Just a weird thought at this somber time; If the Superdome somehow survives intact, and saves 10's of thousands of lives, don't you see this as another excuse to push taxpayer financed, hurricane proof, sports stadiums to protect the public?
The Dome was built 30 years ago. To replicate it today, reinforced concrete and all would cost LOTS AND LOTS of money; money that municipalities nor NFL teams would be willing to come up with -- even if they thought they wanted to.
It's not a horrendously bad idea. Stadiums and their surrounding facilities are great for Civil Defense and natural disaster purposes. One of the things that went down the tubes with the demise of the CD system was comprehensive plans and facilities for dealing with this sort of thing. Stadiums used to be part of these plans - look at the few remaining older stadiums and you should be able to find where the CD signs used to be bolted to them.
Stadiums can provide command centers, distribution centers for supplies, shelter, landing areas for aircraft, space for morgues, and many other critical services that really don't have any other places to go.