A thought on the aftermath of Katrina

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Sindawe

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As I sit here watching/listening to the reports of rescues in NO, seeing the city flooded, with no expectation of power restored for weeks at the soonest, I have to wonder how much it is gonna cost to rebuild NO and the other areas devastated by this storm. And I really have to wonder, Should the city and surroundings be rebuild? This kind of thing has been projected for years, and its is only by fickle fate that NO did not take a direct hit and be totally reduced to ruble, as much of Galveston TX was in 1900. When/If its rebuilt, what occurs, and at what cost, when it eventually gets hit again? If one's home is in a known flood plain, does it make sense to keep rebuilding every time the home gets swept away?

Thinking off the cuff, what if a declaration were made, New Orleans will NOT be rebuilt. The city will be written off as a total loss and razed. The verifiable residents (that being PEOPLE, not corporations) will be gifted a ONE TIME gift from the Federal budget of say, $250,000.00 (no taxes) to relocate and start anew SOMEPLACE else that is not subject to such flooding. I don't know what the total impacted population is, but the financial outlay as got to be less than we pay to wreak and rebuild other peoples countries, and this is our family.

Legal? Politically feasable? Totally bonkers?
 
Building a city of that size below sea level, in a region that is prone to violent weather isn't a great idea. But, it has some great places to eat and I'd hate to see it go away...
 
I think our aid dollars ought to be spent at home first, and overseas only if there's money left over.

That said™, I'm not convinced government is entitled to tell people where we may and may not live, especially considering government's record on projects large and small.
 
Totally bonkers
It's just the way coastal living is. I grew up here in Florida, it happens all the time. What about the people living on fault lines?
You can't just push everyone inland, that's silly.
 
It is very true that you or the government shouldn't be able to tell someone else where to live. However, where do they get the right to expect the rest of us to pay for their choice when a reasonably forseeable event like a flood/hurricane hitting a coastal area occurs?

I feel very badly for these people. However, N.O. is in a bowl below sea level next to the Gulf of Mexico, where many hurricanes occur each year. One need not have Einstein's intelligence to figure out that sooner or later, your house will be flooded or washed away. If you want help for that, buy insurance. If you can't afford it or get it, take the hint and live somewhere else.
 
Totally bonkers
It's just the way coastal living is. I grew up here in Florida, it happens all the time. What about the people living on fault lines?
You can't just push everyone inland, that's silly.
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Well, that's just fine and dandy but I don't see as how the rest of the Americans should have to pay for it. Live where ever you please just when the time comes, pony up for the rebuild yourself of move on.
 
There isn't much left worth rebuilding. Much will have to be torn down from water damage/chemical sludge. After the "Flood of 97" here in Grand Forks, ND we wrote off much of the city near the river. (Several hundred homes.) We moved the dikes back to give the river more room. We paid the homeowners for their houses/land and turned the whole area into a park. There really wouldn't have been a point to rebuilt that part of town anyway, it was too low and close to the river and all the houses where going to have to be torn down anyway. Time to leave NO a ruin and rebuilt on better ground. That or have it happen all over again in 50 years.
 
If one's home is in a known flood plain, does it make sense to keep rebuilding every time the home gets swept away?
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No. These days, it usually is Fed.Gov (meaning all of us who pay taxes) that provides the flood insurance. If I made the rules, there would be ONE payout...for the structures and land. Then the land is owned by the insurance entity and can no longer be built on.

If you pay to rebuild yourself, build as many times as you like.
 
Rebuilding

jfruser wrote:
No. These days, it usually is Fed.Gov (meaning all of us who pay taxes) that provides the flood insurance. If I made the rules, there would be ONE payout...for the structures and land. Then the land is owned by the insurance entity and can no longer be built on.

If you pay to rebuild yourself, build as many times as you like.
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*Excellent* idea....+1. I saw one guy on the evening news a year or two back...had gotten flooded out and lost everything. So sad. The chap wasn't too upset, though, as this had happened *seven* times before...and he rebuilt each time at Uncle Sammy's expense. :banghead:

Isn't the definition of insanity repeating the same behavior while expecting a different outcome?

Cheers
 
Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.
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sounds familiar
 
So where are all these people who you have decided cannot live where they live gonna live.

Is there some magical place that is free from natural disaster that can fit all these people.

Will the people of that region welcome them in or will they cry to the government that they are costing their community money and demand fed assistance in dealing with the influx of these internal aliens taking their jobs away.


Should we just abandon all the thousands of miles coastline like trimming the crust from bread because they are more prone to disaster
 
I don't think the problem is building on the coast joab. The problem is building on the coast on land that is BELOW sea level in an area that is prone to hurricanes. The Dutch don't have to worry about hurricanes and storm surges like we do.

Like I said before, in my town, we wised up and built a little farther away from the river instaid of having houses right against the river banks. We COULD have let houses be rebuilt, but we would just see them get flooded again in a few years. Lots of people where pissed about it, lots of crying and moaning, but we did it and we are safer and better off as a city because of it.
 
They don't know, yet, how long it will take to close the Ponchartrain breach. The water is still rising inside the bowl. How long can a house be inundated before it's beyond restoration?

They can do like Galveston did after th 1900 hurricane. Jack it up. Raise the houses on jacks--those that can be renovated; the rest will be razed--and fill beneath them with dredge material. At least get the silly place above sea level.

Downtown? I guess build a floodwall around the high-rise stuff. Do like that city in Holland, with the place quartered by levees and with floodgates for travel through the levees.

Regardless, there's no place to go home to for around a million people. A great percentage have no car, no clothes, little money and for a good while, no job or income.

Art
 
It's just the way coastal living is. I grew up here in Florida, it happens all the time. What about the people living on fault lines?
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I don't care if you want to live in Florida, an overgrown sandbar or on a fault line. I do care if my taxes go to support your choice of residence. I do care if my insurance premiums are increased because of insurance payouts in your area of choice.

Tell you what: change the laws so that only the insurance premiums in your area can be raised to pay for natural disaster payouts. Change the tax laws so that not only is tax revenue from the affected area used to clean up and rebuild but the taxes in the affected area raised so that the same percentage of funds still goes to other designated uses.

Then you can live on Mt. St. Helen for all I care.

Just don't have things set up so I have to pay to subsidize others' lack of foresight and prudence.
 
Just don't have things set up so I have to pay to subsidize others' lack of foresight and prudence.
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We can do that if you agree not to take taxpayer money from those living in those areas, or sales tax revenues, or any of the other monetary gains that these undesirable places contribute to GNP.

NO is a stupid place to live, fine they can keep all the oil and oil revenue for themselves to help rebuild same with Galveston and Mobile
And Fla can keep every penny of the Disney dollars that come in and all the off shore oil revenues.

California get to keep all their money for earthquake relief?
They have a larger GNP than most countries I wonder if any of that revenue gets to the American taxpayers.
 
Folks' memory is short; some will flee for good, but give it time....In a couple/few decades, all will be back to normal. Just look at how many people stay in areas right around active volcanos, like the one in Monserrat I believe it is, despite that tragedy WILL occur someday. Not if, but when. And yet they stay, because it's 'home'. Then they have kids, and it's home to them too. On the whole, we're not overly brainy of a species.
 
The problem is building on the coast on land that is BELOW sea level in an area that is prone to hurricanes.
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New Orleans is the only coastal city I know of significantly below sea level but it's not the only one to be devestated by storms. This line of thinking comes up everytime a city is city by foreseeable natural disasters of any kind.
Kinda se;f righteous if you ask me.

If thinking like this was prevelant in the 1800s we would never have left the east coast to begin with
 
Good points joab. But the problem with NO is that after the storm the place doesn't drain out. You have standing water that has to be pumped out. Water from storms elsewhere usualy drains on it's own. NO is it's own drain because it is the lowest spot. When everything is covered by water, repairs to everything takes loner and costs more.
 
Uncle Sam shouldn't tell us where to live and he shouldn't subsidize those that want to live where they choose.
 
My point Crosshair, is that every time there is a natural disaster people come out of the wood work with I told you so type comments on the idiocy of the people who live in these places.
Last year I had my fill of the "they should know better" comments regarding the Fla hurricanes even though the event was unprecedented in modern history.

The self righteousness of it has become tiresome
 
I kinda agree with the original post. On the news here in San Antonio I have seen footage of a womans house heading down the Guadelupe River, then a story about her house being rebuilt becasue "All my life I wanted to live on the river", next big flood they were running side by side shots of the new house and the old house both floating down the same river. Her response? Gonna rebuild because I always wanted to ...........

I think you get one rebuild from the FED.GOV, if you put it back in the same bad spot, you buy the next one out of your pocket.
 
Uncle Sam shouldn't tell us where to live and he shouldn't subsidize those that want to live where they choose.
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Then he shouldn't collect taxes from people who work and produce in those areas
 
I was having similar thoughts. There really should not have been a city there in the first place, and rebuilding it now that it has been totally trashed would be just compounding the folly.

"Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them" (or whatever the exact words were).
It's just the way coastal living is. I grew up here in Florida, it happens all the time. What about the people living on fault lines?
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Perhaps I'm just a hopeless nit-picker, but my definition of "coastal" does not include several feet BELOW sea level. For my simple little brain, that spells U-N-D-E-R - W-A-T-E-R
 
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