There wasn't a city already on Mt. St. Helens. New Orleans has been there for hundreds of years. People live in all kinds of places that at one time or another will require federal emergency aid, and for some, rebuilding. Last night someone posted a long list of such places, and no area of the country was exempt from disaster of one kind or another.
That's an absolutely valid point, but there are two major factors here that don't apply to "normal" disasters:
1. At some point, every single person in the city of New Orleans will be evacuated, or will die. This -- in combination with the fact that almost every building in the city has sustained some kind of serious damage -- means that New Orleans will be "starting over" in a way that no other city has ever done.
2. The geographic reality in which New Orleans exists (the changing terrain and sinking ground at the mouth of the Mississippi River) dictates that the long-term viability of the area as a major city will decline over time -- a situation that no other city has really faced.
And the original founder from France was told by his engineers it would be a very bad place for a settlement because of flooding.
a few years back after one area along the Mississippi or one of it's tributaries (in Iowa I think) was flooded again they moved the town up on higher ground. Smart of them.
If you build in the flood plain your dikes/levies can fail, you should have your insurance. Back during the Red river flood dikes failed or were topped. You can not always hold back the water.
NO probably should not be rebuilt entirely in it's current place. Perhaps a few of the historic areas could be perserved but the number of homes and people living in the area should be much much lower.
Someone mentioned on somewhere on FR that buses were available to take people out prior to the hit, sorry I didn't see very many outgoing amongst all that traffic. This has been very poorly handled by the city and state officials. True none of us could have immagined such a HUGE disaster but from the looks of it, standing around and saying, well we told them to leave, without having rounded up enough vehicles to get them out AND personal (NG could have been used) to help the elderly, infirm and families without transportation....it's criminal on the part of the city and state. If not enough buses(city and school) were available they could have used other modes of transport, including semi trailers. I would think that in a state of emergency they could get use of vehicles.
The fact is NOTHING was done to help those who may not have understood the true danger or those who really had no way of leaving their homes. This is truely very sad. God help those people and grant them the patience to endure while help is enroute. It really looks like no plan was even in place to get at least some of those people out. Sooo sad.
Having sad that it would be nice of the people being interviewed to complain about thier plight would start condemming those holding up the whole resue operation. Unless they're ready to admit that some of their 'people' are not worth defending they will continue to be in a dire situation. They need to call on their gov. to bring the situation under control, even if it means SHOOTING of the
'scared' looters/criminals.
jmo of course.