God Spare New Orleans

[classicman]

I would hope that the leadership would realize a city built below sea level wasn't a good idea in the first place and they would instead pay to move them instead. Geez how much more of a hint do they need?

Originally Posted by classicman

I would hope that the leadership would realize a city built below sea level wasn't a good idea in the first place and they would instead pay to move them instead. Geez how much more of a hint do they need?

Should we move all the folks out of California now....before the next devastating earthquake like the San Francisco earthquake of 1906?

New Orleans has survived for 300+ years, a unique American city in many respects...and having never experienced a "perfect storm" like Katrina, with the devastation compounded by a failure of the infrastructure due, primarily to a lack of funding.

I think your solution is a bit heavy handed.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

WOW! Congress really did a great job of dealing with the issue didn't they? Not.

IMO, the appropriations of the Republican Congress in 05 and 06 (and spread out over a period of 4+ years) were reasonable, it not a bit slow, much like the FEMA response (as well as the state/local response).

So why do you think Congress didnt do such a great job? Or is it the Democrats that you want to blame?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Redux

I think your solution is a bit heavy handed.

I'm amazed to be saying it, but I agree with classicman. There's no point relocating people who are living in perfectly good houses, but once the place goes underwater, it's is the height of foolishness to pay them to rebuild houses below sea level again. The place is a bowl surrounded by water on three sides. It relies on pumps to keep floodwater out, and when there is a storm, the electricity to those pumps is lost. It's just about the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

If people want to live in the flood zone, that's fine. It's a free country. But the government shouldn't be giving them one nickle to do it, and the insurance companies should set their rates at an appropriate level to take into account the extreme risks they are taking on.

But then I also think that people shouldn't be able to get insurance for houses on barrier islands. Or at a minimum, they should have rates that reflect the increased risk there.

California is not a good example, because construction standards can make a house able to withstand earthquake damage.

Originally Posted by glatt

....California is not a good example, because construction standards can make a house able to withstand earthquake damage.

Construction standards can make levees able to withstand massive flooding.

The difference is that it is private funding for individual housing/commercial construction and public funding for the levees.

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

Where are you guys proposing these 450,000 people, in the city alone, relocate to?

If you relocate them all to Boenher's district, you could probably vote him out of office!

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Redux

Construction standards can make levees able to withstand massive flooding.

But you still need the pumps to pump out the rainwater. And the pumps fail whenever there is a massive storm.

Also, what's the point of building a levee to protect inferior real estate locations, when there are plenty of places in the country that are above sea level? This isn't the Netherlands. We live in the US. There's lots of land. Let's live on land that doesn't flood when it rains.

Originally Posted by glatt

But you still need the pumps to pump out the rainwater. And the pumps fail whenever there is a massive storm.

Also, what's the point of building a levee to protect inferior real estate locations, when there are plenty of places in the country that are above sea level? This isn't the Netherlands. We live in the US. There's lots of land. Let's live on land that doesn't flood when it rains.

If the flooding that was at Katrina levels was on a regular reoccurring basis, I would agree with you.

But that is not the case. This was the perfect storm...once in hundreds of years....compounded by a failure of the infrastructure due to lack of attention and funding.

Sure there's lots of land in the US....there are also flood plains on both coasts, earthquake zones, tornado alley, dust bowls....

So where do you get workers for the shrimping industry or the rice industry on the gulf coast or do we abandon those industries as well? I dont think there is much demand for shrimpers in Detroit.

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

I would hope that the leadership would realize a city built below sea level wasn't a good idea in the first place and they would instead pay to move them instead. Geez how much more of a hint do they need?

That attitude and resulting corrections had been ongoing in the 1990s. From You're Doing a Heck of Job Brownie:

Furthermore, FEMA is about avoiding damage before that damage can occur. A most famous case is Evansville and Graphton IL where FEMA moved the towns. Other lesser know examples include FEMA's campaign to convince AL homeowners in flood-prone Elba area to sell their homes and relocate. FEMA in the 1990s demonstrated how it is better to solve problems before they happen - which is a well proven William Deming concept.

Such programs were ongoing in CT, DE, CO, IL, MA, MN, MS, MI, MO, ND, SD, WY, UT, TX, and PA when something happened.

These 'mitigation activities' by FEMA were terminated in about 2001 - about the same time that professional disaster managers were being replaced by political appointees.

Due to massive flooding, Graphton IL was moved. Two years later, another Mississippi River flood washed over the same land. But this time, the bottleneck (in part created by dikes in St Louis) did not wash through Graphton. FEMA had moved the town uphill - solved a problem before it happens.

There is no reason to rebuild New Orleans' Ninth ward. Other parts of New Orleans are fine. But it makes no sense to rebuild on land that is already ten feet below sea level - and dropping due to underlying geology.

Nobody is suggesting the Gulf coast should be evacuated. Or that New Orleans should be eliminated. Chantilly Ridge in New Orleans is perfectly safe. But when does it make sense to house a hundred thousand people on land that will always be flooded at least ten feet by a simple category three hurricane? Category Three is what those massive dikes and levees were designed to withstand. And Katrina hit New Orleans as a category three in a region that category threes are too common.

View what happened to St Bernard's Parish. That wave overwhelmed 20 foot dikes. Then traveled a mile plus across marsh land. Then washed out almost all buildings not designed for such flooding. So government should pay to rebuild inferior buildings. Well, St Bernard's Parish is not even at same risk that New Orleans's Ninth Ward is. There is no reason for New Orleans' Ninth Ward to be rebuilt. Want to live in St Bernard's Parish? Then building codes should require expensive structures that can withstand that only category three hurricanes and not yet seen category four hurricane.

Where is the 'theys'? New Orleans Ninth Ward is not same as other parts of New Orleans. And yet the discuss has lumped everyone on the Gulf coast as same. Katrina was not the massive Category Five that it also was. It was only a Category Three made so much worse by, well, where do 85% of all problems originate?