Had I mentioned Ivan, all hell would have broke out, as it looped all over the place and avioded the poor communities. ;)
Posted on 01/30/2006 12:38:06 PM PST by UpTurn
New Orleans waits. While some heroic efforts at rebuilding are taking place, hundreds of thousands of residents have put their lives on hold until they know what the government's next steps will be, leaving the shells of their houses as placeholders. But the Bush administration has now rejected the most broadly supported plan for rebuilding communities while offering nothing to take its place.
It has been five months since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and for many the norm is still the claustrophobic new reality of tiny trailers and multiple families crammed into single apartments. Louisiana is trying. You can hear jackhammers pounding and buzz saws whirring on Canal Street in New Orleans. Dedicated workers endure a grinding daily commute from points north, like Baton Rouge, as they try to make the city and the region whole again. But the mission is far from complete and the challenge is beyond the scope of a broken city and a poor state.
New Orleans's crisis has little relation to anything the nation has faced in modern memory, and traditional solutions will simply not help. Homeowners — many very poor people whose houses had been in their families for generations — had varying degrees of insurance before the disaster. When entire neighborhoods are devastated, their mildewed furniture and drywall piled on the roadsides, it's impossible to tell the people who are well insured to rebuild and hope that the houses all around them will somehow be reclaimed somewhere down the line.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In the case of most of NOLA, it would be a new lake.
Pigeons coming home to roost on the liberal plantation.
Ta-dah
I say pave the whole thing over and be done with it once and for all.
Massachusets paid for the big dig. LA should pay for NOLA.
NOLA is not underwater due to erosion. It is underwater because it was built that way.
Don't pick my pocket for NOLA idiocy.
Salt water is hard on asphalt. :o)
Thanks for your comment, DirtBoy. You hit the nail on the head.
I knew there'd be the usual Louisiana bashing, but tough. I'm not going to let this issue fade away. The magnitude of the damage is indescribable. There is a leadership problem, but it will work out. Louisiana is NOT just the sorry pictures shown of the lower 9th ward, or the panicked crowd at the Superdome.
We get along down here in spite of the above. Let me share a story... from this weekend. I attended a funeral of a dear friend who died of cancer. The graveyard was a long way off--back at the old family homestead--and the procession traveled about 12 miles on a 4-lane highway. EVERY vehicle we met stopped dead in the road & turned their lights on out of respect. EVERY vehicle--well over 200. 18 wheelers, people just driving north on the highway who didn't even live there. They don't know the race of the person in the hearst... who it was, or the socio-economic status... just showed respect all the same.
We do a pretty good job of taking care of each other down here. That's why get along in spite of the other issues.
But these two hurricanes are overwhelming.
Again, thanks for the interest.
Mass taxpayers paid the big dig bill? Did you read that in the Boston Globe?
That is not correct.
Before NOLA and the levees were built, periodic flooding spread sediments over the land and both built up the elevation of the land and pushed land further out into the Gulf.
NOLA sits on deltaic deposits thousands of feet thick. These are still slowly consolidating, which causes the land level to sink. This had been more-than offset by the sedimentation.
Once NOLA was leveed off and levees build along the Mississippi to keep it in-channel, sediments ceased to be deposited. Which has caused the natural subsidence to take over, accelerated by the removal of water and oil and gas.
However, that in turn raises a dichotomy - you have to literally flood the village to save it. The only way to staunch subsidence is to allow natural or man-made flooding to deposit sediments. So I'm not sure how most of NOLA can be saved - even if the levees were raised, they would slowly sink and eventually need to be raised again. And again. And again.
At some point, nature needs to be allowed to take over. There is no point, IMO, rebuilding the sections of the town that were abject slums and below sea level.
And that doesn't even address the likely prospect of the Mississippi River changing course over the next few decades.
Come on. You don't expect us to swallow that one, do you. Make up a story a little more believable than that, if you are going to write fiction.
Believe me that is going on here too. It's just not being reported on. Insurance companies are really screwing with people.
Had I mentioned Ivan, all hell would have broke out, as it looped all over the place and avioded the poor communities. ;)
We did not dial 1-800-UNCLE-SAM.
What the hell is Nagin, Blanco, and the rest of the lazy dopey people doing in LA?
Nomex and Kevlar on.
LOL!
New Orleans wants everything rebuilt just like it was in the low down swamp. That is stupid; it is going to get flooded again. New Orleans is not going to be just like it was...it is going to be smaller because that is what the land supports today.
The State has to face the music and build housing for the flooded out poor elsewhere in the State. Property owners in the swamp should take their money and run with it to put a down payment on a house not located in a swamp. They ought to all get moving.
But they are stuck because they want to rebuild in the swamp and they can't rebild in swamp until the levee is strong enough to protect from a BIG hurricane and they can't build a levee that strong and it's Bush's fault and if we had enough money we would overcome the hurricanes but we can't overcome hurricanes until we build a levee strong enough to hold against a Big hurricane and we can rebuild in the swamp until we have a strong enough levee but Bush won't give us the money to rebuild...
Send out old stubble face to tv cameras "Bush killed my mama. I'm comin mama..."
I do know that they are busy in the recovery here where Rita slammed us. The hold up in NOLA is probably due to the flood and waiting on the new elevation requirements being mapped out. They have to wait for FEMA and the remapping in order to get insurance coverage. At least that is one thing I have read.
I thought you might have been honest when you said to me in another recent thread that you cared about us here in Louisiana. Your continued insults and the fact that you can't seem to let go of that 250 billion dollar request tells me you are a liar. Keep posting, we know the truth. The truth is your are a first class jerk.
Sorry, but it wasn't me that made that request for $250 billion. It was your politicians. Deal with it.
Well, what did these people do 160 years ago for their flood insurance and planning on living below sea level?
We, our Family, do not expect the Nanny State to pay for poor decision-making and lack of planning as to where we live.
We have lived in PA, CO, and currently in NC. We made those choices. Knowing and understanding our decision making process.
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