Figures, but Americans are to blame if they rebuild on the same assenine spot. Let's see, lemme build a city below sea level, right next to the ocean, between a lake and a river, on swampland, in Hurricane Alley, and lemme make sure the topography is that of a bowl. Yeah, that makes sense.
What about the idiot Japanese, putting their major airport on sand in the middle of the ocean? You know that one's a disaster waiting to happen.
Except the city wasn't below sea level when it was founded.
But, over time, two things have happened to change the topography:
1. Building the flood control levees and channelizing the Mississippi River has the effect of constantly raising the level of the river's bed, so that the river will tend to climb up the floodwalls a little higher each year.
2. Pumping water out of the soil has contributed to its steady subsidence, so that ground level sinks a little bit further each year.
Put a sock in it. First of all, New Orleans was not the only city or place affected by one of the most powerful hurricanes in history. The entire Gulf Coast was affected including Mobile, Gulfport, Biloxi, etc. The storm wreaked destruction way inland. 80 percent of Mississippi is without power.
New Orleans is a great American city, and has been for over 200 years. It will survive this diaster and be rebuilt bigger and better. The levee system will be upgraded, pumping stations improved, land rezoned, building codes revised, etc.
The fact that NO is below sea level is not really the issue. So is most of the Netherlands. We have the technology and engineering to make NO safer and more secure from hurricanes, but it will never be risk free. San Francisco is built on the San Andreas fault, there are countless coastal cities in Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, etc. that are vulnerable to hurricanes, there are cities up and down the Mississippi that are affected by periodic flooding (remember the Great Midwestern flood of 1993), and major parts of the US have frequent tornados.
San Francisco, Charleston, Miami, Mobile, Galveston, the Quad cities, etc. are not going to be relocated. Nor will New Orleans. Its location makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of commerce and trade.
From 1803 until 1861, New Orleans' population increased from 8,000 to nearly 170,000. The 1810 census revealed a population of 10,000 making New Orleans the United States' fifth largest city, after New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore and the largest city west of the Appalachians. From 1810 until 1840, New Orleans grew at a faster rate than any other large American city. By 1830, New Orleans was America's third largest city, behind New York and Baltimore; and in 1860, it was still the nation's fifth largest city.
Pierce Lewis, perhaps its most knowledgeable scholar, describes New Orleans as the "inevitable city on an impossible site." It is a tribute to the ingenuity and greatness of Americans that a great city could be built and then flourish.
The city wasn't below sea level when it was built. It subsided afterwards. Channelization of the river kept it from being annually flooded and thus kept it from the supply of silt that would have maintained it's height. And the wells sunk by the inhabitants for water drew down the aquifer underneath it, causing the silt bed it was built on to contract.
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.