I have an observation that may be quite un PC, but do you think that the same thing would be happening in Salt Lake? New Orleans is the dirtiest of the dirty south. It's always struck me as sort of a shady city, corrupt and crime ridden.

Steve0

Seems it would be unlikely in Salt Lake City as Hurricanes don't seem make it that far.

But it's happened in virtually every major natural disaster in the past fifty years.

And it's happening in all metropolitan areas affected severly by Katrina, not just Nawlins.

As to which towns will take those affected in New Orleans, it seems just about every nearby town has.

Here in Houston, six hours from New Orleans, we have the largest furniture store in the city allowing evacuees to spend the night for free (along with another large furniture retailer) on their ample supply of mattresses providing food and showers in addition to the numerous shelters. Many residents in less affected areas closer by are pitching tents on lawns for evacuees.

Can this go on for months? No, I can't see that happening. But this is just the first response. In the end the federal state and local governments are going to have to get together and determine a viable long term solution as one will certianly be needed.

There's speculation that there's plans in the works to move refugees from the Superdome to the Houston Astrodome, at least as a short-term solution.

"I have an observation that may be quite un PC, but do you think that the same thing would be happening in Salt Lake? New Orleans is the dirtiest of the dirty south. It's always struck me as sort of a shady city, corrupt and crime ridden."

I have no problem with politically incorrect thoughts, even if they happen to be wrong. We don't need thought police.

This one has a kernal of truth, although I personally think your assessment is abit unfair. First, New Orleans is a shady city - corrupt and crime ridden. New Orleans has one of the worst murder per capita rates in the country.

However, it is also true that this sort of looting occurs to a greater or lesser extent in every disaster situation. And its also true that alot of people in New Orleans are acting heroicly rather than selfishly. Looting happened with Andrew in Miami. It happened with Hugo in Charlotte. It didn't get reported, but if you were amongst the aid and support workers during 9/11 then you know how much stuff 'the city's finest' and others stole during the first few days following 9/11. Someone will always be looting. The looting problem isn't unique to New Orleans.

That said, it seems to me that its worse in New Orleans than in previous situations. Whether that is a slant in the coverage, whether that is because the scale of the disaster is worse than previous comparisons, or whether that is because there really is a larger 'bad element' (especially as a percentage of the remaining population) in New Orleans than in previous disasters I can't and wouldn't say.

I would say that I doubt you'd see this sort of thing occuring in Salt Lake during a disaster of a similar scale. A sense of community, a practiced discipline, and the ability to self-organize goes a long way in preventing this sort of thing from happening for whatever reason that it starts happening.

Looks like we will finally have a precedent for the total evacuation of a large city. I expect we will have more deaths from the aftermath/evacuation than the storm itself. Waterborne sickness can be expected to become significant 72 - 96 hours into the event. Death rate for the people remaining who are not part of an organized and supported effort may reach 10 percent within two weeks. Those requiring medications such as heart and diabetic controls are at great risk. I expect that after this is over or even before heads will roll at FEMA and Homeland Security.

Rich, why would heads roll at FEMA and DHS? It looks to me like they're doing their best in a tough situation. You want to point fingers, the folks in NO have known this could happen for YEARS. What have they done to prepare? Not much, by the looks of things.

BTW, back on topic, I read that Houston and Dallas are opening up their schools to the displaced for as long as it takes. My hat's off to the Texans for stepping up to the challenge.

For Dave G. Didn't mean to imply that anybody had been negligent, at least so far, its that with a disaster this severe, the political reality is someone is going to be blamed. Every politician and emergency management critter is going to be pointing fingers, if only in selfdefense. Eventually the blame will be shifted upwards until it reaches someone without sufficent political clout. That person/persons will the the goat to be sacrificed.

It may be a proximity issue, but a lot of people here in Houston seem to be taking in relatives and friends who've been rendered homeless in NO. It's not a large scale solution, but lots of small scale solutions (like Davebo mentioned, Matress Mac's letting evacuees to spend the night for free and the various office fundraisers and the church's around here holding BBQ's to raise money for releif/shelter costs, and the Astrodome being opened up to disaster victims) add up.

"Looks like we will finally have a precedent for the total evacuation of a large city."

Not to be grim, but this may be telling if we have a city destroyed by terrorism. The best practice for a disaster is experience.

"You want to point fingers, the folks in NO have known this could happen for YEARS. What have they done to prepare?"

NO has been begging the Corp of Engineers for the last several years to complete the Levees and other flood projects. The Corp has had its budget cut for many years and just two months ago, were advised it would most likely be cut again. Besides
there is not a lot more to be done for a city that is below sea level other than bring in dirt and rock and raise it up above sea level.

The levee system in that part of the south has destroyed thousands of acres of marshland and is actually changing the coast line-for the worse. The congress has been advised of this over the last few years, including a dire warning of potential flood problems caused by levee systems, just two months ago.

The bottom line for me, goes back to what my Mother told me long ago, "You can't control the weather, so prepare for the worse."

Well, you never know just exactly what "the worse" is, until it happens. It did.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

Those wanting a bit longer perspective on the lower Mississippi and NO situation might look up an older John McPhee essay called The Control of Nature - copyright date 1989 - which centers on the Army Corps of Engineers' role there. After the refugees are gotten out of southern LA and MS and basic logistics are back on, it'll be time to ask whether those same lives should be put at risk again, and how much capital we're ready to sink into restoring the status quo ante. Fooling Mother Nature on this scale comes with a steep bill in both dimensions, it's only a question of when it's presented for payment.

In defense of New Orleans (and it's people):

[Disclaimer, I lived and worked in the Crescent City from 1995-1998]

The levee system is not to blame, simple as that, for New Orleans sinking below sea level. It's fine alluvial soil which settles. Short of no levees and nearly yearly flooding of the whole city ala Venice from the Mighty Mississipi, New Orleans was destined to be below sea level. That's just the facts.

The marshlands on the coast DO need replenishing, and hopefully the levee system can be adjusted so non-inhabitated lands are flooded and silted while homes and businesses are protected. However this has nothing to do with the levees failing on Lake Ponchartrain.

Historically, New Orleans was founded because the distance between the lake and River was the smallest. The mouth of the Mississipi would silt up and change constantly, so it was easier to sail into Lake Ponchartrain, and portage over to the Mississipi. Canal Street was named for an abortive early 19th Century canal from the Lake to the River that was soon abandoned.

During my time in New Orleans, the Levee system was a great concern. Several incidents including Hurricane Georges showed that the system on the River and on the Lake (the one that actually failed) needed to be fixed. However, endemic corruption at the local, state level meant almost nothing got done. Mayor Nagin is a good man and the first non-Corrupt mayor in the City's history.

His considerable accomplishments should not be overlooked: evacuating over 80% of the City. Getting food and water at least to the Superdome. Organizing rescues where ever he can. He deserves great credit for this.

New Orleans Mid City and East New Orleans are African American working and middle class people, I've lived in Mid City and socialized in East New Orleans, there are very many brave and good people there right now helping folks out. They are the heart and soul of New Orleans and make it the most beautiful city in America.

However, the ugly projects directly north of Rampart Street, in the Lower 9th Ward, Fauburg Marigny, and off Louisiana Avenue, around Tchopotoulus Street, are home to some of the nastiest, crime-ridden, endemic criminal underclass in the nation. Makes South Central LA look like at least Santa Monica. The folks there are the problem and have been festering since the post WWII era, with corruption merely looking the other way instead of tackling the crime problem and concentration of poverty. Image Nickerson Gardens and Cabrini Green multiplied by ten.

It is my hope that in rebuilding the city, the projects and shanty-towns are destroyed, and replaced with middle class homes (built of steel) in the beautiful 19th Century Architecture that makes New Orleans the city it was.

My hopes and prayers are with the fine and brave people of New Orleans, who are mostly the folks you see out rescuing their fellow citizens, not the morons looting.

What would it take to actually raise New Orleans above sea level?

Tim Oren #10,

John McPhee is a very perceptive writer.

In an interview, an Army Corps of Engineers spokesman stated that the level of protection of New Orleans was for a hit by a Category 3 hurricaine.

Q.3. Why only Category 3 protection?
A.3. That is what we were authorized to do.

For the city, it doesn't seem that Nature presented an immovable force that only an unstoppable object could match. Instead, long-standing warnings weren't acted on. A prescient 2002 Times-Pickayune story is archived here. Although these alarms were reinforced by the recent near-misses, the budgetarily-feasible objective of being ready for a smaller hurricaine was maintained as the objective.

Now the city and the region has gotten "unlucky," putting a different cast on calculations of whether officials, and society, have been unwise. I don't know what a fair cost-benefit analysis prior to last year's Ivan would have shown, though I can suspect it would have made a case for better-engineered (i.e. more costly) protective measures.

Jim Rockford #11,

Thanks for the first-person perspective, and the reminder that disaster brings out both extremes of behavior.

Great comment AMac.

Unfortunatley, I think we'll be hearing this kind of thing on a much worse and more horrific scale in the next several months, since Avian Flu is fast becoming endemic to all of Eurasia and is set to make the leap into a pandemic.

We seriously need better risk assessment strategies and insitutions.

"What would it take to actually raise New Orleans above sea level?"

Assuming all the buildings could be razed or lifted, by my rough calculation about 40 billion cubic feet of fill, or roughly 180 million dump truck loads. These would have to be carted from a considerable distance (greater than 100 miles) because the surrounding region doesn't offer a suitable quary. Considering the usual government waste, You could probably do this for the low low cost of $1.5 trillion dollars. Or, for the same cost you could put each of the inhabitants of New Orleans in a $3,000,000 home elsewhere in the nation.

This of course would only be a temporary solution, as the soil beneath the city would continue to settle and compact as water was squeezed out of the soil by the weight of the city above.

Moses could do it for cheaper, but he ain't available.

NO is dead as we've known it.

Dutch engineers I tell ya. Send in the Dutch engineers.

A visit to Venice and consulting with its officialdom might give a few insights, and several centuries of experience. Then there's San Antonio, whose canals were put in by the CCC.

And during the depression, a resettlement project relocated thousands, at least, of impoverished city dwellers to learn life skills and sustenance level living arts in the country.

Yep, my mom was a resettlement agent, bringing city poor out to the country areas around New Orleans where they were given living quarters and taught how to farm, and to live on what they grew.

AMac, a post hoc analysis would be interesting, but moot, given the facts on the ground and that we now know that P(Cat 5) = 1. in the time interval of interest. I think that's know as the wisdom of hindsight.

Those same facts on the ground would suggest, in the langauge of my trade (VC), that it's time for a substantial writedown of the capital of NO. Its value is substantially impaired, shall we say. So, do we want to put back the same amount of human and financial capital, given what we know about the costs of 'insuring' it in its former configuration? Perhaps so, for some of the high value activities associated with the location - tourism and gambling, to be explicit. But rebuilding lower value residential zones, and industrial infrastructure that was there because of geographical factors that no longer apply, or have become counterproductive, that's worth some thought...

Or, changing metaphors, look at the immediate situation as an embodiment of the military maxim: "Professionals study logistics". The difficulty of getting the survivors out, let alone rebuilding a logistics base, is a clear exhibition of just how vulnerable the 'supply lines' of NO have become. Shouldn't they be shortened?

But there must be bedrock somewhere beneath New Orleans underneath all the silt.

Interesting question. Constant pumping of oil has lowered the elevation of Houston such that the shipping channels have significantly shortened. As to NO, below it to the south there are areas (former plantations) surrounded by levees, where the land is so rich that it will literally burn if it's lighted. Underpinnings aren't the most valued commodities there.

Bill Hennessey has started "Home for Katrina." I'm mulling it over. I do have a spare bedroom, I could allow a refugee to room with me for 6-8 months. But, there's this fear that I could be saddled with someone from "the nastiest, crime-ridden, endemic criminal underclass in the nation." It's easier to write a check for $250 than to open up your home to someone who needs it most desperately: the underclass. Someone with a similar background to mine probably has the resources, the extended family, the network of friends to cushion the blow and allow them to regroup and rebuild.

Still if individuals could be appropriate screened...there are a lot of year-round second homes in this country. All the snowbirds will be heading to Florida shortly, leaving behind empty homes in the Northeast. Perhaps George can give a one-time tax credit to those individuals who allow refugees to occupy a 2nd home rent free while their homes are rebuilt.

Corruption goes a long way towards generating an "ubi est" mentality.

My security code 911657.

#11

In America we like our criminal classes so much we subsidise them.

Alcohol prohibition.

Drug prohibition etc.

On the horizon: tobacco prohibition.

The whole idea of "New Orleans" needs to be rethought. The city that exited last week no longer is. There's a chance to create a new city, almost from scratch.

Make it a tourist destination surrounded by port industries and let everything else, including housing, exist outside the city, in areas with quick exits to higher ground hundreds of miles away. Make sure there's a sufficient railroad system to move masses with a day's notice.