Seems to me that the worst part of the N.Orleans disaster isnt that the dams burst and water flowed into the city–it’s that the water had no way to flow out afterwards.
When I saw the diagrams of how the city sits in a bowl surrounded by ocean, I thought to meself–geez, what a stupid way to build a city!
Sure, it’s a good location for a port.But ya dont gotta be a rocket scientist to know that there’s a reason why they define certain storms as category 4 and cat 5—and if you’re gonna build levees designed only for category 3, well, umm, …
So I got thinking–are there any other cities in the US where simple statistics prove that the future ain’t gonna be pretty?
(I don’t mean the earthquake dangers of California, since there are engineering solutions, and local codes require new buildings to be strong enough to survive. Or so I’ve heard…)
It seems to me that there would have been engineering solutions for New Orleans, too. The levees could have been made larger and stronger, pumping systems could have been upgraded to more capably remove water, etc. I don’t know what would have been most effective, or the details of any of the things that could have been done, not being an engineer myself. But I’m sure that an engineering solution existed.
The problem, of course, is that for whatever reasons (cost, incompetence, whatever) those engineering solutions weren’t implemented. One must then ask whether those cities in danger from a potential major earthquake have their engineering solutions adequately implemented. If Los Angeles, say, is inadequately preapared for the Big One (I don’t know whether it is or not), then it would fall into the category you’re describing.
The major cities of the Sacramento River Delta: Sacramento and Stockton, aren’t in a situation much different from New Orleans. The bigger threat there would be that a large earthquake would damage the levees enough to flood the area.