Start Scrubbing!
Posted on 08/30/2005 3:53:30 PM PDT by Dont Mention the War
On the southern fringe of New Orleans' City Park there is a live oak with a branch that dips low, goes briefly underground, and comes up the other side still thriving.
It's ancient and gnarled, this tree, and filtered sunglight slants through its crown at dusk. It's a sublime thing.
When we talk about these majestic items that dot New Orleans' landscape we say, "is," but we may mean, "was." The reports are still scattered, the news from the ground still incomplete, but Hurricane Katrina may have annihilated New Orleans.
It looks bad to everyone. "It's impossible for us to say how many structures can be salvaged," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said late Tuesday. But can the birthplace of jazz truly be wiped from the face of the earth?
New Orleans may yet surprise. Too often the city is written off as a whiskey nirvana, where one guzzles Pimms cups at Napoleon House in the French Quarter at night, and eggs and grits at the Camellia Grill in the Riverbend at sunrise.
In truth, however, New Orleans is as sublime as it is Rabelaisian. For example - and this is a thing few tourists know - the French Quarter, home of Bourbon Street and jazz and possessor of a global reputation for parties, is in fact a National Park. Now and then, through the spokes of a horse-drawn carriage taking honeymooners up Royal Street, one can spot the distinctive, "Smokey," hat of a park ranger telling a more earnest visitor some genuine history.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
"Will New Orleans survive?"
Ive seen more intelligent questions.
No, not as we know it.
The notion takes on a different quality when an official newspaper begins considering the possibility that New Orleans could be "annihilated".
Part of me hopes that NO can pull itself up after this.
OTOH, this disaster was waiting to happen. A whole city below sea level next to the Gulf Coast doesn't make sense.
Prayers for the folks in NO and Mississippi.
"Will New Orleans survive?"
As it exists now, mostly below sea-level?
Should it?
Should the taxpayers be on the hook for it?
-PJ
Well, somebody picked themselves up a thesaurus at Wal-Mart.
Sure, and the next time this happens too. Just ask them.
I remember something similar when the Missippi River flooded in a hundred year high. People built their homes in a flood plain, and it flooded.
NO has been sinking for years. The silt has been rerouted to the gulf and water has been pumped out of the ground under NO.
I hope the rebuilding is more thoughtful, than the rebuilding in a floodplain was.
DK
> ... Hurricane Katrina may have annihilated New Orleans.
Yep. The long-predicted (when-not-if) has now happened.
Either the city needs to become Cat5-proof, or they need
to abandon the site. If the status-quo is merely preserved,
even with minor enhancements, this WILL happen again.
This isn't Holland. People can go elsewhere.
Was this a "disaster"? Yes.
Was it a "tragedy"? No (except for those who had no
choice about being there, like children).
If the federal government writes flood insurance for this
area, that needs to stop (indeed, that whole program can
be deep-sixed - if private insurers won't write it, there's
an important message there).
Had New Orleans been hit by an unsuspected asteroid, I
might have had some sympathy. But what is unfolding there
now is simply what had been expected for decades, and has
now been fully realized.
When Galveston was devastated by the 1906 hurricane, they jacked up the buildings that survived, pumped sand in under them, then built a seawall to protect the city. It can and has been done.
Should the tax payer be on the Hook when San Fransisco falls apart after the next big quake hits???
maybe they should move it upstream a bit
"It can and has been done."
And it will be done in New Orleans. No doubt about it.
Or for the farmers, no matter what the weather is.
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