God Spare New Orleans

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.