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Monday, September 05, 2005
Louisiana's Wetlands @ National Geographic Magazine
Prescient Article from National Geographic, October of 2004
"It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.
The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. "
Without knowing enough yet to direct blame, it sure seems like there should have been a much better plan in place for this one. If you know it's coming eventually, and when it does, you have several days warning, it's inexcusable that so many were left behind... and equally unforgiveable for help to be so late and misdirected in the aftermath. - served up by Nomad @ 1:32 PM
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This article is completely horrifying.
Immediately after the storm, I thought, why rebuild there? A city on the coast below sea level? You're just begging for trouble. Apparently some republican senator expressed a similar view and was roundly criticized for it. I have no emotional ties to New Orleans. Never been there. I can imagine though that it would hurt to hear that your city has been surrendered to the sea.
The thing is, though, rebuilding a city where it's too dangerous to have a city is a mistake so big, only the government could make it. Imagine if once a century the city is under water for a month. Who would develop large projects there? Who would sell insurance? After the city is "dewatered", to use a term I've been reading for the first time, what are property values going to be? Zero.
I don't mind the government fixing the levees, "dewatering" the city and removing all of the corpses and sewage that is covering the city. But demolishing individual structures and rebuilding should be done by individual developers. That way, rebuilding would only happen if the market exceeded the risk. If not, it would remain a ghost town, but that's better than pouring government money to rebuild a town that just gets inundated in a century.
Immediately after the storm, I thought, why rebuild there? A city on the coast below sea level? You're just begging for trouble. Apparently some republican senator expressed a similar view and was roundly criticized for it. I have no emotional ties to New Orleans. Never been there. I can imagine though that it would hurt to hear that your city has been surrendered to the sea.
The thing is, though, rebuilding a city where it's too dangerous to have a city is a mistake so big, only the government could make it. Imagine if once a century the city is under water for a month. Who would develop large projects there? Who would sell insurance? After the city is "dewatered", to use a term I've been reading for the first time, what are property values going to be? Zero.
I don't mind the government fixing the levees, "dewatering" the city and removing all of the corpses and sewage that is covering the city. But demolishing individual structures and rebuilding should be done by individual developers. That way, rebuilding would only happen if the market exceeded the risk. If not, it would remain a ghost town, but that's better than pouring government money to rebuild a town that just gets inundated in a century.
Sorry I'm too tired to Google something and link here, but I read somewhere or other that the NO port is critical to our incoming industrial economy and outgoing agricultural economy and therefore must be rebuilt. So, I'm guessing it'll be rebuilt along with its city.
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