How has New Orleans survived storms in the past? I’m all for giveing the rich folks who rebuild their nice houses on barrier islands notice that my tax money isn’t paying their insurance anymore, it’s going to help the people of color I saw at the Super Dome.
But I digress. NO has been around long enough to develop importance as a refinery, a port and various cultural aspects that may not have such monetary impact on the country. Let’s build better levies and indeed flood gates like they have in the Netherlands. Or whatever those huge things are that keep the ocean from flooding towns.
Well, do we need a city at the mouth of this continent’s largest river? If so, then we need to set about coastal restoration and storm protection to make that happen. We could get hit again next year. The city has endured other bad storms in its 200+ year history, this one was made worse by our overdependence on flood control and putting houses on slabs in a former flood plain.
An article in our local paper (no longer available on line) shows an 1878 map of the city. Essentially, the developed areas then were confined to uplands that didn’t flood, and those areas - - like my area - - didn’t flood in Katrina. Houses were raised in most areas even then just in case a bad flood happened. All of the areas of the city that flooded were developed this century, most in the 1950’s after the levees were raised.
Personally, I think that it makes a lot of sense to either raise any houses that get rebuilt in that area AND make this a one-time bail out with federal tax dollars. If we get hit again after that, folks should be on their own.
That opinion isn’t the most popular down here right now, though.
I saw the police department building up to it’s eaves on the Educational TV station lst night. Surely that’s an historical event statictically unlikely to occur again.
Sure. I could live somewhere else. I didn’t grow up down here, though my family has deep roots in North Louisiana. And in leaving here to get out of Katrina’s way my family and I basically took the clothes on our backs (curious feeling driving the screws into the last shutter wondering if you’re ever going to see your house and stuff again, but liberating all the same), so we’re not so tied to here as to not be able to imagine living anywhere else.
Why do you live where you do? I like the people of New Orleans. The restaurants, parks, the river, our neighborhood of all mixed up white, black, rich, poor people. I like the music. The architecture. The history. The climate 7 months of the year. Mardi Gras.
Funny you should say that. We value our kids so much that we stay. I’ve thought of looking for a job elsewhere. However, the best friends my kids have ever had are here. There are zillions of things for them to do: zoo, aquarium, park, river, lake, fishing. We occasionally get comp tickets to Saints games. Hornets games are (were) affordable enough to pay to go. Mardi Gras, mentioned above, is like another Christmas for kids - - riders throw toys to the young ones. There’s the 100 year old Italian gelato and pastry shop. I could go on, but I hope I’ve made my point.
Trust me: we’ve done a lot of thinking about this. Our area of town didn’t flood, hasn’t flooded since there’s been a New Orleans here. Many businesses are up and running. Folks are coming back at Christmas when their kids get out of the schools they’ve been going to since September (we homeschool). The historic parts of the city are mostly okay. With a little help and some better levees, we should make it though this one stronger for the experience.
Would you give New York just one more chance? Miami? Houston? Atlanta (okay, bad example). What is it about New Orleans - - or at least the 25% of it that is above sea level - - that makes many in the rest of the country seem to begrudge us the aid we need for this disaster?
And I thought it was retribution for my taking the US side in the lumber tariff dispute with you a few years back… 
Amen. Beignets on me if you ever get down here and we’re still here to get down to!
I’m all for rebuilding with federal funds. We’d do it in New York, Phoenix, or Miami (see 9/11 and hurricane Andrew), so why not New Orleans?
Besides, I’ve got some fine memories from several trips to New Orleans, and I’d like to make some more. 
In the past the houses were clustered on the strip of land near the river that is above sea level. Houses that were in areas that flooded were raised with unfinished lower stories. As we got to rely on the levees and flood walls, houses started to be built on slabs which is cheaper than raising them on piers.
Sadly, the majority of poor people you saw at the Dome and Convention Center were living in neighborhoods that were just below the breach in the industrial canal. While many of those houses were on piers, they were short piers and did not have raised basements. They’re all just about total losses. Most folks there did not have flood insurance. They’re in a real bind.
Hey Ivorybill,
I am from Northern Louisiana (Where is your family from?) and this whole thing makes me sick everyday. My wife and I both went to Tulane but we live in her home state of Massachusetts now (boy is it not the same).
I know so many people in New Orleans that I will probably never hear from again. I talked to at least one of them a month for 10 years and I can’t reach any of them now and it might be forever.
My wife has a remote employee from New Orleans that is also a friend of ours. He was up here on a business trip before Katrina hit, was stuck here while it happened, and just migrated the country after that. He lived in the lower 9th Ward and his house was completely flooded but survived structurally somehow. He finally couldn’t take it anymore and he found a way to New Orleans. His entire house was wet and filled with mold and everything he had in the world was ruined. He got a mattress from somewhere and just lives there now. No one can talk him out of it. He just hangs around in devastation. It has been weeks now and my wife is going to have to make an employment decision soon. It is total misery and tragedy.
That is the picture I have of New Orleans now. I also get emails from Tulane every single day about near-term strategy. I have run the numbers myself and I can’t see how things are going to work.
I see it as a disaster of nuclear proportions.
My great-great grandparents on my mother’s side settled in Bienville Parish - - Mount Lebanon - - in the 1840s. My mother was born in Gibsland in 1925. Shortly after the families mostly moved to Shreveport. I used to have cousins in Monroe as well.
Although I work for the USDA Forest Service, I am adjunct at Tulane and teach one course there each spring. I really love the interaction with the students and hope that there will be classes come January.
I think you’ll hear from them. Folks are just so phenomenally busy right now that it doesn’t seem like New Orleans in some regards. We’re gutting homes, hauling debris, cutting trees, calling adjusters, calling contractors, tarping roofs, getting roofs done, etc., etc. Most of us are task saturated. I’ve just now gotten around to contacting some of our friends we’ve missed since K-Day. They deserve better. We’ve been thinking of them (and yours are thinking of you) but we just cannot make enough hours in the day to do everything.
Neither do I. But we’re here and we’re making a go of it. Stuff didn’t work in New Orleans before Katrina and we managed to survive. This has gotten a lot of folks off their duffs and deciding that they don’t have to settle for mediocre city and state government, and that’s one small positive thing to come out of all of this.
Then since you’ve been advised that it’s dangerous to live there in the sense that another storm, an even weaker storm, could have an even greater devastating effect, then the burden is on your shoulders if the unthinkable occurs. I sincerely hope for your sake that it doesn,'t.
The greatest risk of natural disaster where I live is either a tornado or a blizzard. A tornado doesn’t render an entire city uninhabitable for months at a time and leave behind toxic residue. A blizzard is nothing much to worry about, really. Stay inside, take a couple days off work, and watch TV. If the power is knocked out, it’ll be back pretty soon. If not, hop in the four-wheeler, go to a shelter and wait. At least your house will still be there when the electricity comes back on.
Put it this way: I’m not so tied to a place that I wouldn’t move if the risks, in my view, outweighed the benefits. Mardi Gras ain’t worth a moldy house to me.
Well, not really. Other than Mardi Gras, all those things are readily available somewhere else. No doubt, it’d be heart-wrenching for your kids to lose their friends, but it’d be more heart-wrenching to lose the kids themselves, dontcha think?
The historic parts, i.e., the Garden District, most of the hotel area, and the French Quarter are the areas that, I think, are worth saving. Ditto with the Port Authority and docks. It makes sense to levee those.
It doesn’t make sense to rebuild levees around areas that, even if the levees hold, will be severely flooded anyway since they sit in the low parts of the NO bathtub. And it wouldn’t take a hurricane to do it. A blow of tropical storm strength would dump enough water to flood those areas again.
The 25% above sea level is salvageable. The rest is a man-made disaster just waiting to happen. I don’t begrudge aid to someone or someplace that makes sense. But it seems to me (and I believe many others) that too many New Orleanians have become dependent on the dole. I base that on all of the reports that came out after Katrina that noted the percentage of population (27%, IIRC) that were receiving some kind of welfare and the instances of several generations that were in that situation.
That sounds pretty harsh. Sorry.
Also, just to make note of it:
New York, or the World Trade Center specifically, was a result of terrorism. It couldn’t logically have been foreseen. Miami doesn’t sit in a bowl. Neither does Houston.
Atlanta?
To be perfectly honest…I’d have issues with living alongside or above seismic faults as well.
It’s obvious that you intend to stay there, and that you feel the benefits outweigh the risks. They don’t to me, but to each his own.
What I’m saying is that, you, yourself, and all other New Orleans residents need to be aware that you live there at your own risk. You said it yourself:
That’s assuming that it had already been rebuilt once. You’re probably correct. I can’t see, though, rebuilding much of the residential areas that were, basically, obliterated. I mean, why? Why put people back into a hazardous place?
Anyway, New Orleans is still there, albeit irrevocably changed. Let’s hope it continues to change for the better.
Good luck.
It appears that rail evac was an option, also a failure of the local officials:
Then the same goes for folks in Navarre Beach, Florida. Key West. Miami. Hattaras. Charleston, SC. Hilton Head. Savannah. Pensacola. Mobile. Galveston. If you live anywhere along the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains, you’re at risk from a hurricane. In my 40 years I’ve been through Hugo in Columbia, SC, Fran and Floyd in Raleigh, and now Katrina in New Orleans.
It’s more than Mardi Gras. Creole and Cajun culture have given so much to this country and to the world. Jazz. Zydeco. Gumbo. Jambalaya. To name just a few biggies. Personally, I think it’s net win for the country to have New Orleans of some shape or form here.
I’ve lived in the upper Midwest - - cold and snow aren’t my thing. I’m willing to take a chance that every 30 years or so, on average, we’ll have to deal with a bad hurricane.
Pardon me for giving you a big old roll eyes and a DUH! It’s not like hurricanes hide out in the Gulf and then slam ashore like a bit wet windy surprise. Of course it would be horrible to lose our children. That ain’t gonna happen, at least with a hurricane. In our family, at least, we keep our eyes on the weather and get out two or three days ahead of time. Tornados and blizzards claim lives each year too.
I’ll quibble with you about our not being able to take a tropical storm. We’ve had several here in my 6 years in NOLA. Nothing more than minor street flooding. (The Northeast took similar flooding from a few days or rain this year, remember?) Earlier this year we had a strong tropical storm/minor hurricane (Cindy, for those with short memories) that caused minor discomforts.
Katrina is such an order of magnitude higher than anything that’s ever been seen on the Gulf coast. It’s not just New Orleans. The area impacted by the hurricane is as large as the state of Minnesota. The storm surge in Mississippi was estimated to be 30 feet! Water carried far enough inland to affect areas above the interstate.
About 50 years ago a bad storm on the North Sea prompted the government of The Netherlands to emabark on a flood control program to protect the very low lying areas of the country (some 20 feet below sea level) to protect people and important port cities. I think that since there will be a New Orleans here - - the 25% above sea level isn’t going away any time soon - - and that having a city at the mouth of the Mississippi is good for the country (like it or not, we need oil, gasoline, and an outlet for Midwest grain, among other things), we’ll have some levees down here. Might as well build them properly this time, and improve them.
People in that situation need more than levees. It’d be another couple of threads (likely in Great Debates) to address the root causes of poverty in New Orleans. Slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, urban white flight, Napoleonic law, lethargy, and apathy all factor into that equation. However, you have that situation in New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, etc. I don’t think we’re asking the rest of the country to help us return exactly to pre-Katrina conditions, but rather to invest in the infrastructure needed to have a city in this location.
Thanks.
True: see this from post #20
I don’t know exactly why city leadership failed to utilize this resource. Perhaps fears of a stampede? Perhaps thinking that the Dome wouldn’t lose its roof? Thinking that people had brought enough food and water as directed? Over-reliance on a quick response from the state (National Guard troops), FEMA, and Red Cross? No matter how you cut it, it’s a real head-scratcher.
In the future, we should arrange to have ample rail transportation staged where it can be utilized in the event another super hurricane targets us.
How many of them still had standing water inundating entire neighborhoods a month later?
Of those “biggies” you mentioned, I’d (grudgingly) agree with only one: Jazz. The rest are non-starters. Gumbo and jambalaya rank somewhere below deep dish Chicago pizza and New York street vendor hot dogs. Zydeco? It’s momentarily amusing, but probably pretty poorly represented in the vast majority of people’s musical selections.
I do think that there needs to be a shipping port in or near NO.
Your choice. However, it’s not my choice to have to pay to rebuild your house.
Yeah, the evacuation worked out so well last time. (rolleyes and DUH back atcha)
I’m glad you got you and yours out, but it appears that there were quite a few that didn’t.
How many bodies have they found in NO so far? Don’t they total to more than all of the tornado and blizzard deaths in the entire country for this year?
Nevermind the Northeast. We’re talking NO here.
Flooding isn’t minor when the high water mark transverses the screen on your console TV. As has been said before, any drop of rain that falls in NO and doesn’t evaporate must be pumped out. And also has been said before: No part of NO proper is higher than the level of the Mississippi River. Just one breach, just one, and you’re back into the toxic pool. An unwarranted risk, in my view.
Granted. Absolutely.
I’m reasonably sure that the effort will be made. To what degree NO will be different, it’s hard to tell.
I grant that a city of some sort needs to be in that location. I don’t grant that NO’s situation was on a par with the other cities you mentioned. Unless the news reports were entirely in error, NO was either the highest, or one of the highest, locations with people supported entirely by government hand outs. That doesn’t play well in the Midwest.
And it would be foolish to rebuild the city as it was. Either make it better, or dynamite the levees. Since option #2 is unlikely, option #1 will have to be undertaken with the goal in mind of salvaging what is necessary. What’s currently left is what the rest of the nation needs (refineries, shipping, and the FQ/GD/HD if you wish to consider those ‘requirements’).
The point is, though, that the rest of the city, the miles and miles of run-down near-slums, aren’t necessary at all. The city is better off without them in the sense that, if you don’t have needy, unemployed residents that require public assistance living in them, you needn’t spend the money there.
In no way am I saying that I’m glad that it happened. Not at all. But since it did happen, then, by all means, we should take the opportunity to insure it doesn’t happen to the same degree again.
- Don’t rebuild in a fish bowl
- Don’t create an urban ghetto that fosters dependence on government largesse
- Don’t allow the welfare rolls to turn into a pre-work retirement program
Still, with what I’ve learned about NO since Katrina (topics ranging from subsidence, toxic silt, storm surge through Lake Pontchartrain, the number of petroleum refineries on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, ‘Cancer Alley’, the feasibility of new dike construction, the cost of constructing reasonably protective barriers, delta erosion, the cleanliness of the water supply and the nature of its delivery system, levee reliability, and a few more), it makes, to me, a dubious choice for a homestead.
No problem.
Many homes in Florida still have blue roofs a year+ after Ivan. If I’m following your logic, it’s okay for your tax dollars to go to rebuild areas that get damaged by storms as long as they didn’t flood. How about when Los Angeles gets the big quake? San Franciso? Your reasoning eludes me.
We’re not asking you to pay to rebuild our houses. Insurance and initiative will take care of that. We are asking for help with better levees and flood walls since those fall under federal jurisdiction via the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Look, you bring up a straw man about my endangering my own children by living here when you have not one shred of evidence that me or mine were ever in any danger, you’re going to get called on it. Now you’re trying to change the point you’re arguing.
Since you are, just compare the New Orleans evacuation during Katrina with the Houston evacuation for Rita. Practically everyone who could arrange transportation and who wanted to get out of New Orleans was able to do so before Katrina hit. There were people who couldn’t get out, and it’s a shame that the emergency plans weren’t followed to get them out. Some people drove their cars to the Superdome to take shelter there, of all things, so not everyone you saw on the news had no other recourse than to stay. In Houston people were running out of gas on clogged interstates since the authorities wouldn’t institute contraflow.
True. The point in question is that weather claims lives wherever you live. In most hurricanes the loss of life is minimal - - often less than during severe tornadic activity.
I’m just pointing out that New Orleans hasn’t cornered the market on flooding. The upper Mississippi valley took a severe flood several years ago. The Northeast flooded this year.
I would wager that you would find the percentages of welfare recipients roughly analagous in Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles. It seems to be an unfortunate effect of urban decay and suburban flight. Having a population of undereducated and underemployed people in the city didn’t play well here, either. It’s not like we sat around and said “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if we just paid some people to be slothful, stupid, and violent?” We had programs in place and were making progress on those problems, believe it or not.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been here before, but the areas that flooded were not miles and miles of run-down near-slums. Some very affluent neighborhoods took water, some nice upper middle class neighborhoods took water, some nice lower middle class and working poor neighborhoods took water, and some derelict neighborhoods took water. It was an equal opportunity flood, in other words. With the exception of the latter category, these neighborhoods were composed of honest, hard working, tax paying citizens. It’s insulting that you would paint them all with that broad brush of yours.
I’ve already allowed that I’m personally adverse to living where the terra isn’t firma. Besides, the homes in Florida were able to be repaired within days. Homes in Metarie and the 9th Ward weren’t even reachable on foot for more than a month.
If any part of that insurance was flood insurance, then I’m paying for it. Likewise initiatives, if I understand what you mean.
Just because you call it a straw man doesn’t make it so. IMO, you live in a suspect, possibly dangerous area. And, sometimes you speak in the first person singular and then later in the third person plural. I’m speaking of children in New Orleans in general.
Your point is? I guess since you can get out, then it’s all OK. Well, it ain’t.
I’m sick of people who whine that, “Well, bad weather and earthquakes happen everywhere.” Of course it does, but think about it…you can’t predict earthquakes at all, advance warning for a blizzard is probably two days of less, and you get no advance warning other than a siren 20 minutes before a tornado hits, yet the sum total of those deaths nationwide isn’t a third of what one Cat 3 or 4 hurricane could do (and did do) to NO.
Apples and oranges. New Orleans is a bad place for a city. But people choose to live there. Go figure.
This is just a variation of the above whine. Non-starter.
It’s a bet you’d lose.
I have been there. Several times. I’ve worked there. I wouldn’t do so again, but that’s another story.
The 9th Ward ain’t too afflent. Much of Metarie isn’t either. I didn’t specify which area were run down, and you incorrectly assumed that I meant all of NO that was under water. I’d say this: the areas that were deepest underwater averaged the poorest. Any contention with that?
Whatever. This is getting boring. Live there as long as you like. Have a happy life. Be safe. I hope disaster avoids you. Bon chance.
Watching the footage from Katrina on Spanish news, my brother turned to me and said “my friend’s pictures from teaching Spanish there all of last year have just turned into historic material, just like your pics from the top of the WTC. I should stop meeting people with historic material”
New Orleans is the one town that was still left in my list of “US places I want to visit”. Fix it soon, I still want to go 
Metairie proper didn’t flood. In fact, it didn’t even get much wind damage. And Metairie, while working class in many aspects, isn’t exactly chock-full of what I’d call poor neighborhoods.
The only incorrect assumption is being made on your end by stating that there are “miles and miles of run-down near-slums” in New Orleans. It just ain’t so. There are poor neighborhoods, but not miles and miles of them. If you want people to understand your arguments, best state exactly what you mean the first time out.
Yes. Lots of contention. Lakeview, a middle to upper middle class mostly white neighborhood took 8 feet of water. Pontchartrain Park, a middle to upper middle class predominantly black neighborhood took 8 feet of water. Parts of New Orleans East, home to some very affluent black people, took about 6 feet of water. The Lower 9th Ward, a predominantly black impoverished neighborhood took about four feet. Holly Grove, a neighborhood similar to the Lower 9th, took about four feet. Old Metairie, location of multi-million dollar mansions, took 3 feet of water. Chalmette, home to middle class white folks, took about 12 feet. Depth of water was not tied to poverty.
Sorry to see you give in and bow out. I hope that disaster avoids you too.
Come see us! We’re not as neat and proper as our neighbors upriver, but we’ll put out the welome mat for you. If you do head this way, look up my email address in my profile and send me a note. I’ve friends in the music and restaurant business down here and will gladly recommend some fun places to go.
[QUOTE=Ivorybill]
The only incorrect assumption is being made on your end by stating that there are “miles and miles of run-down near-slums” in New Orleans. It just ain’t so. There are poor neighborhoods, but not miles and miles of them. If you want people to understand your arguments, best state exactly what you mean the first time out.
[quote]
Yes, yes there are. I’ve been there. I’ve seen them.
Uh huh. But did you give the proportional size of those neighborhoods? Geez. What, did every news report lie when they said that the poorest areas of NO were the hardest hit? If so, so be it.
I give in nothing. This is IMHO and you have my opinion, which is this: New Orleans is not a place that I’d recommend for a home. And, although I appreciate your wish that I avoid disaster, I feel that it’s much more unlikely that I would be in that danger than you are.