Posted on 05/03/2009 11:38:33 AM PDT by Graybeard58
It is difficult sometimes to decide which disaster was more unmitigated: Hurricane Katrina or the federal response. In the more than three years since Katrina ravaged the Central Gulf Coast, U.S. taxpayers have spent $107 billion rebuilding the region so inhabitants can return to harm's way. And the fool's errand continues apace. Katrina breached the 350-mile network of levees around New Orleans in at least 50 spots. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in midst of a $14 billion project to rebuild the levees to withstand the force of water and winds of a storm that statistically strikes every 100 years. Now the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council are raising serious doubts about the whole premise. Among their conclusions:
"Rebuilding the New Orleans area and its hurricane-protection system to its pre-Katrina state would leave the city and its inhabitants vulnerable to similar disasters. Instead, settlement in areas most vulnerable to flooding should be discouraged. ... Furthermore, the 100-year flood level ... is inadequate for flood protection structures in heavily populated areas such as New Orleans, where the failure of the system would be catastrophic."
Hmmm. Where have we heard this before? That's right. We said it, in "Is New Orleans worth reclaiming?" the day after Katrina hit: "FEMA intends to throw tens of billions in disaster relief to reclaim hurricane-ravaged regions from the sea. Untold millions more will be spent rebuilding the levees and sea walls and modernizing the pumping stations that heretofore had kept New Orleans from sagging into the sea. To what end? So when subsequent big hurricanes blow through, the government can do it all over again and again and again? ... (B)efore the government commits to reclaiming New Orleans and its marshy environs, it should think long and hard about whether the investment of time and money would be worth it."
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
I know a Katrina I’d like to revisit. Married but I still have memories.
Katrina and the waves
Galveston took the hint after the 1900 hurricane, which is why now Houston is one of our largest cities.
Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast: I know, because I was in it and lost my lucrative business. Why are these articles always about New Orleans, “Bush hates black people”, and all that drivel? Is Mississippi not one of the 50 states? Do white people not count?
Why does the government insist on building a city on wet lands when the EPA forbids citizens from doing far smaller projects on private land so designated? Guess it’s just politics trumping common sense again.
You're asking much too much. By the time politicians could make up "our" mind that it just isn't worth it, mother nature would have made the decision with 20 more hurricanes in New Orleans territory.
This is always wrongly stated.
It should be: " A storm of this magnitude has a one in one hundred chance of striking this region every year".
Those are very good odds.
“It is difficult sometimes to decide which disaster was more unmitigated: Hurricane Katrina or the federal response.”
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I’ll go with curtain Number 3 in a slam-dunk, no brainer as to the primary cause of the Katrina problems:
The entitlement, dependency mentality of New Orleans residents.
Almost one-hundred years of Huey Long's "Every Man a King, but No One Wears a Crown," the New Deal, various d-Rat paternalistic/populist Governors of Louisiana, and crooked Mayor's of New Orleans, and it all came to this. Blanco and the idiot Mayor Nagin were just the end result of the political inbreeding that has plagued Louisiana since the "heydays" of the Long machine. The d-Rats promised utopia, but gave us the pathology of the 9th Wart writ large.
No.
“Walking On Sunshine” on of my all time favorites for reasons other than music. Of course a woman was involved. And, she was from Australia. (Sigh.....)
the federal response was fine.........overblown in fact. the dipsheets running and living in New Orleans should have taken action to mitigate the problems. One of the people I am aware of got to live on a cruise ship for heaven’s sake, this is a girl who grew up daughter of a millionaire, got a Triumph Spitfire for graduation, went to Vail skiing all winter long and this idiot article says the federal response was bad? the hail you say. People sitting around waiting for Uncle Sugar to “give them they gummint checks” makes me want to puke.
Even more difficult is deciding what part of the Constitution authorizes the Federal Government to participate in the disaster response to hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
Or countless other things our government does, begining with a "president" who is not a natural born citizen.
Or countless other things our government does, begining with a "president" who is not a natural born citizen.
You can say that again!
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