gone — and they are not coming back anytime soon.
It is in this sense, then, that it seems almost as if a nuclear weapon went off in New Orleans. The people mostly have fled rather than died, but they are gone. Not all of the facilities are destroyed, but most are. It appears to us that New Orleans and its environs have passed the point of recoverability. The area can recover, to be sure, but only with the commitment of massive resources from outside — and those resources would always be at risk to another Katrina.
The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about the facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city’s population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States.
Let’s go back to the beginning. The United States historically has depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange. It is also the facility where goods are stored in transit. Without this port, the river can’t be used. Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.
Katrina has taken out the port — not by destroying the facilities, but by rendering the area uninhabited and potentially uninhabitable. That means that even if the Mississippi remains navigable, the absence of a port near the mouth of the river makes the Mississippi enormously less useful than it was. For these reasons, the United States has lost not only its biggest port complex, but also the utility of its river transport system — the foundation of the entire American transport system. There are some substitutes, but none with sufficient capacity to solve the problem.
It follows from this that the port will have to be revived and, one would assume, the city as well. The ports around New Orleans are located as far north as they can be and still be accessed by ocean-going vessels. The need for ships to be able to pass each other in the waterways, which narrow to the north, adds to the problem. Besides, the Highway 190 bridge in Baton Rouge blocks the river going north. New Orleans is where it is for a reason: The United States needs a city right there.
New Orleans is not optional for the United States’ commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to.
Geopolitics is the stuff of permanent geographical realities and the way they interact with political life. Geopolitics created New Orleans. Geopolitics caused American presidents to obsess over its safety. And geopolitics will force the city’s resurrection, even if it is in the worst imaginable place.
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Yes we should rebuild New Orleans. New Orleans is important to the economy and to the Gulf Coast. You senseless people up north who has no idea what is going on down here can easly say do not rebuild. Let’s see how fast your gas prices go up without the pipes that are coming from the Gulf Coast. New Orleans has a rich history and has been around for years, it’s actually one of the oldest cities in america. There is just too much culture and history there to let it be washed away by water. New Orleans will be rebuilt, it will actually be rebuilt better and safer. More advanced and with a 21st century feel. Everyone knew the diaster would happen one day and that was Aug 29. Now it is time to recovery. If we can rebuild Iraq what makes you think we will not rebuild an american city. There are 1.5 million people in that area….the city has to be rebuilt and will be rebuilt. We who live on the Gulf Coast knows the threat of hurricanes like people who lives on the Florida coast, or people who live in earthquake pround California. We shouldn’t even be asking the question should we rebuild New Orleans…the question that should be asked is “How will New Orleans be rebuilt?
Some here don’t seem to believe that the cajuns and the NO folks hand handle the rebuild. Just a small reminder not to misunderestimate this people:
‘In late 1814 New Orleans was home to a population of French, Spanish, African, Anglo and Creole peoples dedicated to pursuing economic opportunism and the joys of life.’
‘In addition to his regular U.S. Army units, Jackson counted on dandy New Orleans militia, a sizable contingent of black former Haitian slaves fighting as free men of color, Kentucky and Tennessee frontiersmen armed with deadly long rifles and a colorful band of Jean Lafitte’s outlaws, whose men Jackson had once disdained as “hellish banditti.” This hodgepodge of 4,000 soldiers, crammed behind narrow fortifications, faced more than twice their number. ‘
‘More than 2,000 British had been killed or wounded and several hundred more were captured. The American loss was eight killed and 13 wounded.’
That’s YOUR OWN HISTORY. Again, you should really be ashamed if you’re thinking about abandoning such a city.
quotes from http://www.gatewayno.com/history/War1812.html
Rebuild it, but don’t populate it again with so many blacks. That way if something like this does happen again, there won’t be so much lawlessness in its wake.
I don’t believe anyone is saying don’t rebuild N.O. Yes, the area is crucial to the economy. The Mississippi is a vital waterway. The port is of great importance. The petroleum industry, the refineries, the pipelines, and the ship handling facilities must be restored. Homes and businesses need to be rebuilt. What we ARE saying is this: Don’t rebuild in a below sea level hole where the only defense is an expensive and intricate series of dikes and levees, which by their very existence exacerbate the problem. Rebuild nearby in an area which won’t interfere with environment to such a degree. While it is true there is no place in the world secure from all natural disasters, such is life, why intentionally increase the risk when it isn’t necessary. A NEW N.O. built nearby would still be at risk to hurricanes or tornadoes, but the risk of catastrophic flooding by breached levees could be avoided. There is a difference between reasonable risk and unreasonable risk. The old N.O. is gone. Senseless nostalgia and rebuilding upon the ruins is NOT going to brink it back. Show some mercy and compassion on those who have suffered and lost so much. Don’t subject them to the same dangers all over again.
It depends on what you call “New Orleans”.
I love New Orleans and the French Quarter. The symbolism and culture that pervades it cannot be destroyed, or left to memory. But I also realize that if we don’t do something highly progressive, then we are doomed to this apocalyptic scenario once more. Even without another Katrina, what’s to keep a terrorist from bombing the river levee during high water?
Here’s my offering: Rebuild a “cultural city” in the downtown area, with tourist spots, and hotels, and access for cruise ships. Use spoil material from the suburbs to build up above sea level those areas that could flood.
Take all of Jefferson Parish and the upper and eastern section of Orleans and clear them flat. Dig out lakes and canals, and use the spoil materials to create an “above sea level” airport, UNO, and limited community housing. Put in green laws, nature trails and other areas. Ban all high rises above 3 floors.
Create a community for poor people that would give them individual housing at low rates, and an opportuntity to share in the new “natural Orleans”.
Again all such development would be very limited. A population limit of 200,000 would be set for all of Orleans and Jefferson.
I’d be open to other ideas as well. I think someone needs to form an organization to bring this to the attention of our political leaders, and do so before billions of dollars are (again) wasted.
Are all people here for real or am I talkin to ETs? ‘Rebuild it, but don’t populate it again with so many blacks.’ Serious? That’s your american ideal of freedom? Tellin people where they can live?
Besides, did you know that 67% of the NO polulation is african american? That the percentage in the poor living quarters is even higher, maybe 80% or more? Ever wondered if they stayed behind because they couldn’t afford gas or ticket and a hotel room in Tx? You think, the reason you see only black people in NO right now is that blacks have a different genetical code so they are born as looters? From which planet do you come from, Wendy? Ork?
Blacks are the reason there is so much lawlessness in N.O.? First off, the vast majority of the people stranded in the city are NOT breaking any laws. Secondly is the fact that the infrastructure is broken, the police (who are also victims) are over worked, over extended, have virtually no communication, and trouble with mobility are unable to function normally. Thirdly, there is a small minority who are taking advantage of the situation. And lastly, considering that the vast majority of the poor people still stuck in N.O. are black, what do you figure the odds are of a like majority of the lawlessness element are going to be black (even though it is a very small minority of the people stranded)? You are watching too much CNN.
I dont understand why so many people blame homosexual’s and african americans, for the occurance of katrina and the lawlessness occuring. What some people dont understand is that in times of great natural disaster’s and wars there is going to be looting and rioting its what’s expected, its whites, african americans, latinos, asian’s, its every single person on this planet. To address the question of N.O being rebuilt sadly I would have to say no, would you place your hand on a hot stovetop no you wouldnt. would you rebuild a city below sea level located between two bodies of water no you dont. Again just to point out a fact that some of you may not realize the city of N.O in 100 years time will be underwated permenatly, the marshes will no longer be there meaning the gulf will be where N.O is now. So I see no point in rebuilding a city that will be gone in 100 years it just doesnt make sense
‘ A population limit of 200,000 would be set for all of Orleans and Jefferson.’
Maybe I’m the one who is becoming lunatic here, but are these the new democratic ideals of the 21st century? Is there any historic example of an american city with a population limit or did someone catch a bad case of delirium?
New Orleans only has three worthwhile industries: Refineries, shipping and fishing. That part of the area should be rebuild and maybe even add four or five more refineries, but the rest of the slum areas and the French Quarter should be buldozed. They’re only home to drug addicts, gangs, queers and HIV.
I agree with all the people who say we should ignore the question until it’s too late for our opinions to make a difference just like we ignored the dangers to the people of N.O. for all the years that people have been trying to warn us that a city which is mostly below sea level shouldn’t be built next to a sea that is prone to hurricanes.
French Quarter should be buldozed, yeh…. maybe god said enough!!
our world is in control of our maker. will anyone see 2025?
Darrel
dkkn69@earthlink.net
hey, Gray,
the check is in the mail.
however— it is outrageous to think that charity should replace the work & workings of government in the long run. if alfred e. newman, oops, i mean our president had any guts or vision, or (hoo-hah!) INTEGRITY, the 1st thing he would do is put all talk of repealing the estate tax on hold, and talk straight about the cost of rebuilding lives and cities. he’s already tried to finance a war “off he books” – & now?????
this is a public works issue – to be publicly financed. charity should be the lesser half, important though it is. somehow, doing a rerun of the tsunami effort, utterly misses the point. can’t explain it – it just weirds me out.
Try something new. Float it !
Is it possible to re-build it in limited areas.
The real question is: will people come back?
Houston might end up gaining every single refugee from NO. If I lost my home, and had to seek refuge in another city for about 6-12 months. Hell, I would probably just find a new job in a new city already, rather than wait hopelessly for my old city to be rebuilt from the ground up.
I believe God has spoken through Hurricane Katrina. He’s telling us to tear down those levees and return the restored wetlands to the wildlife that occupied the land before we moved them out and repopulated it with murderers, rapists, thieves, and prostitutes. It appears that jungle animals have taken over already, anyway. Let Lake Ponchetrain cleanse the land of the filth and remnants of decadance that thrived in that decrepit excuse for a city since its inception.
The population bomb hits! Everyone always used to worry that the over-consumption of our non-renewable natural resources by an excessive and growing populace would lead to the decline of civilization. No one considered the effects of a large-scale natural disaster. Rebuilt or not, the geographically and economically displaced population of NO will strain whatever community takes in large numbers and lead to civil unrest and strife. Only a totalitarian regime can restore order to the region and enforce a rebalance of resources and bring social and economic stability to the disenfranchised populace. Viva la revolution!
…………..
Seriously, any solutions to this tragedy may be too little and too late if its left up to government. By the time a viable plan is thought up it will likely be underfunded. Pray to God that those leading the rescue and recovery efforts use more than a little common sense along with a whole lot of compassion. Their (the residents) best hope lay in the cozy relationship big business has with Republicans. NO is so vital economically to the region that Bush and company can’t not help.
If the city is to be rebuilt then the city woul have to implement mandatory hurricane proof building codes such has the ones n the Bahamas.
1. In the Bahamas if you are building a home it must be of 6inch concrete blocks. (no wooden houses are built, the ones that are theere were there for ages)
2. Steel reinforced walls.
3. Concrete foundations
4. 2×8 beams vs those 2×4 beams that is the US standard.
5. Anti-hurricane clips
6.. In the Bahamas you wont find a trailer much less a park of them.
7. In some islands it mandatory for you to buid with storm shutters.
The results from these codes were so good that every Caribbean country adoted them to some extent, and florida didnt even adopt some until Andrew. I think this is more than enough of a wakeup call.
Please send a prayer for the victims.
A lot of you guys alluded to Boston’s Back Bay as an example for rebuilding New Orleans. I just wanted to inform you guys: Boston’s Back Bay, because of the ground it is built upon, is especially vulnerable to earthquakes. By resting on soft landfills, even moderate ground shakes would easily level every million dollar brownstones in Back Bay. I learned this from a “Natural Disaster’s” geology class at college.
I am a big believer in not fighting nature…
Why would you want to rebuild N.O. for the animals that live there ? They act like trash, looting and shooting and taking full advantage of the situation. Lawlessness ruled immediately. Was saving the community and their neighbors the first thought or was lets loot the place and get what we can for free ? Who wants to spend your tax dollars to rebuild homes for these people? Those “citizens ” are a discrace to every American and let them get what they deserve. Most have probably have been living off the public system for generations and will be in line for another helping hand, or should I say “DEMANDING” a hand. How many will go to Huston who never even lived in N.O. and claim that they lost everything in the flood?
I can see thousands of lowlifes cashing in on this misfortune, sucking the federal dollars up because we’re to stupid to question them. In the end everyone will be happy, those who gave will feel good and those lowlifes who take will feel good as well. They will have new free public housing,a new car and a color T.V. and don’t forget the Cell Phone.
Why should we rebuild New Orleans? Whos to say anotherone of these bad boys (or girls) won’t hit the city again in 1 2 3 4 or 5 years from now? Look at what this is going to do to our economy! Why should we throw away all our money towards a city that is proned to disaster or destruction. The remaining levees are weak now and probably would fold to a cat 1 cane right now! Save the money, bulldose the city, apply a massive amount of lyme or some kind of bacterial neutralizer over the city, and once everyone is out and all intrests from the city are secured, call it a loss. Use that 10.5 billion dollars to help the displaced rebuild and be through with it!!!
One of our ancestors biggest mistake was urbanizing that seispool in the first place.
LET OUR GRANDSONS REBUILD NEW ORLEANS, WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN SCREWED WITH IRAQ
[...] Jeff at Buzzmachine wonders aloud if New Orleans should be rebuilt. [...]
86 the town. 86 the 1/2 mile from the water inland all the way down the coast. Turn it all into natural barriers or parkland. Have a giant National OceanFront Park stretching all the way around the Gulf. I’m tired of these idiots building stuff on the water and then the rest of the country having to pay to rebuild it with higher insurance premiums or taxes. People have no business living or having businesses in such dangerous areas. Of course they can build whatever they wish IF they foot the bill for rebuilding and disaster relief themselves. I was happy to do it a few times but now I feel stupid because this keeps happening every year somewhere along the Gulf Coast. 86 all development along the coast. And New Orleans… that place needs to be a landfill for a few years and then you can build on it.
Absolutely NOT. The BILLIONS of dollars that will be expended to set it up for the same thing next year could relocate all those residents in a safe area and sustain them til they were self sufficent. The port area could be rebuilt, to handle commerce, by private enterprise. The areas around N.O. that are not flooded would give adequate housing for an ample work force. This will happen again, then what, if it’s rebuilt? It’s a dead city, BURY IT and move on.
I know- Take down the levees. Let it fill up with water. Visit it with your scuba gear. It’ll be the new lost city! Who needs Atlantis?
Rebuilding is just asking for trouble. This WILL WITHOUT QUESTION UNDOUBTEDY happen again. Are we glottons?
No, New Orleans should not be re-built. Our tax dollars need to go the the great American soldiers in Iraq. This has happened before to New Orleans and it will happen again. Does anyone remember the storm at the turn of the last century? Coffins and skeletons were floating down Bourbon St. New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. The city should have been better prepared. I hate to see all those people suffering because of our stupidity/lack of reality.
So many of us forget that the Deep South is one of the few bastions left of the classic American Spirit. A spirit which dictates to its holders the need to push forward in the face of disaster, to press on when all around are crying, “give upâ€. It is that attitude that has made us the nation we are today. To sit back and wait for waters to recede and bodies to be counted would be nothing but wasted time. I ask you to remember that the Gulf coast in particular is the embodiment of regeneration in this great country. They always rebuild! A rebuilt New Orleans will no doubt be a grand slap in the face of all the naysayers in the country. She will return. She will be reborn. Viva New Orleans!
What truly remains for the rest of us here to do is to rally to rescue our sons and daughters from a pointless entanglement in a country that could care less about our brave men and women dying left and right in her blistering sands. Bring our children, mothers, and fathers back to our shores. There is a grand call for them here at home. We must rebuild our country. In an effort that shall make a statement heard and seen ’round the world. We have a grand chance at healing. What was disaster can be opportunity. We must remember that the only constant in life is change. Let us embrace it, not mourn it. What a fine new beginning this could be if we just embrace it. Rebuild New Orleans? Yes! Rebuild the South? Yes! Rebuild America? In the names of all those who strove before us, YES!
Duh.
Rebuild the port YES, but NOT the city. It is immoral to permit people without means to reside in an area frequented by natural disaster. It is more immoral to ask taxpayers to pay to constantly rebuild an area which nature has said “NO” to human habitation.
no matter the music food or culture that comes from that sinful nasty place it was gods will to have it mostly washed away and I feel that that is the way it should stay. They are paying for there sins in a great and painful way but we all have a wake up call and this was theres. Don’t waste the money we need to fix our gas and oil needs on a rebuild give those poor people a relocation and pray for them.
[...] Jeff Jarvis asks an (admittedly) “indelicate” question: should New Orleans be rebuilt? I really don’t want to be thinking about that quite yet, but yeah, it’s something that will have to be addressed down the line. [...]
Reading the posts in what will probably become the most visible turning point of our nation and how we deal with our resources and population; it is pretty easy to see that each of us comes from several viewpoints but those viewpoints converge on two main personality types: 1. Left brain, concrete, physical, tending to non-emotional issues; 2. Right brain, creative, artistic, relational, and emotional. What this means is that in America we have to do our best to please all sides. No doubt we will be debating how this massive tradgedy could be avoided for decades, but some will get ahead of the wave on this restructuring of New Orleans in a way possibly like the following written by some already thinking maybe along the lines of the following:
“While our nation grieves over the enormous loss of life and personal property in the Gulf Coast area, our planners and governing bodies are beginning to assess the surely mind boggling possibilities before them to restore this broken area. Most likely the loss of the City of New Orleans will go down as the greatest loss of life and property from a natural disaster in our nation’s history. Before emotion is allowed to take control of the direction of the coming rebuild of this amazing city, why not consider the possibilities for a NEW, New Orleans (and the surrounding communities as well, Gulfport, Biloxi, Slidell, Bay St. Louis, and others hit by Katrina.)
Here is a proposition that I am sure is not original: Why not relocate New Orleans to higher ground away from the danger of future hurricanes, a likely rising ocean depth in the coming decades and centuries, and continuous pressure from the mighty Mississippi River always trying to reclaim the delta area it had for millennia before New Orleans. As Gerry House likes to say, “Do the Math!†The math problem is to try to determine what such a massive undertaking would be. Here is a thought for openers, the math is pretty simple and can be adjusted to a higher degree of accuracy based upon costs that should be relatively easy for planners to come up with:
New Orleans is a city with an area of some 180 square miles according to this web site http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthrain.html seems reasonable to me.
Assume a base cost per square foot of urban development of the political area described including:
Government buildings
Utility services including waste
Fire and Police protection
Education
Hospitals and Nursing Homes
Communication Services
Welfare Services
Manufacturing
Retail Distribution
Residential communities all types including retirement
Parks and recreation
Everything else I failed to mention
How many square feet in a square mile? Answer: 5280 times 5280 equals 27878400 oh, just say 28,000,000 to keep the math a little easier.
Now it gets a little tougher, how many square feet in 180 square miles, ok 180 times 28,000,000 equals about 50,000,000,000 (that’s 50 Billion!)
Washington D. C. has an area of only 60 square miles and it’s a pretty big city, so maybe we only have to develop 60 square miles to begin with. Ok, that leaves only a third of the area and let’s say about 17 billion square feet.
Redevelopment could cost anywhere from $10 per square foot up to $100 per square foot (remember this is not total finished enclosed living and working area, there would be a lot of wide open spaces between developed property and infrastructure.) Well I am pretty easy to please so I would just hazard a wild guess at $50 per square foot for total redevelopment.
Total redevelopment costs could be around $850,000,000.00. That is a pretty big number until you break it down. First of all the insurance companies are going to be out about $50,000,000 by the time this is all over. They might be willing to negotiate a little for a more favorable risk environment for a new city. I would suggest that insured property owners facing no more than a certain percentage of their property loss to get new land in properly zoned neighborhoods for rebuilding their homes. Think about the employment opportunities for so many people out of work in the affected area. Uninsured property owners would get low or no interest loans to rebuild and keep them in the community which would create a synergy of neighbors working together to build their new community.
That leaves $800,000,000,000 to finance. First you have to find the property. How to do? This is a planning problem I cannot answer, but there has to be 180 square miles somewhere in Louisiana for development (the developers are already rubbing their hands together…hold on boys, don’t forget the law of eminent domain…the government can grab any piece of property it wants.) With eminent domain and tax exempt bond sales to some of us old codgers trying to get by on Social Security who would probably jump at securing as many of these bonds as we could. And hey, President Bush just might find a happy market for his revitalized Social Security plan for individual IRA’s and enhancement and use of Social Security funds. Betcha, its not as far fetched as you might think right now.
New Orleans could become a modern, energy efficient, environmentally favorable place for human beings that would be a world model for building habitations for the 21st and 22nd century. Leave a legacy of progress for the coming generations and centuries of people that will inhabit this planet.
Can’t you see it now: Buy a piece of the New New Orleans. This could be a world changing turnaround from disaster to an energy charging revitalization of America’s economy.”
If the folks in Louisana want New Orleans rebuilt, I say OK, as long as it is done with your money. Many studies have been done to acertain what it would take to avoid exactly what has happened, and the federal government has always chosen to pass because of the cost. Now, that amount looks cheap indeed compared to not only fixing the levees and pumping the area dry, but terraforming the southern delta to defeat gulf storm surges in the future. I do not want to be paying taxes so that folks can submerge themselves in the delta blues scene. I do not owe anyone the right to go back to life as it was. We have many more pressing problems to spend our money on. Those folks who are being relocated should be relocated permanantly. Once empty, New Orleans should be bulldozed, and returned to coastal marshland.
If they want to rebuild…go for it. I say why? It’s not about black or white. It’s sick that people are already turning it into that. Save lives. That should be what we are talking about. Once the lives are saved then you figure the rest. N.O. is losing 25 miles of coastline a year! In the time it takes to watch one football game, 5 football fields of land is lost. There will be no barrier for N.O. within a few years. Save people. Don’t let them rebuild!
First let me say that I am a Christian and a federal government employee employed by an agency that quite often works in devastated areas – the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. So I have some understanding of disasters and the suffering and misery that comes with them. I was deployed to New York on 9/11/01 and worked at the trade center disaster for nearly a month. I worked for over a month in Florida last summer as they were hit with storm after storm. In fact, I rode through three of the four hurricanes that hit the coast. I do have great compassion for the suffering people of New Orleans at this time and it is truly a tragedy that this self-inflicted disaster had to happen at all. If the United States Government rebuilds New Orleans to be a city below sea level then they will be facilitating the misery of thousands of people who may not even be born at this time. New Orleans never should have been. It was built a disaster waiting to happen. For the Federal Government to reconstruct this city will be a huge injustice to the American People – not only in the money spent to do it, but in the unbelievable human suffering that will occur at some point in the years to come – possibly even next year. It is an unthinkable gamble with the money and the lives of millions of Americans to build another “bowl†out in the Gulf of Mexico and allow the poorest of poor American people to build homes and live again with a lit fuse just waiting to destroy everything they have………….again. I beg you, not from one American to another, but from one human being to another, please bring this issue up before your fellow congressmen and senators so that the American people will have some say in the spending of countless billions of dollars to build a bomb the likes of which no one has ever seen before. If we rebuild this place we will be guilty before God and our fellow man of inflicting unreal suffering on people alive today and people yet unborn.
Just think about it, if you really care about the issue – climb up on your roof and close your eyes for a minute. It’s been 2-3-4 days or more since you axed your way through your ceiling to get out of the water to safety on your roof. You struggle just to hold on in the wind while dodging flying debris and wondering what tomorrow will bring. The night finally comes but passes very slowly as you feel the hunger and thirst that time brings. Daylight comes, but it is a curse of blistering hot sun and dehydration as you enter day two of living from your roof. The night falls again which brings some relief from the heat but your body begins to yearn for rest. You shouldn’t sleep for fear of rolling off of your roof, it’s like being lost at sea…..only there are thousands of people lost around you and no hope in sight…………misery……..all around you.
Or lets look at another picture……..you decide to get off of your roof and try to swim or wade through to get to the interstate – the government was wise enough to build it raised up above the depths of the water that they knew would one day fill this sewer. As you make your way through the flooded streets you see hundreds of bodies floating in the same water that you now bring your family through. Not to mention the sewers that now vomit thousands of gallons of raw sewage into that same water. You’ve made the decision and now you cannot turn back……finally at the interstate you meet up with hundreds of other people who are not better off than you are. Some just waiting to die as the heat, the lack of water, the sewage, or the misery take the life right out of them.
The desperate people must now begin to turn to violence.
Why would we do this to our people? What is the point? It can be prevented. Let’s prevent it.
For nearly 200 years years engineers have advised against it, storms have repeatedly whacked it, modern engineers and scientist have shown repeatedly that it is too dangerous.
Don’t settle Death Valley, don’t settle the North or South poles, don’t build a settlement inside an active volcano, don’t settle any of those Polynesian islands that are constantly under water, don’t rebuild New Orleans.
Forget the emotional crap, just use your brain: It is not supposed to be inhabited by humans.
The people who say it is callous to oppose the rebuilding of New Orleans are fooling themselves. Rebuilding a city in a known death trap that is now filled with 1000 different toxins is the true cruelty. New Orleans is uninhabitable. It is not fit for humankind and it obviously is beyond our means to help these people if this should happen again. The people of New Orleans do deserve a new city, but the areas that flooded need to be abandoned for 100 reasons, the greatest of which is it is too dangerous to live there, even if it never flooded again.
Whether or not New Orleans should be rebuilt–and how–is indeed a question worth asking. Though it may seem insensitive, it is worth asking now, because people need help relocating now. Even if there are eventually attempts to reclaim and repopulate New Orleans, what kind of timetable would we be considering? Months? Years? Previous posts have also illustrated the problems of reinsurance, federal funding, whether anyone will actually reinvest, etc.; what will people do in the meantime? People need to live, and it seems that the more quickly people can get back to somewhat normal lives somewhere–anywhere–the better. I think it is both ethical and reasonable to try to help people relocate now, as we exhaustively study the geographical, geological, hydrological, and economic possibilities of doing something with New Orleans.
I’n glad that this discussion has turned toward physical geography. This is a discipline we neglect in this country to our own peril. We build cities in certain places due to our economic needs at the time–New Orleans as a port at the mouth of the Mississippi; Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland (to mention cities brought up in prevous posts) were built similarly as ports and industrial centers in the resource-rich Great Lakes region. Those cities grew larger than New Orleans as Industrialization mushroomed in the twentieth century, and began to decline with the deindustrialization of recent years. As cities grew, culture has followed, and as cities declined, culture has moved on. Technology has helped us more recently build cities in less livable climates such as deserts, with imported water and food, made comfortable by air conditioning, where a “post-industrial” “service” or “information” economy makes it easier for many to live and work wherever they want.
It is true that many areas of the US and the world are less habitable–more prone to natural disasters and resourse problems– than others. I think it is helpful that writers such as Mike Davis and James Kunstler highlight the problems accompanying the kind of urban (and suburban) development we have been undertaking in parts of the USA in recent years. I think we should indeed reevaluate continued settlement in some areas. As Davis suggests, we should abandon Malibu and let it burn and/or wash away. As Kunstler suggests, we shouldn’t be wasting our precious resources on desert sprawl such as Las Vegas. However, we can’t just get the government to force people to leave such places–that would be a political disaster akin –at least philosophically– to Stalin’s forced migrations in the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s. But when conditions are unlivable, or resources scarce, slowly people will migrate.
What happened in New Orleans was much quicker, and the rapidity caused and is causing much suffering and loss of life. The science of soil deposition and the changing conditions of river deltas will not let us do everything we want, no matter how much human spirit we have. Even the most spirited among us need resources to work with. Culture is a great reason to love a city, and New Orleans certainly deserves much love, either as a living city or as history and memory. But culture is not stronger than nature. We, the people, the government, the international community, etc., should concentrate at this time on helping people relocate permanently or semipermanently. If in a few months or so economics–taking into account human safety concerns– still warrants some degree a rebuilt port or other industries at New Orleans, well, then something might be rebuilt, and some people might return. But I think it is only hubris to want everything back that has been taken away from us. We must work with what we have, and despite what others have said, I don’t think is realistic to assume that 1. the industries that dominated New Orleans will automatically return if it is rebuilt, and 2. that even if those industries were to return, they–and their support industries in the service sector– would be sufficient to sustain a metropolitan area of over a million people.
So, lets assume for now that we should focus on helping with possibly permanent or semipermanent relocation of people to other, safer areas, possibly all over the country, before we commit to a massive rebuilding effort that may or may not be possible in the end. If in the future people have options for a decent life elsewhere, some may still decide to return if New Orleans is rebuilt, but that should not be their only choice.
Concur with Hofstra writer Cynthia Bogart
New Orleans could be taken by the State of Louisiana as a park area
and remain a tourist area with parts of the city that survived and don’t req can refurbish
Use majority of funds to relocate those peoplewho have nothing to go back to
with a town 2/3 of it poor – we would be rebuilding what truly is a poor ghetto. ?? Why not allow choice to begin anew in a better spot
aimed at a better future for the children??
With Global Warming here even Alaska is thawing- Other industrialized nations are planning and doing things aimed at furture catrostophic events while we sleep her minus alternative plans for disaster ( mother earth changing to accommodate intense heat in our atmosphere..
First let me quote someone that posted earlier –
“I wonder if you’d be so quick to suggest abandonment and relocation of New Orleans if the people affected were predominantly white rather than black?”
Sorry, but its not the fault of white people that a large black population was too stupid and worried about protecting property that would be destroyed to leave. It is not the fault of white people that a large number of the black people that stayed behind were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to loot the city after.
LET NEW ORLEANS ROT. If you want to rebuild the city, build it in a more suitable location. The slums and projects should be abandoned. Also, anyone that was too idiotic to leave the city in the first place when they KNEW the hurricane was coming should get stuck with the bill of how much it cost to save their life. The rest of the country should not have to suffer because you thought your crappy little house built below sea level, on a floodplain, and without adequate defenses against a HURRICANE.
Our earth is changing. Flooding Heat Land masses shifting.
Alaska is now in THAW.
So We concurr with Hofstra University writer Cynthia Bogart
- why not allow choice to the former residents of New Orleans Gulfport and Biloxi to begin anew in a safer spot aimed at a better future for the children??
Global Warming has other industrialized nations making plans aimed at dealing with weather casuing future catastrophic events..
The question remains- How do we make contingency plans for our future- the future of our children in the event these Catastrophic events become more common.
I lived and loved in NO. From all the discussions and articles I have read these past few days and from what I know about the longing for a “home town”, I say, first rebuild a port, and save what can be saved ( if not already too polluted, keep as a “historical”, albeit tourist centre) but new homes and infrastructure MUST be built at above sea-level locations. There is no logical reason to put thousands of people at risk again. The United States is a vast land and a country with vast monatery resources (unfortunately mismanaged). You need to find a way to help those (and there will be many thousands) who wish to relocate, financially and help those who do wish to return to a newly built “new” New Orleans.
I am so saddened by the lack of organization and social thinking and the slow response of agencies who are supposed to be in charge.
Horrific to think what would happen if you now had a major earthquake or volcano erupting, or a few more class 4 or 5 tornadoes elsewhere.
Please don’t spend tax dollars on the rebuilding of New Orleans. Let private dollars rebuild it.
No, New Orleans should not be rebuilt. Nor should -any- other high-risk (ie, at or below sea level) settlement along a hurricaine-exposed coastline. That type of real estate is unfit for human habitation. Rather, as much as possible those lands should be returned to their original state and preserved as parks and wildlife refuges, and as buffers against the certainty of future storms. A major port and its attendant industries at the mouth of the Mississippi are essential to the national economy, but residential and businesses not directly tied to shipping must be safely removed from inevitable, yet preventable, destruction.
Those desiring to preserve the French Quarter or rebuild any other development along a hurricane coast should do so with private sector funds. If there really are so many people who value the history of New Orleans or any of the other damaged/destroyed locations (Biloxi, etc), the re-developers should have no problem getting it done on their own. If they are successful, they will get to reap the benefits. If not, our tax dollars will be spared at least one useless waste (to be saved for another).
One last thing… Mayor Nagin and his sidekick, the City Director of Emergency Management (I forget his name), owe the entire nation an explanation. We deserve to know how a city that has been warned for decades about the inevitability of exactly this sort of disaster could possibly have been so terribly unprepared. From all indications, their “plan” was to “have no plan”, but rather rely entirely on state and federal agencies to literally bail them out. Where were the necessary supplies of water, rations, and medicine in the refugee centers (Superdome & Convention Center)? Of course, since the city fathers had no plan, there were no prepared refugee centers, meaning that the Superdome & CV were simply last-minute efforts instead of well-thought-out strategy.
Didn’t those “leaders” know that a huge percentage of their citizenry had no means to evacuate beforehand? New Orleans’ leaders cry for buses now, but why didn’t they have an actual plan to employ buses IN ADVANCE to evacuate the people who couldn’t/wouldn’t get out on their own? Maybe the mayor and his assistants tried. Maybe they found it too difficult to manage on the front end with several days of warning, clear weather, clean (relatively) streets, and without massive flooding. Maybe… IF they even bothered. (Assuming they did try, their efforts were a massive failure.) Or maybe it just wasn’t possible to accomplish such a task on such short notice even under normal, pre-hurricaine conditions. If so, how much more difficult must it be for buses and aid to reach the city now.
It takes a momumental amount of gaul to suggest that others are not doing enough when Nagin and his contemporaries and their predecesors accommplished virtually nothing when they had much more time and much less trying circumstances with which to work. Of course, if he and others in his position say it loudly and often enough, they will have no problem convincing a large part of our society that it wasn’t their fault, therefore it must be someone else’s fault. Now, who could that possibly be? Let’s see, to paraphrase a statement from the Congressional Black Caucus, it’s “whitey” because this whole mess would have been avoided if the demographics were shifted to the lighter end of the spectrum. Unbelievable.
Two problems
First…if the water is a toxic dump…where will we pump it to?…why pollute the Mississippi and the Gulf?.. if to Lake Ponchetrain..won’t that just be filling up the bathtub again?….
Second..if the cityis below sea level now..what guarantees the new city won’t still be below in the future….
When Galveston was obliterated by a hurricane..the citizens sucked it up and raised the entire town. Yes, it was smaller, and yes, it was easier because there wasn’t a large group of complaining environmentalists and lawyers waiting to file lawsuits over everything they didn’t like, but the city has never been hit by a large wave since. (no hurricanes either). ….
Why don’t we just move the historical part to a better site and turn the current city in a bowl into a natural disaster museum?
I believe in god but i question the faith of other people on here when they say they deserved what they got because they lived in such a sinful city. It appears to me there happy that hundreds of people lost their lives, there glad that entire metro was destroyed, that hundreds of thousands of people of been displaced, to me they are the sinners, GOD HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH HURRICANE KATRINA!
Uh, why has no one mention the importance of new orleans for the trade and moving barges up the mississippi.
Let us not rebuild new orleans and see what happens with the cost of good that relay on new orleans ports. Let us flush out all the offshore jobs and let us abandon all the oil companies…. I am sure it would be great for the us economy
Gabriel, I’m glad you believe in God. And, since you believe in Him, you must know that He has everything to do with everything. Nothing happens simply by chance or fate. Everything, and I mean, everything has a plan and purpose, including even the weather.
Having said that, I disagree with the notion that the people of New Orleans got what they deserved. That’s an absurd and ignorant attempt to analyze God’s motives. Frankly, I pretty sure He doesn’t want us even trying to “get in His head” like that, but is rather very interested in what we think of Him and how we treat each other. I can’t see how a person who is saying “I told you so” is going to be any help at all to some who is suffering, deserved or not.
So… Plan yes, condemnation no. We help as much as humanly possible and let God sort out the details. He’ll do a much better job of it than anyone around here possible could.
It’s easy to disregard the race card when you’re not on the receiving end!
A worthy challenge: make a great port city that respects its natural environment. Remove the levees and canals that divert the river. Wait 5 or 10 or 20 years for the wetlands to return and the bowl to fill in with Mississippi silt. Build on that and in such a way that flooding can be tolerated. Study natural sites that survive well in hurricanes and floods. Use appropriate plants. People used to fear wetlands (”swamps”) but now we have the technology to live with them. Build a sustainable city and port.
A small rant: where are the corporate donations? Greyhound busses, mobile homes and RVs are needed immediately. Since business doesn’t step up very readily I want a government that can force the private sector to contribute.
Duh, no one is suggesting we abandon the port of New Orleans, just the city located in such a precarious location. The port stays where it is because its location is dictated by geography, but residences and non-essential businesses relocate further inland to a more secure, above sea level location. Commuting to work at the port and refineries is a small price to pay to avoid drowning. If it’s all too much effort, anyone not willing to put up with the added trouble is welcome to move elsewhere or find another job.
From all the reports I’ve seen there were apparently tens of thousands of unemployed working-age adults living in and around downtown New Orleans, so they should have no problem moving to a more secure location since commuting isn’t a problem for them. The aged and infirm should also be quite happy to simply get out of that cesspool. Whatever their situation, they all deserve to live in a safe location, and that eliminates New Orleans from the list.
Cheryl, I’m not sure which side of the race card argument you are taking.
Are you saying you are okay with racially-motivated comments that pander to minority groups? Or are you saying that unless someone accusses you of being a racist, you don’t know what it feels like?
Please clarify.
Right now, I think we should stop being so ready to jump the gun about making New Orleans a phoenix from the ashes and do the true American thing: worry about those fellow countrymen who have lost everything! New Orleans should be pieced back together, even if it is only its people and not the city itself.
I applaud those who are expressing the normal human (and American) reaction to rebuild New Orleans. But I also see the point of those who just don’t see it as being plausable. I don’t think any of us who are sitting in our air conditioned offices and rooms can really grasp the enormity of what has happened to our country’s Gulf coastline. Sure, I would love to see New Orleans rebuilt. As a college history major, I can’t think of another city with such a vibrant and unique charcter so connected to the past. At the same time, however, this disaster is a crippling blow to our country: mental, physical, spiritual and economic. I believe that the hurrahs and calls for rebuilding are a bit pre-mature. Untold multitudes are dead. By the time water is pumped out of the city, every exposed foundation and wooden frame will be rotted and/or undermined. We are dealing with one of the largest refugee crises on American soil since the Civil War. I say we should just worry about getting help to those who need it for now, and worry about rebuilding later. Losing a city is one of the most traumatic things that could ever happen to a civilization, but, after all the hurrah and rallying of support (which is all well and good), maybe we should take a step back and see what really would be better for our country and its people. Also, I personally do not appreciate the issues of race being brought into the picture. I am a white, middle-class Catholic, but I sat at my television and got teary eyed watching every person pass by the news cameras, regardless of color, class, religion, etc. Let’s stop pointing fingers, at least for now, and use our hands and voices for what is most important: helping those in need! To accuse anyone of negligence due to factors of race is downright ignorant (using fully both definitions of the word). All that can be done is being done, and the shortcomings are simply due to the monumental scale of the problem.
Personally, I think the rebuilding of New Orleans should be assessed after clean-up has begun. We still have a long way to go. Untold amounts of water to pump out. Thousands of dead loved ones to find. And untold thousands of lives to be rebuilt. I am not a dreamer. I pride myself on being a realist. I am NOT a fortune-teller. So what I have to say is this: I hope that New Orleans can at least in part be rebuilt. If not, however, I can understand why and shall do the true American thing: worry about my fellow Americans.
New Orleans should convert part of the flooded areas into a Venice (Italy) type attraction. Stop fighting the inevitable. Retreat and rebuild on higher ground.
Everyone knew the levees would not hold and were told to evacuate. Read the article.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/28/katrina.neworleans/
The mayor had a MANDATORY evacuation. That means “get the hell out”. A
category 5 hurricane is catastrophic.
Anyone who stayed in a city below sea level, protected by levees that were known
to be inadequate, in the face of a category 5 hurricane is a complete idiot, especially
people caring for families and the elderly.
The excuse that the 200,000 people were too poor to evacuate is nonsense too.
These people have not listened since they were born. Go to school, get an education, go to college, get a job, evacuate the city, it seems they did none of the above.
Mexican immigrants run across the border in California and within a year or two have 3 jobs
and an apartment and are sending $500 home a month. What’s the excuse of Americans
born in New Orleans?
I know, it was George Bush’s fault! He planned this hurricane to stop people from talking
about the war!
Ridiculous.
I cannot believe how heartless many of these comments are!!
Why haven’t the federal authorities sent the troops etc in earlier
to give the people of New Orleans the food and water they need?
I guess many of you lot explain why!!
A city was built on water from the Lord. HOw long can you last in an unnatural habitat?
Under no circumstances should the city (as we know it) be re-built. As a tax payer I do not want to see my contributions to be spent on a project that is below sea level and located in a hurricane hot spot. The combination of those two conditions would be like trying to build a ice castle in Death Valley. There is hundreds of citys in this Nation with as much “Heart” and History as N.O. I believe that the City needs to be looked at as an example to future generations and re-designed as a tourist and history spot. Not as a major metropolitian area. The cost of making a smaller area capable of surviving future events would be far less expensive. That 200+ billion dollars along with the good folks around this country should be able to relocate the refugees and get them started in a new life without the fear of a repeat performance. Another area that should be saved is the import and export shipping area.
Disaster relief is actually a state and local responsibility. FEMA coordinates relief efforts and passes state/local requests on to the Federal government. The Federal government then passes the request resources thru FEMA to the state/local authorities who then distribute material and personnel as needed. This seems to have worked fairly well in Alabama and Mississippi. The process has not worked in Louisiana, especially in N.O. Where was the Louisiana governor, the mayor of N.O., the police chief, the fire chief during the first couple days of this disaster? Were they speaking to each other? I’m no Bush fan, no Republican fan (actually, no big fan of Federal government under any party), but it seems the Federal government has responded relatively well (not perfectly, there is much room for improvement), but the Louisiana state and local governments have fallen flat on their faces. Cudos to the officials in Alabama and Mississippi.
I’m pleased to hear that some things are going well. All I hear is bad news.
Weren’t the N.O. officials so overwhelmed that the federal authorities
ought to have just done the right thing straight away and sent
the troops in to help? Why the wait? Things seem hopelessly slow.
Of course it’s a huge problem so one cannot expect miracles BUT the
world’s news journalists seem to be able to get to the really desperate crowds in New Orleans
without too much trouble…
I do think the question about rebuilding should be
left on the back burner for now.
Also, I think you cannot possibly blame all the people for staying
in New Orleans. How can you expect people in nursing homes to get
themselves out of the city, or those who don’t own a car (not everyone does!),
or tourists stuck in the city, …
We think if we can rebuild irak then we can rebuild louisianna…..
In reply to Frank Martin:Sections of Southern Louisiana, Missouri and Alabama will likely be uninhabitable for some time, and its very likely that due to dioxin there may be may parts of these areas that are never going to be re-inhabited.
In think that you meant Mississippi instead if Missouri (it wasn’t affected by Katrina)
yes im here in new orleans it seans like a war zone here the 12 of us our armed with 7 guns each day we go out to find old hot water heaters to tap them for the water we have 2 dead here with us and this battery isnt going to last long but ill post what i can were barely staying alive theres no rescue in the area we fear for our lifes people are hunting everything and anything they can to eat we have 4 rooms here we sit at the entrance to whats left of this old hotel and gaurd ourselves please help
lost
[...] Go There Now!! [...]
Much has been said on this & other blogs about NOLA being bulldozed, and abandoned as a lost cause, etc. This is a wonderful idea advanced by our fellow citizens, most notably Mr. Hastert.
By the same logic used by these astute thinkers, when the next major disaster rolls around (natural or man-made) we need to follow the same logical prescription to the following cities, it they happen to be the victim:
1) Miami (my favorite, being from FL)
a) Is not below sea level, but is very close to it, with the water table very close to ground level.
b) Is a hive of sinfulness and dissolution, & too many drug dealers
c) God has already punished Miami with H. Andrew and others, and
could so easily again. God does not want NOLA to exist obviously, and does not want Miami to exist either.
d) Was a mosquito, alligator and water-moccasin infested swamp before the city was built. like NOLA. We need to let it go back to being part of the Everglades again
e) Is an important part of the nation’s economy like NOLA, like for international banking with South America, is an important port, etc. But so what.
f) Has too many people of brown skin color
g) Idiots developed it in the first place, probably by Southerners (like NOLA, as Aldo has claimed) , who everyone knows are a bunch of backward Neanderthals. Ooops, I checked my encyclopedia, and found I got this point wrong as far as Miami goes. Sorry, it was Northern money (Flagler and others) who originally drained the FL swamps and built the first major cities there. So this makes Miami a little better than NOLA I guess, since it was Northern money. As a matter of fact, NOLA was originally developed by French money. And the French…..well that’s another topic.
h) is like a banana republic, like NOLA is like Haiti, as someone else on this blog has said.
i) is a cultural center for many Hispanics, as NOLA has been a cultural center for the Creole world and our Anglo world for over 300 years. But that doesn’t matter, we need to move on. All those unique Spanish and Cuban restaurants can be replaced with any McDonalds, any day, just like the Creole restaurants of NOLA can..
2) SF
a) is built on an earthquake faultline
b) Is a hive of sinfulness and dissolution, and too many gays
c) God has already punished SF with earthquakes and major fires, and could so easily again. God does not want SF to exist either.
d) Was a wet, foggy, cold forest area before the city was built. We need to let it go back to being forest again.
e) Is an important part of the nation’s economy like NOLA, like for international banking with the Pacific Rim Countries, is an important port, etc. But so what.
f) Has too many people of brown or yellow skin color
g) Idiots developed it in the first place, , many greedy people wanting to make a killing in the Gold Rush, and they were from all over the country, I guess….
h) is like a “queer” republic, like NOLA is like Haiti, as someone else on this blog has said.
i) is a cultural center for many Asians, Hispanics and others, as NOLA has been a cultural center for the Creole world and our Anglo world for over 300 years. But that doesn’t matter, we need to move on. All those unique Chinese and other restaurants can be replaced with any McDonalds, any day, just like the Creole restaurants of NOLA can..
3) Atlanta
a) is built on Georgia red clay, always suceptible to a mudslide…
b) Is a hive of sinfulness and dissolution
c) God has already punished Atlanta with several tornadoes plus THE fire, which of course they deserved being stupid Southerners in rebellion against the North. God does not want Atlanta to exist either.
d) Was a series of nice, rolling hills covered with beautiful forests. Now it’s just an ever-expanding sea of concrete with horrible traffic. We need to let it go back to being green rolling hills again.
e) Is an important part of the nation’s economy like NOLA, like for computer companies, regional banking, an important airline hub, etc. But so what.
f) Has too many people of brown skin color, and too many rednecks coming out of the Georgia woods and the Tennessee hills
g) Idiots developed it in the first place, probably by Southerners, who everyone knows are a bunch of backward Neanderthals. Before THE fire, mostly Southerners built Atlanta, but being the evil beings they were, their city was destroyed. Then Atlanta was rebuilt using lots of Northern money, which was of course an improvement.
h) is like a redneck republic, like NOLA is like Haiti, as someone else on this blog has said.
i) is a cultural center for many blacks, and others (even rednecks), as NOLA has been a cultural center for the Creole world and our Anglo world for over 300 years. But that doesn’t matter, we need to move on. All those unique soul food and “Southern cookin” restaurants can be replaced with any McDonalds, any day, just like the Creole restaurants of NOLA can..
4) New York
a) is built close to the water, and could easily be washed away by a Northeasterner…or bombed by terrorists coming from overseas. It was probably surrounded by U-boats during WWII, as was NOLA.
b) Is a hive of sinfulness and dissolution and greed
c) God has already punished NY with several major fires, plus of course 9/11. God, or maybe Allah, does not want NY to exist either.
d) Was a lowland on the Hudson River with beautiful forests in the background. Now it’s just an ever-expanding sea of concrete with horrible traffic. We need to let it go back to being a lowland again.
e) Is an important part of the nation’s economy like NOLA, like for every kind of company, world banking, an important port, etc. But so what.
f) Has too many Yankees and greedy lawyers and speculators
g) Idiots developed it in the first place, namely the Dutch, then the English.
h) is like a money republic full of greedheads, like NOLA is like Haiti, as someone else on this blog has said.
i) is a cultural center for artists and many people of all categories, as NOLA has been a cultural center for the Creole world and our Anglo world for over 300 years. But that doesn’t matter, we need to move on. All those unique international and “new American” restaurants can be replaced with any McDonalds, any day, just like the Creole restaurants of NOLA can.
There are other American cities that this logic can be applied to, such as Chicago, Honolulu and others. Others can add to this list for similar reasons as quoted above.
For NOLA, there are 3 main alternatives:
1) Bulldozing and “moving on”
2) Rebuilding as it was
3) Rebuilding smarter. Does this mean a McDonalds instead of the Gumbo Shop on the corner? No, but it could mean buildings constructed on stilts or higher ground (build it up). See Building Codes’ posting, above where he/she describes the new Caribbean island building codes, effective for hurricane-prone areas.
BUT..this costs money. To save money, and so that we don’t have to rebuild all the time, we as a nation need to apply the logic as mentioned above (thanks to others on this blog who inspired me) to all American cities who have a natural or man-made disaster, to keep it fair. After all, rebuilding Iraq and other places is much more important than rebuilding at home.
Keep in mind- the thousands of people being rescued from New Orleans are NOT being rescued from the aftermath of Katrina. They are being rescued from human stupidity and most of it is there very own.
The overwhelming information and recommendation from the federal level down was to evacuate the city. This was not heeded by the vast majority of the people stranded.
Yes, SOME could not have gotten out. This is stupidity on part of the local government. Free transportation should have been available to take people out of the city. Maybe this was available, in which case, read above paragraph.
There was ample warning. This was no surprise. In fact- it was expected to be worse. And people CHOSE to face mother nature in spite of overwhelming evidence they would lose and guess what, they lost.
Why should New Orleans be rebuilt? I think this will just happen again. The only way to rebuild it would be to build giant 50 foot walls around the city like the Great Wall of China.
Didn’t this happen to Alantis?
New Orleans must be re-built.
But, if Mardi Grass will come back.
New Orleans will be totally destroyed.
There is some excellent geographic info at this site.
http://www.southbear.com/New_Orleans/Geography.html
New Orleans should be rethought, redesigned and rebuilt, WITH one caveat – “NEVER AGAIN, next time it must be abandoned.”
Thank god there’s still people like reblev around here. What the hell do you think, yes it should be rebuild, i never tought somebody would even dare raise this issue. Would we leave San Fran if it were to go down??? I was stuned by the comment left by Ruiner, San Fran’s mainly white, the location of the city is much better than NO!!! SO we’ll let them suffer when they get hit??? IF WE WANNA BE THE NUMBER ONE COUNTRY ON EARTH WE SHOULD AT LEAST HELP ANYONE STRUCK BY BAD LUCK IN OUR OWN COUNTRY PROPERLY!!!
No, absolutely not. End of story.
The idea that we should thumb our noses at Mother Nature by throwing a ludicrous amount of money and effort into such a futile effort is preposterous. There is no better way to throw money away than to rebuild New Orleans. I see more sense in the US being in Iraq (and there is none) than rebuilding New Orleans.
As humans we sometimes have a tendency to leap before we look, but this has to come down to a very logical look before we leap. We have to weigh the good against the bad. I will not waste time and space recounting both, it’s sufficient to say, our hearts want to rebuild and hold on to the past and our minds tell us it’s senseless to fight an unstoppable force and it is just that, unstoppable we cannot even begin to hope to stop the forces of nature.
We put up a good fight, but we have to be sensible enough to retreat when faced with the undefeatable. To mindlessly go foward into battle you will surely loose isn’t honorable, heroic, couragious or a testiment to the human spirit, it’s suicidal. We may just have to face the practical fact that New Orleans is the first city claimed by global warming and really bad human planning, not God (I guess that honor goes to Sodom).
To all those who partake of the wrath of God angle, what of Rio de Janeiro, or Bangkok all of which seem to be full of debauchery and people of color and a lLOT of white ‘tourist’ as well, and not so full of pestilence… unless you count the massive slums of those cities What of Ibiza or Amsterdam? And before anyone says Amsterdam is a prime example of why we could rebuild since nearly one half of Holland is protected from flooding by an extensive system of dikes, dams and sand dunes, they do not have to deal with Hurricanes.
We should not be controlled by an emotional attachment to something we can not in invariably save. We have to realize it’s not truly worth the fight because it’s a fight we can’t truly expect to win. We have to pick our battles and know when to say when. The tens to hundreds of billions we’re blindly going to spend to retrieve a lost city could be better spent elsewhere within the US in citys that haven’t been devestated. New Orleans is a viable port but it’s not the only city on the Mississippi River, it can be replaced, maybe not in spirit but no ‘thing’ is irreplaceable.
The only reason this question is asked affirms my position that those poor people were left to die out because of the color of their skin.
Why is the WTC being rebuilt? What will happen if an earthquake hits LA? Should it be abandoned before the last body is pulled out of the rubble? Isnt it prone to earthquakes? Why not let mother nature do its job huh?
PLEASE
And some moron calls himself “realist” and says
“Does the black man and woman wonder why they don’t have much opportunity? Look at all of the looters and rapists and gunmen, THEY ARE ALL BLACK! When will these dumb sunsabitches quit acting like animals? They should shoot everyone of the looting, low life folks of any color that are not helping”
Just like the dumb myopic racist you are why cant you see beyond ure racially blinded eyes that only blacks seem to be left in the city, not just looting but also dieing on the roof tops, sleeping next to corpses in the superdome, and freaking chasing down the looters as a police office.
You should be ashamed of yourself fool and btw your last sentence just shows you hide ure true self, a frigin racist.
guess which race played the race card again.
people who are below average intelligence and ability, and who make bad decisions, should but dont appreciate those capable of better decision making.
refusal to accept responsibility for the consequences of ones actions, and blaming government for ones personal failings, is a sign of stupidity, incompetece, and dishonessty.
refusal to condemn people who loot [other than immediate necessities], rape & kill makes one part of the problem.
the courage to look reality in the eye is required. do we or dont we believe in telling the truth?
poverty isnt the reason. character and the lack of it are the reason.
Jesus Christ, John, how great to see another voice of reason and rationality.
Ajadudu- sorry, but you are an idiot. I really for sorry for you because ignorance is not bliss- it’s misery which is exactly why you perceive the world as you do.
You ask why does it seem only blacks are left in the city? Because most of the people who did not evacuate when ordered before the storm are black. That’s why. The white people who stayed behind are stranded too. They are not only resuing white people and leaving behind black people you friggin moron. A moment of rational thought clearly and concisely proves this: The vast majority of people moved into texas are black, not white. Did you, uh, notice that mr “open eyes”?
Reason. Rationality. This is how we find truth.
Hello from Germany. What happpened to you american guys keeping such a lousy discussion about rebuild or not? You spend an incredible amount of billions of tax dollars helping Afghanistan and Iraq (without any visible result), but you are not willing to help your own fellows rebuild an important city in the gulf region? Think of all the vessels and barges that operate on the Mississippi carrying all sort of industry goods and food. You need a vital port city down there. Think of the oil platforms and refineries down there.
You american guys, you are the leading nation of the world, if you can´t´do that, who else could do that? For rebuild of the eastern part of germany the germans had to pay a total amount of 1,500 billion EURO from 1990 to 2004.
For the damage in the gulf region we talk about 30 Billion USD.
Man, what a wimpy discussion…
Someone stated that New Orleans should not be rebuilt because it has no reason to exist in the first place. You, my friend are a moron. You obviously have no idea how things work in this country. I live in New Orleans. I am a native Orleanian. You have to eat right? You put gas in your car right? Do you use medicine or shampoo or eat cereal or bread? Do you drink coffee? Odds are the cup of coffee you drank this morning arrived in the port of New Orleans about a week ago. Not to mention the gas you put in your car yesterday was refined in a plant along the river in New Orleans. Oh thats right i forgot, all the grains and vegetables you midwesterners sell to the rest of the world to put food on your own table, without a doubt went through customs in New orleans and then on to destinations unknown. We suply 255 of the refined gasoline this country uses everyday. You will see soon how important this city is when youstart to pay six dollars for a gallon of gas and three dollars for a pack of gum. It’s the largest port inthe country, getting it yet??
Now for some historical background . What are the most historical cities significant to this country? Boston? WashingtonD.C.? Guess what? This city is three hundred years old. It has more historical significance than any other city in the United States. Remember the Louisiana Purchase? It doubled the size of the country. But why would a silly litle upstart country spend that much money on a big empty chunk of land? I’ll tell you why. Because New Orleans was there. Your midwestern farms would not exist without the port of New orleans to dish out your wares. The largest distributors of fresh seafood to every restaraunts kitchen comes from Louisiana. Did you eat any fruits from Florida or bananas from South America lately. Yep, you guessed it. It came from here to get to your fat mouth.
On an average block on any street within the city limits of New orleans, 1 out of every 3 houses is probably over 100 years old, some are 150 years old. The French Quarter has buildings as old as 200 years old. i think this is worth saving. not all of these homes are under water and almost all of them can be repaired.
Hey lets talk more History. the battle of New Orleans in the war of 1812. Not only was general Jackson highly outnumbered, he was out of ammunition. The people of New orleans rallied together and not only defeated, but mopped the floor with those British invaders to compleely close the door on the war. Most of these people were french citizens only a few years becore. Oh, by the way, a large portion of the defenders were free men of color.
There was a pretty big war called World war II. Did you see saving private Ryan? The opening scene with the Hiiggins landing boats? Guess where they were built? Guess where the inventor of these boats came from? I think you know the answer. The D-Day Museum is in the heart of the city. It is the biggest memorial museum to world War II veterans in the country. You tell those vets that this monumental tribute to their sacrifices will not be rebuilt. I’m not going to do it.
Now, to all the racists out there in blogland. This is my home. This is where i was raised. I am white. The city of New Orleans is the most culturally diverse city in the country. Like all cities there are rich and poor. I am white, but I am not rich. If it werent for the help of relatives I would be in that Dome with those people. I am very thankful and could never truly repay my debt to these people that are helping me to survive at the moment. I am in a hotel in Tyler texas.
Let us clear up a few things. New Orleans is 70%black.
It is not a suprise that 99% of those “refugees” as they are called are black. It is a poor city. Yes, everyone was warned.
If you make $5.15 an hour and have two kids, there is no money left over to buy most of things the average American takes for granted. These people use public transportation to get to their jobs. They don’t have cars, they don’t have bicicycles, and they sure as hell don’t have money to take a train out of town. How do you leave if you have no way out? None of them have rich uncles that can wire them some cash to rent a car and stay at a Holiday Inn in Houston.
There is a high crime rate in New Orleans, this is true, but the vast majority of those people dying from starvation are doing what they were told to do. there is a minute percentage of “bad apples’ that are making us all look bad.
As for the looting. If you were holding a child about to die from starvation or dehydration, you would knock the windows out of a Walgreen’s to feed that child. These are unique circumstances. Try not to eat for four days and see how long you r resolve lasts.
In summation, I would like to remind you people that these people dying are Americans. That’s right, Americans, just like you and me. They are not “REFUGEES”, They are mothers and fathers and families that pay taxes just like you. They are war veterans and teachers and everyday average citizens that deserve their rights to be protected. This is not Iraq, this is not Ethiopia, this an important american city that is dying right in front of our eyes. As a displaced native, I find it sickening to se the lack of response from the rest of the country.
We sit in this hotel and watch the news networks non stop. Do you think it is easy to watch your neighborhood dissapear?
Do you think it is easy to watch the people you worked with come on t.v. and say that their whole family is dead or that their are bodies floating down the street one block over from your apartment.
I would wish that every American go outside right now. Sit on your porch. Look around. Think about every wonderful memory you have of this place you live in. The ballpark where you got your first hit. The restaraunt tou had your first date with your wife or girlfriend. The palces your granparents took you as kids. The fairs, the festivals, the house where yougo to see your whole family at Thanksgiving, the tree you climbed in the front yard, your old high school.
Do you have all these pictures in you r head?
Now, close your eyes. What you now see is what we have now. Nothing complete and utter anhialation of every memory we have. Think about this before you decide to make judgements.
thank you for reading this,
Paul A. Poupart’
forever a citizen of New Orleans
It should not be rebuilt as anything more than a port city that occasionally floods.
However, it will be rebuilt. With money we don’t have. The talking heads on TV say that this will help the economy.
They are wrong, as usual. Most groupthink ideas are wrong.
Consider a distribution center in NO that was destroyed. Some company has to build another. In the meantime, it uses FedEx and UPS to ship its items – incurring additional costs. So fedex and UPS get more money, right? Yes, and all the other carriers that shipped the freight more efficiently (cost wise) lose their business. Other contractors both local and national that had service contracts for mechanical, electrical, and computer equipment in the building no longer have a contract. The people who used to work there no longer have a job. The small businesses that interacted with those workers no longer have customers. The building itself was a capital resource that generated revenue for a host of companies, and is no longer there. The money that will be used to replace it will have to come from somewhere – meaning that is money that would have been used elsewhere but will now be used to build something that was destroyed.
And to be honest, I’m not certain the country can afford this. The insurance companies are talking about 20-30 billion in expenses for just them. The Federal government insures for flood damage, the insurance companies are mostly just talkig about wind damage and people’s cars. The flood damage is likely to be astronomical by comparison when you consider that an entire city is under water. It’s electrical, sewage, and road systems are destroyed or badly damaged. There is no tax base now so the local government cannot do a thing, and Louisiana certainly cannot do anything since it’s main cash cow is gone. What do you think that will cost in total? 100 billion? 200 billion?
This is going to have a much wider and more severe effect on people all over the country than anyone thinks.
i say take all the tree huggers and environmental fools and send them to New Orleans to straighten out the mess, and then we can go drill for our own oil in our own country. We can build more refineries and become a little more self sufficient.
You people are completly missing the point.
Paul: there does not have to be a bustling city of a million people to have a port there. I’ll give ya that the port is very important, but there does not have to be a city of New Orleans there with a million people waiting to die in the flood that will come again. do not rebuild the “city” but build a port and don’t let the army corps of engineers within 1,000 miles of it. the mouth of the Mississippi river is too important not to be used in that manner. Only a fool could think that it would be worth rebuilding the city and moving all the civilians back in. demolish it all, start over from scratch and build it back to what it should have only been in the first place, a port to only receive goods and such and then get the goods the hell outta there. And this time, build the damn thing above sea level.
You can’t live in “history” you can only think about. and I hope thats what the city becomes, HISTORY.
If its as hard as you say to see and hear the things that are happening to N.O. right now, why in the world would you want to put it back only to inevitably have the same thing happen in the future? You sound like a man of reason and must realize that will happen again sometime if everything is simply rebuilt.
If you ask to be judged by the content of your character, you most surely will.
interesting article:
Written in 2000
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BJK/is_15_11/ai_68642805
And if the city is rebuilt it will be by fools
Having been born in New Orleans, but primarily raised in Lake Charles, I have witnessed first hand both ends of Louisiana’s cultural spectrum. New Orleans certainly must be rebuilt; the only question is where? I would vote for higher ground in a an area significantly less prone to flood.
And as far as the race factor goes…wouldn’t it be best to demolish all of the slums that existed in New Orleans and begin anew with better housing. This could be an opportunity to better integrate New Orleans and break up the clusters of poverty that now exist.
There seem to be a lot of people here arguing that the taxpayers money shouldn’t be used for rebuilding NO. I just want to remind those folks that the people of Louisiana are taxpayers, too. Their taxes went into projects they were not very enthusiastic about, too. And the feds denied them the needed funds for flood prevention which would have prevented the most dire consequences of the hurrivane. In the republican ideology of ‘taxes are YOUR money’, this means that the feds didn’t allow them to use THEIR money for this very urgent task. Afaik Louisiana’s citizens pay about 8 billion dollars in taxes every year. Officials say, complete class 5 levees for NO would have cost 2.5 billion. In comparison, 7 billion dollars have been spent to recreate thge Florida everglades.
Is it ethical to spend an incredible amount of money in Alaska in the future, including a monster bridge with a prize tag of $941 million, and in the same instance deny the hurricane refugees the chance to rebuild their communities?
Imho the US owes the victims the rebuilding effort, because the feds bear a lot of responsibility for the desaster. Of course, there should be regulations regarding safety for the constructions. And the work at the upgrade of the levees should start immediately. But millions of US citizens in Louisiana shouldn’t be forced to leave their home country because the rest of the nation denies to support them.
I am from Mobile, AL and I have spent time all over this world; most of it in New Orleans. This city is unlike anything on this planet; the people, the attitude, and the life are things you don’t find anywhere else. Most Americans would understand these things if we would travel outside this county, and truly understand what it is that we have here.
I am discussed to here America’s ignorance for what they know about their governments actions. Our Army is rebuilding the Infrastructure in Iraq, Afghanistan, and every other place we go. Unfortunately our government Classifies things when reporters and the public being to ask questions on how much are we rebuilding and where. We can get troops and supplies to those troops in a matter of hours not days. However, the people of America will do nothing to rebuild their own town and wait for a desperate mayor and governor to make FORMAL requests to get troops and supplies…. That is the most insane thing I think I have read to date!
There truly needs to be discussions and thought made before the building process beings; this is a must. Let us consider things like removing residential areas out of these sensitive areas, raising the business off of the first levels, moving parts of the city to higher ground, or some other engineering feat. America, consider Venice as an example of things we might be able to do to rebuild…. But the last thing that Americans need to think about is letting the city become a part of our history and not a part of our future…
Finally: To Knowitall, I would under if you had ever been to this city, or what it is you think you know about the Corps of Engineers? Without the Corps there would be no port city, period! Their main function is to keep the shipping channels opened and running. That is a 24/7 dredging operation, but that’s not something I guess you knew. You are correct, only a fool would build the city back exactly the way it was. However, if you know history you are not doomed to repeat it.
There are many here who talk about Miami, or Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York. They fail to differentiate between reasonable and unreasonable risk. They ramble on about how we MUST rebuild N.O. and call others names and accuse them of being inconsiderate. Then they go on an attach little qualifications like “build on stilts or higher ground”! DUH! Stilts works for the buildings, but the rest of the infrastructure will still be at risk and flooded streets would isolate the buildings. Higher ground makes sense. That is EXACTLY what the “inconsiderates” are proposing, you morons! Fill in the existing basin? Where do you get the fill? How long to get that amount of material in, then safely compacted (you definitely don’t want to build anything on loose fill), then erect structures and infrastructure on top of that. Reloate nearby, on higher ground. There will still be risk from hurricanes, but not (unnatural) inundating floods. That is reasonable risk.
Bonnie shows a rational understanding of the problem that is New Orleans. Rebuilding a coastal city that sits below sea level is simply not reasonable. The risks are far too high. There is no engineering on earth that can assure such a city will not experience yet another catastrophic flooding.
The city of San Francisco may be near a fault line; but it is not built on a fault. As the last major earthquake there showed, the engineering held up. No major building toppled. The rebuilt freeway will also be unlkely to topple in the next earthquake. Its flaws were understood and corrected in the rebuild. There is no such solution for New Orleans.
Filling in the basin would be an engineering project the likes of which has never been seen on the face of the earth. The only conceivable way it could be done would be to shunt the Mississippi into the New Oreleans area and allow repeated floodings to build up silt to near sea level. Of course the time line for such a project would be measured in decades. When this process was reasonably complete in fifty years or so, engineers would have to figure out how to make the silt stable enough for construction. But in fifty years perhaps people would forget about rebuilding and just let it be: our gift to the archaeologists of the distant future.
I have substantially contributed, financially, THIS time to help the victims of Katrina. New Orleans, however, should not be rebuilt as it was. It has always been a disaster waiting to happen. If it is rebuilt, and WHEN it gets hit again, I will not contribute so much as a one penney. It is ridiculous that the American public is continually tagged to foot the bill for people who choose to live in unsafe places. Enough is enough!
If New Orleans along with the rest of Louisiana wants to secede from the Union and spend your tax money on propping up your great sinking city, go right ahead… I don’t want one red cent going towards that end.
The US would be better off spending twice the amount of money it’s going to cost to rebuild and diverting the Mississippi River through the state of Mississippi and having it come out between Gulfport and Biloxi
I say this because New Orleans is going to get hit again and again (as is Gulfport and Biloxi but the difference is they’re not built under sea level), and this isn’t like rebuilding a region that was once run into the ground by corrupt and/or misguided leaders such as East Germany or Iraq, once you rebuild the infrastructure there it will stay unless man destroys it again (or the occasional 100 year flood or two).
What we’re talking about in New Orleans is a complete gamble. And not about a gamble where we win and walk away richer, it’s a gamble on when we’ll lose our shirts again… next year maybe two years from now (does New Orleans want to start a Hurricane relief fund for themselves? Save during the good years to pay for the bad. I doubt it. So for now your tax moneys go into the greater good pot, besides Louisiana was a Red state twice so you should agree whole heartedly on how “W†is spending your money… ya’ gotta’ support your man, right?).
What happens when it gets hit again? Or even twice in one year? Then all you’ll hear is, “the government should have never let anyone rebuild in that area. It was completely irresponsible and racist. They knew that blacks were going to repopulate that area and they just wanted to set us (blacks) up to get killed again. We need reparations for you being short sighted enough to listen to us and rebuilding the cityâ€. You know what, if it was a truly racist issue… their would be no rescue process at all and the Astrodome would be prepping for entertainment events that bring money into the city not refugees sucking resources away. Refugees from a city that should have been abandoned years ago when we first realized what was happening to it (slowly sinking below the surface of the sea and there is nothing we can do about it!).
What pisses me off the most is that some people don’t realize that what happens to the people of New Atlantis… I mean Orleans… happens to all of us. We’re the ones paying for the rescue. No one wants to see people suffer but to rebuild only means future unnecessary suffering. (New Orleaneans surly aren’t paying into their rescue… their tax moneys all go to sure up their dykes… if you want to live by the sword of all of our tax money should go to just us… screw the common good, then you die by that same sword).
And you say, “well if that had been the case then the levees would not have failedâ€. But there is no way to prove that. And even though the city had been given millions in recent years to sure up the system the only way to really make sure that New Orleans didn’t have a front row seat to “Finding Nemo†is to build a 40 foot high 300 foot thick wall around the city and not ever let it grow again… that would ensure that no poor people , black or white, could ever live their because land would be such a prime commodity.
Sounds like a win-win situation lets do it! You mean a city with all the best restaurants and entertainment venues and no poor people bumming change off of me when I leave to go to my car… that’s AWSOME! I’m there!
And less we forget Katrina was called for a time a Category 5 + storm what happens when there’s a Cat 5++ with 225 mile per hour winds? Should we prepare for that as well? Let’s build that wall a 100 foot high a 1000 feet thick hell let’s just build a dome and keep the weather out completely. Screw you mother nature I mean heck… the super dome survived right? Then let’s make the Uber Super Dooper Dome!
Shame on us for not building?
No, shame on us for building in an area where we knowingly put people in harms way. But this is a moot point because the people in charge and the sheep like masses are too short sighted to see the benefits of relocating New Orleans to higher ground. We no longer have leaders we have winners of popularity contests whose only goal is to be liked by the most people, and most people are sentimental fools who cling to a warm and fuzzy idealized mental picture of the past. Americans, for the most part can’t plan for the future, that’s why most are in debt up to their eyeballs and why America will stay in debt, because we don’t or can’t plan for the long term.
I wonder if the death toll will exceed the 10,000 that perished by Yellow Fever, (check city history). Building, or rebuilding, a city 10 feet below sea level, on a disease breeding swamp, is akin to building a house of straw. Only a fool would consider it.
My uncle is a long-distance truck driver; he heard of at least 3 drivers who, loaded with bottled water, drove from VA & were told to turn around at Baton Rouge! What’s the deal?? Incompetant administration; Unacceptable response!
Ignorance seems to be a plague.
Most of you have no command of the facts or complexity of any of the issues at hand. You exhibit typical first-order thinking. One person described it as “rational”. Uninformed people can always make seemingly rational decisions, particularly about other people’s lives, because they neither have the information nor seek the information to comprehend what is really happening.
Most of New Orleans’ most significant historic, cultural, and investment assets sit on high ground. The miles of historic housing that are now perfectly dry sit several feet above sea level. These are the neighborhoods that everyone loves to visit when they come to New Orleans. If widespread fire can be avoided, people will move back in these homes as soon as the government lets them access their private property. The housing that belonged to people of means was covered by private insurance, often by flood insurance, or by their own assets. The problem will be all of the (primarily) rental housing that was destroyed, occupied by people of little or no means.
So when you devise your practical solutions, you must remember that you are devising solutions for 150,000 people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Are you going to rebuild a city for them, or are you going to absorb them into all of your cities? Because the people of the city of New Orleans cannot afford to build massive flood-resistant housing projects to house these people.
I have a feeling that, faced with the prospect of impoverished African-Americans being relocated to their town, the “rational” folks may change their tune.
Do not doubt that the people of means will come back to the city. They have lived there for 6..7… who knows how many generations. There is much to love about New Orleans that many people cannot seem to grasp.
“Acceptable risk” vs. “Unaccceptable Risk” is largely individual preference. I may think it is stupid to live in a place that you could freeze to death, you may think that is normal. You don’t have to live on top of a fault line to be destroyed by an earthquake. I thought the tsunami would have taught people that.
If you are going try to “rationally” debate the protection systems that surround the City of New Orleans, learn what is feasible, for what cost. Don’t make dramatic assertions about cost, height of walls, etc. that are based on nothing other than, at best, past models and, at worst, guesses. Then you need to compare the various protection systems that protect other cities from natural phenomena, microeconomics, macroeconomics, etc. That may be rational – although in politics, right-leaning or left-leaning, we never make rational decisions. We just view the other side’s excesses as irrational and label our own rational.
So the right sees tree-huggers, PETA nuts, people having abortions, solar-power geeks, and protecting cultural resources as irrational.
The left sees driving giant SUVs around the blandburbs, wars for profit, snake-handling assassination fans and giant expensive bridges for Republican senators of barely populated states as irrational.
New Orleans will be back, regardless of what the federal government does in the long term (since we know they will dry out the city in the near-term). If you want to re-locate the impoverished to higher ground, (your subdivision, perchance?) be my guest. Somehow I don’t think that will happen.
I am here in Houston, and as heartless as this may read, I do not want these refugees to stay here. We are already overwhelmed with stifling school taxes, and adding to the already high indigent (err….lazy, unmotivated, content to let the taxpayers pay for their existence) population will make it more difficult to accumulate wealth. I do not believe we should be so concerned with the common good. This country was founded on principles of individualism, not communism. If people feel guilty because they’re eating filet mignon while others are starving, then do whatever you need to rid yourselves of the guilt. I just wish the governement would quit forcing those of us who work their asses off to provide ourselves a better life to provide everyone else with a similar life.
ooops….submitted too soon. Conclusion…..please rebuild it, and citizens of New Orleans, please move back.
thanks sick, I feel that people have a choice to live like they want. I for one chose to work and support my family. If you want to rebuild find rebuild, but require people who are able to work to work. Provide jobs, so if something like this happens again maybe you’ll have the means to leave when told to leave.
I know its hard to work when jobs are few a for in between, so pprovide jobs so people who can work will work. NO can be rebuilded, but I do believe you should consider that if people are going to go back to barely living then some changes should be made.
See how quickly the right-wing can come around when they realize that they’ve brought poor African-Americans onto ‘the high ground’ (i.e. their cities)?
New Orleans will be rebuilt.
Stated By Mapman:
Finally: To Knowitall, I would under if you had ever been to this city, or what it is you think you know about the Corps of Engineers? Without the Corps there would be no port city, period! Their main function is to keep the shipping channels opened and running. That is a 24/7 dredging operation, but that’s not something I guess you knew. You are correct, only a fool would build the city back exactly the way it was. However, if you know history you are not doomed to repeat it.
I have been to the city, and it’s nothing but mostly freaks, dykes, and faggots, and lazy ass people, with a minority of decent people, and i don’t plan on goin back.
After reading sickofpayingforlaziness’s response I’ve had a change of heart, rebuild the city and send the freaks, dykes, fags, and lazy asses back, i don’t want them in my city either, I would rathar pay to have them live somewhere else than pay to have them live in my city.
oh yeah, and send the freaks, dykes, fags, and lazy asses back to rebuild it their self,
Tempers are running a little hot here. Certainly, reasonable risk vs unreasonable risk is subjective, to an extent. So, we need to look at priorities, develop a number of scenarios to deal with issues, and choose the scenario which is the best for common good.
The first order of business is to save lives and relieve suffering. Far too many lives have already been lost. The health of the survivors needs to be tended to. Families are separated from each other and don’t have a clue as to who has survived and who has not. This is the immediate need.
But we also need to start planning the future. We need to start thinking about it now.
First question. Is a city needed in this proximity? Is there any argument that the answer is a respounding YES? The location, with the waterways, the natural resources, etc., demand that the Port of New Orleans be restored and reopened asap. This is vital to the common good of the entire country. The port cannot be relocated. A major (and I mean MAJOR) port such as this requires a significant settlement nearby. Any debate that a city of New Orleans needs to exist somewhere in the vicinity of the port?
The existing city, with the exception of the French Quarter and a few other (higher) areas, no longer exists. Something needs to be built. What are the requirements for this “something”?
1. The people. It needs to be safe, secure, and healthy, fit for human habitation. Should be reinstate people living in poverty (who could ill afford this disaster) back into the same situation? Or should we reestablish them in a safer, more secure location?
2. The environment. Lots of room here for subjective reasonable vs unreasonable risk analysis. We have people on one side who would be happiest if human habitation of the earth ceased, and people on the other extreme who don’t give a darn. The truth is somewhere in between. The planet is our home and we should be taking care of it. It isn’t a museum piece either, so we have to use it. We have to use it in such a way as to cause the least harm. After years of experience, we should know that we can’t reliably tame something as powerful as the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico, the tides, or hurricanes (among other things). The river carries silt. The river NEEDS to flood. It needs someplace to flood to. It is on record what is happening in that region as far as erosion and land loss is concerned. The dikes and levees are great feats of engineering, but now we know that they are also part of the problem. As they are (were), they are inadequate. The levees need to be bigger and more complex, which in turn further degrade the environment, which then leads to higher future risk. We can rebuild the ruins, reinforce the levees, and wait for it to happen again, or we can move the population center to a more secure location, simply the levee system to better protect areas which have survived relatively well (such as the French Quarter), and return the rest to nature. I guess the question is, should we work WITH the environment, or AGAINST it?
3. Economics. This is the hot button item. I can see people blowing their tops already. You may not like the topic, but it is a factor, regardless. When we talk economics, we need to talk on the long term level here. Please note that this list of priorities is short. This is the 3rd and last item. Notice that it is the LAST item. That means economics is at the BOTTOM of the list. Whose economics are we talking about here? The economics of the country? The region? The people who are living in New Orleans? All of the above. The people who have lost so much already, many not having that much to begin with. Do we put them in a position where the risk of losing everything AGAIN is lower, or do we maintain the status quo? Do we reinstitute a system in which untold finances will need to be spent to maintain (dollars which could be used for economic development instead), and then more cost in dollars (and more importantly, LIVES), when (not if, but when) the levees fail again? A relocation may (or may not) be more costly in the short term. In the long term, relocation is much more economically viable in the terms of not only dollars, but human lives.
When we speak of relocation, we aren’t talking about moving to Texas or Arkansas. We are talking about what? 10 or 20 miles? Maybe less? Get significantly away from the river and it’s flood plain.
The biggest task of creating a NEW New Orleans is making it something other that sterile rows and rows of cookie cutter homes. The atmosphere of the old city is gone. The good old days cannot be brought back. Rather than try to mimic the past, let’s create a better future, and preserve what is left of the past.
Is this short diatribe a final and definitive solution? No. It’s intended as food for thought. No solution is going to please everyone. But please, remember that the situation in New Orleans is unique. It is NOT the same as Miami, which has been devasted by hurricanes. It is NOT the same as San Franciso and the earthquakes. It is NOT the Chicago fire. Miami and San Franciso have been subject to acts of God. Relocation of either of these is unreasonable because we would be talking at least HUNDREDS of miles. Chicago was a man made disaster from which we learned much about fire protection, building codes, etc.
New Orleans was a two-fold disaster. An act of God (Katrina) and an act of man who thought he could be God and control the Mississippi. We can’t do anything about Katrina. We can do something about the flood threat. If the ONLY alternative was to move New Orleans 200 miles west to avoid the threat of flood, I’d say rebuild where it stands, and build a redundant levee system for protection. But when alternatives are close at hand…!
Lay emotion aside. Lay race aside. Lay politics aside. This isn’t about whites discriminating against blacks. This isn’t about blacks all being lazy, drug addicted, and deserving of nothing better. This isn’t about the people in New Orleans receiving the wrath of God for their immoral behavior. This isn’t about Republican mismanagement or Democratic corruption. This is about PEOPLE, and what can be done to put them back on their feet, with normal (as far as possible) lives and a secure (safe) future.
An analogy and I’ll quit. A child is in an abusive home. She is sexually assaulted and injured by her step-father while her mother sits idlely by. Do we heal her physical injuries, send her home, and try to prevent a repeat by providing counselling for her and her parents, and even send a social worker by to check up once in awhile, or do we remove the girl from her home, heal her body, counsel her spirit, and provide as tender and loving foster care as we can? (And yes, I know the real world doesn’t function this way for abused children, but it’s only an analogy).
I know the media has said that New Orleans is “gone”, but this simply isn’t the case. Look at the NOAA satellite images from 2 days ago. If you aren’t from this city, you simply do not know what you are talking about. The media simply has not shown the areas that are fine. Why would they? When they say 80% of the city is under water, that doesn’t mean it is all under 10 ft of water. Some areas have no water, some a foot of water, some 2 ft of water, some 10 ft of water. Everyone should know that the media are hyperbolic idiots.
The biggest threat to the city right now is fire. Fire would kill the city. Several fires are burning, and there is no capability to fight them. Per the Times-Picayune, the Forest Service has offered their firefighting helicopters, but Dept. of Homeland Security has turned them down. If the French Quarter, CBD, Lower Garden District, Upper GD, Irish Channel, Upper Audubon, Lower Audubon, Uptown Triangle, and Carrollton (all dry neighborhoods) burn to the ground, then there is no point. But right now, this is a specious argument.
It’s amazing the paternalistic, factless things people come up with. Learn something about the people and place you are talking about other than what the talking heads told you. The people of New Orleans are nuts/strange? They aren’t playing bulldozer or social worker from hundreds of miles away.
New Orleans should be rebuilt by employing the Mississippi to haul rock and fill from hill-country upriver so that it becomes, like the original French Quarter, all above water-level. One only need look at Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, which literally was transformed from “Back Bay” when filled during the ox-and-railroad Victorian age, to see that it is feasible, especially now with our advanced technological capabilty. New Orleans is a shipping port vital to national interest, and cannot be abandoned. But to rebuild in a bowl, forever at the mercy of fallible levees and pumps, is too precarious. Let’s not make the same costly mistake twice.
Also — in a time of crisis, with emotions raw, it may be tempting to play the race card, throwing blame wherever it appears to stick, but ultimately self-righteousness solves no problems. Perhaps we need to learn from the gentle victims of the recent tsunami, and just cooperatively mend things, meanwhile praising God that we’re still alive to do it.
well, let’s see-
one extremely tacky city, with embarrasing drunks, cheesy beads, even cheasier Bourbon St, dirty and smelly; scary bayou rednecks abounding,
33% poverty; large stinky, sweaty uneducated masses…
just burn the remnants, cleanse the air off the miasma and bury it under water
nobody will miss it, except for few corny tourists and they will even go to Vegas pretty soon
Okay, now the gloves are off. “Let’s make it just a port”? Okay bonehead, who is going to work there? You need people to work in a port don’t you? Are we supposed to drive in from Houston everyday to punch the clock?
Tax dollars? Hmm let’s see. No one in this country knows where the fuck their tax dollars are going anyway. I payed part of that 87 billion to go to iraq. They didn’t ask my opinion. I do believe Florida has gotten the shit kicked out of it about 17 times in the last ten years from hurricanes. I didn’t see anyone complaining about paying for that. Is it because Florida is full of retired white guys that contribute their giant pensions to the Republican party?
If Bumfuck Kansas was hit by the biggest tornado ever recorded and wiped off the face of the Earth, would we rebuild it? What significance does a town in Kansas have to the country? “Well, we had this really fancy BP station at the main junction in town. It had three flavors of Slush Puppies. We have to rebuild our productive town.” I guarantee it would be rebuilt.
GLK had a valid point. I would think you people were crazy for living in a place that has Tornadoes in the plains. I wouldn’t move to California because of the Earthquakes and I sure as hell wouldn’t move to Minnesota to freeze my nuts off. Just think if in the dead of winter, the power grid goes down in Minneapolis. Thousands freeze to death. “Well those stupid honkeys deserve it because they live in the arctic.” This is dumb shit all around. At any time in any place a dissaster can happen. It could be your turn soon.
Its easy to spew out your thoughts about someone else’s problems while you sit in your air conditioned home with a fridge full of food. Until it hurts you, you won’t get it.
GLK , you have your shit together.
Know it all: You speak of not living in History. We learn from our mistakes right. Well, if you saw the documentary about the twin towers on Nova, you would have learned that they were built “supposedly” to withstand the hit of an aircraft. Guess what? They did. But, what was overlooked was the extreme temperature of the fire, which intern, melted the bolts on the main I beams causing them to collapse on each other like a stack of pancakes. The towers fell because of an unseen situation.
The same thing happened here. When the hurricane went through, the city was okay. Every building was standing. There was no flood water. The unforseen fact was that afterwards, one small portion of the levee became weakened by the pressure of the lake water. This caused the proverbial dam to break. The city engineers and contractors did their jobs. The buildings held. The levee was high enough. The water didn’t go over it, it went through it. It weakened just like the bolts on the towers. I don’t think anyone was bad mouthing the steel workers and contracters who built those. We pulled together and gave the richest city in the United States everything they needed. It wasn’t about money, it was about mankind.
I’m going back next week to start rebuilding and cleaning up the only home I’ve ever known. Try to stop me.
Check out these transcripts of a 2002 feature broadcast:
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_delta.html
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_neworleans.html
Excerpts:
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DANIEL ZWERDLING: And on top of those worries: scientists say that the threat to New Orleans keeps getting bigger.
New Orleans has always had a huge natural shield that helps protect it from storms: there are miles and miles of wetlands, between the city and the Gulf of Mexico. When a hurricane blows over them, it loses some of its power. But as we reported a couple of weeks ago, this shield is breaking apart.
And here’s the irony: the wetlands are disappearing because of the levees. The very levees that were supposed to protect New Orleans. They stopped the Mississippi River from flooding, but it turns out that they also triggered an environmental chain reaction, which is starving the wetlands to death.
Scientists say if this shield keeps crumbling over the next few decades, then it won’t take a giant storm to cause a disaster. A much weaker, more common kind of hurricane could devastate New Orleans.
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DANIEL ZWERDLING: Remember the levees which the Army built, to hold smaller floods out of the bowl? Maestri says now those levees would doom the city. Because they’d trap the water in.
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OLIVER HOUCK, PROFESSOR, TULANE LAW SCHOOL: Every day the Mississippi River brings about a half million tons of silt. You can imagine what it would take in dump trucks to bring half a million tons of silt every day to south Louisiana.
ZWERDLING: Oliver Houck runs the environment program at Tulane University Law School.
OLIVER HOUCK:It would take 200,000 dump trucks, every day, on the roads, bringing that soil in. The Mississippi River built five million acres of south Louisiana. It built 20,000 square miles of south Louisiana. It built everything you see between Texas and Mississippi and inland about 50 miles. All of that’s care of and thanks to the Mississippi River.
ZWERDLING: After the river built these wetlands, it sustained them for thousands of years — it stopped them from dropping into the sea. This whole region is actually sinking a tiny bit, constantly. All that rich, heavy soil keeps compacting under its own weight. But every few years, the river would flood and gush over its banks and all that goo would spread across the landscape and build the wetlands back up.
Until the Europeans showed up.
OLIVER HOUCK: The French came in about 1700. They find Louisiana in the fall, and they find it dry. And they find the site of New Orleans to be a good site to build and so they decide to build there. Of course the next spring it floods. So their answer to that is to build a little levee.
DANIEL ZWERDLING: A wall.
OLIVER HOUCK: A little wall. And they built a little wall between their houses and the river. And that works for about a year, but then the river jumps the wall upstream and comes around behind the wall and hits the houses. So, they have to extend the wall upstream. And we’ve been extending that wall upstream for the next 300 years.
ZWERDLING: The US Army took over the job in the late 1800s and every time they thought they’d conquered nature, the Mississippi River proved them wrong. So the Army’s Corps of Engineers built more walls, and they built them higher. It’s been one of the biggest engineering projects in history. Today, the Army manages more than two thousand miles of levees, and they’ve finally won the war — they’ve stopped the flooding in Louisiana.
OLIVER HOUCK: And so the project was, from an engineering point of view, brilliant, brilliant. From an environmental standpoint, it was a disaster. And it was a disaster because all of that bed load, all of that material that had built south Louisiana for thousands of years, now was thrown away like a waste product into the deep Gulf. And Louisiana was poised like a patient in a hospital. It was put on a starvation diet. It wasn’t killed it was just made weak and susceptible to attack. And in about the 1930’s the attack came.
New Orleans is a city that can never be replaced. I believe that it should not be rebulit and that a revolution among african americans is about to take place. People within Houston were scared that maybe these “refugees” would bring with them the chaos that was depicted on the news. This has not been so. Everyone that I have met were very nice and open to change. New Orleans is a place that was very rich in african american culture. Louisiana is the only state within the US that has its own language, which is unique within itself. It may be gone but never forgotten!!
GLK says “Some areas have no water, some a foot of water, some 2 ft of water, some 10 ft of water. Everyone should know that the media are hyperbolic idiots.”
Are people in the media hyperbolic idiots? That would be a reasonable assertion.
From what GLK says, it’s only a small portion of the city that has any real problem. I wonder why there are thousands of people desperately wanting to get out? Why don’t they just stroll over to one of the areas that only has a foot of water or so sitting in the street? Of course, people can live without electricity, but they need food and water. There should be plenty of stores (also only slightly flooded) where canned food, bottled water, sodas, beer, etc. are available. I can’t condone looting, but understand taking what is essential (food and liquid) for survival. Very high likelyhood I’d do it myself.
Once the army and national guard stop the senseless evacuations, they can devote their time and energy delivering food and water to those in the only slightly damaged areas.
Sit it out, wait for the streets to dry off, and go back to work. I imagine most places of employment were also only slightly flooded, or just the parking lots. The street sweepers can clean up the little bit of mud and things are back to normal.
I can see where only a couple inches of water sitting on the floor for a few weeks and rotting out the very bottom isn’t a major problem. Everything else from the top of the baseboards up is fine. Minor repair.
I don’t understand the problem with the fires. Surely fire trucks can navigate through a foot of water! Perhaps even two foot of water. And there certainly shouldn’t be a lack of water which can be pumped onto the fires, even with the water mains down. I assume of course that the fire stations also only have a foot or two of water in them. Not enough to damage the trucks.
It is really crazy to evacuate a city that isn’t as bad off as we had thought. Thank you, GLK. I’m glad you have your s**t together and are think rationally.
[...] David Wallace-Wells of Slate summarizes the discussion around the Should New Orleans Be Rebuilt post from comments and from other blogs. Who needs an op-ed page? [...]
This is in response to the imbecile that posted 1:25am sept 3rd called matt b.
I dont know where u left ure brains but if u have a population in which aprox 70% are black then the majority of dead, stranded,knucklehead looters, brave cops, deserter cops will be BLACK!! AND quoting ure dumb ass”The vast majority of people moved into texas are black, not white”
Of course they will be a majority, gosh!
As Kanye West said “I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, ‘They’re looting.’ You see a white family, it says, ‘They’re looking for food.”
Yes I saw black people “looting” majority had diapers, candy bars, coke bottles and groceries, a few stupid teenage kids stole snickers and vcrs etc, AND a few of the cops that stood their guard (BLACK by the way) stopped them..
Shoo matt b, go sit infront of ur big screen tv and be glad ure livelyhood has not been taken from your in a storm
This has been very interesting reading, should we rebuild…and then throwing race into the mix…nice. I have been to New Orleans many times and it is a great city. Great cities just happen, they’re usually not planned. For some reason, usually economic, people settle in an area and then others come and there you, are a great city. Even planned cities, Braslia excluded, started as trading posts and villages. New Orleans will be rebuilt, with or without Federal funds. People will return, business will return and the city will survive. It will happen at its own pace. Initially the population will be smaller but with time it will increase. It’s easy to say move the city, but it’s hard to tell people who have ties to a place that they should just move. Right now lots of people are crying and swearing they won’t be back but as time goes on some of them will return. Rarely have cities just been abandoned and never in America, it’s against our nature. Can’t make the land dry? We’ll prove you wrong and do it. We trust technology to solve our problems. Plus, the whole city isn’t underwater, the areas around the port are dry, most of the central business district looks dry, of course the French quarter, the West Bank looks dry and the smaller cities aroung New Orleans are dry.
Now for those who call this “wrath of God”, I thought with the coming of Jesus, God went out of the punishment business, and who are you to presume to know what’s on God’s mind? Does God speak to you personally? Only God knows who will be in heaven with him and I would never presume to try to decide who God will let into His presence.
O
To those who want to rebuild New Orleans, let them go ahead and build. But I’m not paying one cent for the construction, or for the funerals when the next hurricane floods the city once more.
It was a huge mistake to build a large city in such an unstable area. The soil on which the Big Easy sits on is basically soft mud, and the bedrock is God knows how deep. And anything built there will simply sink until it reaches the bedrock. Also, the Mississippi River is just too powerful to be confined to a bunch of levees, which are also sinking.
The Louisiana settlers should have learned from the local Native American tribes before slaughtering them. They were at least smart enough to live a semi-nomadic lifestyle, knowing how unpredictable the region is.
Of course New Orleans will be rebuilt – it is, after all, a state of mind as much as a city and for those who have experienced the architecture, the music, the food and the uniquely New Orleans concept of Lagniappe, no other option is available. Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?
And besides, any other considerations would be political suicide and culturally irresponsible to a nation that cherishes its history. We have the technology to build levees that can survive Cat 5 storms and we can stop the wetlands erosion that is slowly eating up the buffer zones between the Crescent City and the Gulf, but until now, the crucial element missing from the formula for future sustainability of this great city has been the now obvious awareness at the top levels that New Orleans impacts the entire country. The largest volume port of entry in the US, the heart of the country’s Energy Coast, a major medical hub, home to some of our most prestigious Universities, antebellum homes, Audobon Zoo, and on and on and on…
I would like to caution against wholesale demolition though. While health considerations, structural assessments, environmental clean up and basic services restoration will all take precedence over the weeks that follow the unwatering of New Orleans, I urge those in charge to resist the decision to simply bulldoze neighborhoods as a precursor to rebuilding the city. The historic status of the French Quarter and
its overall minor flooding will no doubt save this area but other areas may not fare as well with the affects of long term flooding. But please consider a detail that is uniquely New Orleans:
Having owned a construction company and lived in the French Quarter throughout the 1980s, I can say from first-hand experience that many of the historic homes of the Vieux Carré, Faubourg Marigny, Bywater, Ninth Ward, Sixth Ward, Garden District, Irish Channel and many of the other old districts are framed with some of the densest wood I’ve ever known – namely heartpine which is nearly impossible to drive a nail into and burns up the thickest carbide sawblades.
It’s difficult to imagine that heartpine would be affected by long-duration emersion in water and I only hope that when the decisions are ultimately made whether to demolish existing homes or try to preserve some of the historic homes, this is factored into the equation.
In fact, a few homes are not even framed but consist of barge boards disassembled from those original boats that floated the early residents down the Mississippi to New Orleans in the 1700s and early 1800s (walking down the dangerous Nachez Trace was the only other viable access to NOLA in the early days of the city). These boards were erected vertically, butted side-by-side, to form the walls and then dressed out with furring strips and lath & plaster interior walls and the exterior covered with shiplap siding on the street-facing wall and tapered cypress weatherboard siding on the remaining exterior walls. These barge boards are nearly indestructable, too. And we all know how water resistant cypress is.
Please, please, when the time finally arrives, have the foresight to move forward responsibly with the reconstruction of New Orleans. Our country and our future generations of Americans should have an opportunity to know what it means…
Sorry Ajadudu, but I remain. You are an idiot, the proof is in your post. Allow me to quote from it:
>
Your position is wrong. NOONE was left to die. The massive, massive, massive rescue effort is quite evident of this. If only white people were getting off buses in texas, I’d agree with you.
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Earthquakes happen without warning, as did 911, and usually the majority of infrastructure remains in tact or at least passable. The NO people were well warned well in advance that it may be days for a resuce if they stupidly stay. But to answer your question, if an earthquake hit LA it may or may not be rebuilt depending on the amount of devestation and feasability of the project. But to infer it would or wouldn’t be rebuilt because of the percentage of blacks is quite ridiculous.
>
It is YOU who have racially blind eyes. Neither blacks nor whites were left in the city. STUPID PEOPLE were left in the city because they didn’t take any reasonable action to heed the mandatory evac. They can be from India for all I care, if they didn’t leave the city with the advance warning, they are idiots. And idiocy knows no race. You, Ajadudu, are evidence of that, in fact, since I don’t know your race!
Wow, quotes from other posts don’t transfer by cut and paste.
Great.
New Orleans should be rebuilt on solid ground and the wetlands should be allowed to resume their natural state. They already had a soul before the building started.
The point is that we have a tragedy here, in which 100,000 people may have completely lost their homes. Those people are, indeed, sitting in the dry spots and, not having homes, have no place to go. Of course, you aren’t seeing the other million people, holed up around the country with friends, relatives, etc., waiting to get back to their property. The reason that the 100,000 people have been/are being evacuated is because the systems infrastructure has failed – water pressure, land phone, cell phone, electricity, gas, roads. Not because there isn’t anywhere that is dry.
The government/utilities cannot repair the infrastructure quickly enough to take care of these people.
Fire is a problem, even in areas without water, because there are transportation corridors that are flooded with the 10 ft of water, probably more in the underpasses. Thus some neighborhoods may be cut off, turned into islands. Even if they get there, there is no water pressure. If there is water on the street, they cannot pump it effectively because it is full of leaves, limbs, mud, trash, etc.
To those who denigrate the city, or think it is “disgusting” and deserves brimstone – do you know who the tacky stuff is there for? Tourists. If you come to New Orleans and never make it off of Bourbon St., I am sorry. But it isn’t locals buying all of those lewd T-shirts, showing off their naughty bits for beads and strewing trash in the French Quarter. Unfortunately, they sometimes tend to blame the city for their behavior when they wake up in the morning with the pink copy of a “Girls Gone Wild” release form. New Orleanians are the ones cleaning up after those people go home. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to turn them into pillars of salt on their way there.
Hardly a worthwhile volley in a public works argument.
RE: NOVA. The acute loss of wetlands has little to do with this process- the Mississippi would not be spewing along the entire LA coastline in the short term. Long-term, yes – the classic “garden hose” metaphor. Short-term, It has to do with the harvest of the entire vast cypress forest of southern LA to supply everyone with wood, the endless cutting of channels by the oil companies to supply everyone with oil, and rising sea levels.
I would call establishing your city on the high ground that the Natives used as their primary portage route between Lake Ponchatrain and the Mississippi “learning from the Indians”. The main skirmish between French and Indians I know of in that era occurred upriver, at Natchez.
The bottom line is that, whether it be due to sheer force of will, sentimentality, practicality, inherent worth, or political showmanship, New Orleans will persevere. Unless I am to understand that the conservatives here are advocating the forcible seizure of the private property of 1.3 million American citizens…?
Matt B believes stupid people are the old and helpless, the infant babies in incubators, the poor that can only afford public transportation (do you know there was NO public transport out of the city by the 28th?)….
Me thinks a good indicator of a stupid person is an in’duh’viduals that can’s cut and paste…..
“Wow, quotes from other posts don’t transfer by cut and paste.
Great.”
Matt B, a basic tutorial on cut and paste for ya, now shoo I need to interact with more intelligent people:
http://personalweb.about.com/od/basicwebdesigntips/a/00cutcopypaste.htm
Sorry, again I compare NOLA & Miami:
NOLA:
-lots of poor people, 70% minority (black or mixed race). At least they speak English, not much French or Creole any more
-plenty of corruption
-Hurricane-prone like all the Gulf Coast
-hot, humid and mosquito-prone
Miami
-lots of poor people, with some very rich people. the middle class has largely fled. A good percentage of what is left does not speak English at all or reluctantly speaks it as a second language when necessary
-plenty of corruption
-hurricane-prone like all Florida & the Carribean
-hot, humid and mosquito-prone
Ok, Miami is not built in a bowl, but is still a sitting duck for hurricanes, being square in the middle of the Caribbean and the path for hurricanes.
Yes, Miami drains better than NOLA. BUT ALSO, FL building codes now mandate that all new construction on the beach be built on stilts and able to withstand strong winds of a hurricane (not sure what category). Since Andrew even the building codes of mobile homes became much stricter. All existing beach construction was grandfathered in, but if it got torn up, it had to be rebuilt according to the new codes. Plus sand dunes could not be torn up by construction since they help to protect the beach.
I don’t see why NO couldn’t have a similar approach for new construction. Maybe not just houses on stilts, but other approaches as well. Since NO is not right on the beach, wind is not as much of a problem, but flooding is more the issue. Sorry I’m not a technical expert, but I have seen the new codes work for FL, and they could work in Louisiana.
NO needs to be cleaned up, and not just the current mess, but all the corruption which has dragged it down for the past several years (it’s always been there to an extent). But those who advocate abandonment seem to have an axe to grind toward NO because of corruption, race, etc, as well as a totally tight-fisted attitude. Like I previously stated, one needs to apply this attitude across the board to be fair, not just to NO. Why not pick on Miami also, it’s quite deserving of your contempt and tight-fistedness. And there should be another hurricane coming up again soon, so maybe we can take the opportunity to just let this former Indian village just rot afterward.
To the NO natives on this blog, y’all may just have to take your own money to rebuild your unique and fascinating city that can’t be duplicated. This may mean things may have to be done a little differently as far as building, or as far as corruption, etc. But you can do it, and show the naysayers that you dont’ need their damn money anyway.
From The San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Carroll:
My friend Julie was one of the “lucky ones.” She and her husband got out of New Orleans on Sunday, spent nine hours on the road and found a warm welcome with friends living high and dry in northern Louisiana. Their home in New Orleans is on relatively high ground, and their apartment is on the third floor of their sturdy building. On Tuesday morning they got word that their cats had survived and were being cared for.
They still do not know the fates of most of their friends. Land lines are overloaded, and cell phones don’t work if the local tower is down. Thus, someone with a 504 area code cannot call someone else with a 504 area code, although both, if they are out of the city, can call someone with the 415 area code.
But probably their friends are the lucky ones too. They had flood insurance — which, surprisingly, you can buy in New Orleans — and they had the means to get out ahead of the storm. They have enough to eat; they have potable water; there is no civil unrest in whatever community has taken them in.
Of course, the lucky ones still don’t have any idea when they can go home and what home will look like when they get there. They have no idea when power will be restored, when food will be available, when the water will drain off and the other water will be turned on. They do not know if and when water- borne plagues will hit the city, whether malaria and cholera will become epidemic.
They don’t know whether they have a job anymore. They don’t know if they have a city anymore. Hurricane Katrina is sort of like a rolling Sept. 11, a disaster that keeps on killing. There’s no one to blame, no enemy to fight, no one with whom to sign a peace treaty, no one to surrender to. There’s another six weeks of hurricane season left; the whole damn thing could happen again. This is what the lucky ones are facing. The unlucky ones, those that are still alive, are in an unimaginable nightmare.
In California terms, New Orleans was at the dead center of an 8.5 earthquake. It could have been a 9.5, but the storm center hit Biloxi and Gulfport in Mississippi, where there are also lucky ones wondering where their lives went.
And the loss of New Orleans, for however long a period of time, diminishes the entire country. New Orleans is like San Francisco, a justifiably popular tourist attraction with a tolerant attitude toward pleasure and the ways in which people find it. It’s a sanctuary; it’s a refuge; in the great adult game of tag, New Orleans is a tree you can touch and call “safe.” And you’re not really safe, not forever, but you’ve bought yourself some time, because New Orleans is all about buying time.
New Orleans was founded partly by smugglers; of course there are a lot of places to hide. Where will all the running men go now; where will all the reinvented women live? This is partly romantic piffle, of course, brought on by television images of the French Quarter invaded by rivers, but there is an element of truth to piffle. There is an element of truth to New Orleans, where truth is not a particularly valued commodity.
New Orleans exists as an idea as well as a place, and the idea is unique. It’s Storyville and Tennessee Williams and Mardi Gras and the streetcars in the Garden District — those gardens will need replanting — and the birthplace of jazz and all the other cliches of New Orleans life. But the cliches are true, just as the cliches of San Francisco are true.
New Orleans is defenseless now. Metaphorical levees have broken along with physical ones. It is being hit by looters, many of whom are dumb enough to do their work in front of television cameras. Soon the con men will arrive, promising instant home repairs or low-cost furniture or food supplies, all at a discount if only you’ll pay now. It will not be romantic or charming or decadent or languid; it will just be the same old nonsense, a kind of Wal-Mart of larceny and avarice.
My friend Julie waits for news. She refuses to watch television, but then she does for a little bit, then she turns it off again. She eats meals she can’t taste, which is not normal behavior for a resident of New Orleans. At least the rain has stopped. For now.
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It’s hard to get a fix on the size of Katrina. Try this: Consider the California coastline from Bodega Bay on the north to Big Sur on the south. That’s how broad the hurricane was when it hit the Gulf Coast.
Good morning America how are you? Don’t you know me I’m your native son; I’m the train they call jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.
PS: Where were all the city buses, the school buses, 18 wheeler or any wheeler trucks, carpoolers with extra room in their cars, trains, planes, ships etc etc. to get folks out of N. O. who had no cars or money or were too old to hitchhike, even if there had been a place near enough to also be out of the storm. And Bravo to the the young man who took it upon himself to drive that bus and pick up people along the way. He did not wait on anybody to tell him to do anything.
Where was George Bush most of the week? The Vice President is still on vacation. Connie Rice is buying fancy shoes in the city. Nobody came. Who was waiting on whom to give the word? There had better be some life lessons learned here, or it will be a shame.
Everybody who lives in a large or small city by a coastline, or lives on any kind of faultline, by any great body of water ( the Great Lakes), or any river, better be reviewing their plans. Anybody who has anything at all to happen in their city better have a plan. What would you do if nobody told you what to do? This situation in New Orleans has got to stand for something, some new effective way of living. It is not same old any longer. There has to be a way for a NEW New Orleans, as the old New Orleans is going to be re-invented. I am sure of it. Because I have yet to have my beignets and coffee at Cafe Du Monde. And I intend to.
Love, Mom
Bottom line:
1. the city is below sea level and will (despite upgraded levees) flood again if rebuilt – mother nature ALWAYS wins in the end
2. New Orleans and Louisiana government is hopelessly inept and corrupt: this is not news – Louisiana government must ask the federal government for help before the feds move in – the local/state government reacted far too late in requesting local and federal support, thereby deserving all the political repurcussions coming their way
3. the rest of the country will pay the price of this through our taxes – since I have already given generously to this cause and will pay for this involunarily as well, I have every right as a taxpayer to demand that any rebuilding take place ABOVE SEA LEVEL FAR FROM THE COAST!!!
The reckless resistance to change and stubborn mindset of people who want to re-build NO are reminders that our current civilization is inching (or more perhaps more rapidly, “footing”) closer to its end. We are a nation, a world, of wasters and if we don’t change these present ways of thinking and sentimental value of the past then we won’t have a future. NO, pre-Katrina, was a truly unique place. It can never be what it was. Natives should know this more than anyone.
The greatest respect you can show for NO’s history is to abandon any notion you can reasonably re-create it. It is just not economically feasible to re-build NO in any fashion that would resemble as we knew it. Our world is changing and we need to adapt. People ask what would we do if SF, LA, NY, Chicago or Miami were hit with such a catastrophe? That’s largely pointless and if anything takes away the uniqueness of each place and especially of NO’s. To the extent of similar damage and cost it would take to re-build, I am absolutely certain similar considerations would be taken when deciding if one of those cities should be re-built. The Chicago fire and California earthquakes were under completely uncomparable circumstances (again, primarily because NO is so unique) to what Katrina did to the “bowl.”
Environmental forces, mother nature are not something we can control in the long run. That’s the type of arrogance that will lead to the destruction of this world. I honestly believe there will come a time when Florida’s coast will be battered so much, land will have eroded away, that the decision to abandon large parts of it will be the smart and only reasonable option. Try to imagine our country, or the world, in 2,000 to 3,000 or even 1,000 years from now. The physical shape of countries and land masses will have changed, some significantly. The US could very well be smaller. Maybe the west coast will have sunk into