Posted on 08/31/2005 12:49:47 PM PDT by Brilliant
There are limits to what Man can do to make his environment safe. People weigh the risks versus the benefits and make their choices. People have lived their entire lives in SF along with their children and children's children without having endured the Big One.
I think the idea of New Orleans is more enchanting than New Orleans itself.
>> There's nothing merciful in destroying people's lives
I will not get rat holed into a discussion of this type. You win, God sucks like a black hole and is a killer angel.
Godspeed to you.
>>New Orleans is our national epiphany, showing us that God is good, great and ultimately merciful in the extreme.
LOL!
They may have been let down by their leaders, but many must also take personal responsibility for not heeding the warnings to leave.
>.New Orleans smelly, filthy, and having just a bit too much tolerance for debauchery...but hey, that's just me. :)
That's what made it so so very very great.
Damn, I keep slipping into the past tense.
That's right. And when they get hit, they'll be "victims."
You don't say where you live but to answer your question, the US will rebuild NO the same as your city would be rebuilt if it was destroyed.
Exactly. They are victims. The very idea that people shoud be blamed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time is sophistry. NO could have been built on a hill and still been damaged by Katrina. Are the people of NO any less victims than those of Mobile, Biloxi, Miami, Gulfport, Jackson, etc.? If the Big One comes to SF, many more people will be affected than just those in SF. I guess there must be varying degrees of victimhood.
I'm sincerely sorry I stuck my feet in my mouth, then.
I would have tried to leave earlier, which is easy to say after the fact. Certainly people were warned about the coming disaster more than 10 hours before it hit. Unfortunately, many thought that this was just another instance of the government and the MSM hyping the event and crying wolf.
The gas lines were long. Many stations had already run out of gas. My relatives drove 10 hours to get two hours out of New Orleans.
Too little, too late. My wife's cousin lives in Jackson. They have no gas, no food, and no electricity. The damage to their house was small, but they now regret not having left earlier. Now they are stuck.
Some of those leaders' heads should roll. I'm no bleeding heart liberal, but it's pretty obvious that some of these people had NO options but to stay in their homes or go to the Superdome. My relatives briefly considered that, but considering the rioting and violence that has occurred previously in the Superdome, not everyone may have felt safer there. For many--the choices were worse or worst.
I agree with you there. The governor and the mayor waited too long to order a mandatory evacuation. The Governers of Alabama and Mississippi did a better job in that regard. When all is known, I think we will find that Mississippi was struck the worst.
That said, Blanco and Nagin dropped the ball from the very beginning. They just didn't act quickly and decisive enough. I hope GWB understands the scope of the crisis and the need to bring every resource we can to assist these people sooner rather than later. A sense of urgency is definitely needed.
Rebuilding the levees higher isn't going to fix the FACT that the levee system and the artificial routing of the mississippi river are going to cause more wetlands to slide into the gulf and place NO in greater danger after we pour billions of tax dollars into that rathole. Yeah, what a brilliant idea.
It all depends on how they rebuild, if they're smart they'll be like Seattle and make a new ground floor that's at least a little above sea level. Could be an interesting project to watch, going under the city in Seattle is interesting. Given where it is there WILL be a city there, the only question is what will it look like.
I am not a civil engineer, but I do know that there is a technical solution to make NO more secure and safe from hurricanes. It may involve artificial barrier islands.
I don't know what your technical qualifications are to comment on whatever solution is developed from the lessons learned, but the Dutch have certainly been able to deal with similar problems. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers, considers what was done as one of the seven modern wonders of the world.
Netherlands North Sea Protection Works
This singularly unique, vast and complex system of dams, floodgates, storm surge barriers and other engineered works literally allows the Netherlands to exist. For centuries, the people of the Netherlands have repeatedly attempted to push back the sea, only to watch brutal storm surges flood their efforts, since the nation sits below sea level and its land mass is still sinking.
The North Sea Protection Works consists of two monumental steps the Dutch took to win their struggle to hold back the sea. Step one, a 19-mile-long enclosure dam, was built between 1927 and 1932. The immense dike, 100-yards thick at the waterline, collars the neck of the estuary once known as Zuiderzee. Step two, the Delta Project, was intended to control the treacherous area where the mouths of the Meuse and Rhine Rivers break into a delta. The project's crowning touch was the Eastern Schelde Barrier, a two-mile barrier of tell gates slung between massive concrete piers, which fall only when storm-waters threaten. The North Sea Protection Works exemplifies the ability of humanity to exist side-by-side with the forces of nature.
Over 25% of the Netherlands is below sea level. The balance of land averages only 37' above sea level. Much of the land that was once below sea level is today reclaimed and protected by 1,500 miles of dikes.
There are very few places on this earth completely immune to natural disaster, and most of them don't have the kind of terrain and weather to be truly useful for sustaining society (need coasts for trade, all coasts are dangerous; the wide open plains of farmlands are perfect for tornados and massive floods; mountains are generally the result of various forms of natural disasters, and are also the primary location for the metals that make our world possible). So blaming people who live somewhere that gets hit by a natural disaster for getting hit by a natural disaster is just dumb, if they didn't live in those places we wouldn't have been able to build the richest most powerful nation in the history of the world.
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