Posted on 08/30/2005 3:53:30 PM PDT by Dont Mention the War
On the southern fringe of New Orleans' City Park there is a live oak with a branch that dips low, goes briefly underground, and comes up the other side still thriving.
It's ancient and gnarled, this tree, and filtered sunglight slants through its crown at dusk. It's a sublime thing.
When we talk about these majestic items that dot New Orleans' landscape we say, "is," but we may mean, "was." The reports are still scattered, the news from the ground still incomplete, but Hurricane Katrina may have annihilated New Orleans.
It looks bad to everyone. "It's impossible for us to say how many structures can be salvaged," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said late Tuesday. But can the birthplace of jazz truly be wiped from the face of the earth?
New Orleans may yet surprise. Too often the city is written off as a whiskey nirvana, where one guzzles Pimms cups at Napoleon House in the French Quarter at night, and eggs and grits at the Camellia Grill in the Riverbend at sunrise.
In truth, however, New Orleans is as sublime as it is Rabelaisian. For example - and this is a thing few tourists know - the French Quarter, home of Bourbon Street and jazz and possessor of a global reputation for parties, is in fact a National Park. Now and then, through the spokes of a horse-drawn carriage taking honeymooners up Royal Street, one can spot the distinctive, "Smokey," hat of a park ranger telling a more earnest visitor some genuine history.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Should it?
Should the taxpayers be on the hook for it?
Move the whole shebang to higher ground, and call it New and Improved Orleans.
Upon viewing the photo thread, I understand the question being asked. There are no words for the devastation. As to the below sea level debate, I understand both sides...
People who have roots there generations deep aren't going to give up without a fight. They just have to find a way to make it worthwhile to stay in the neighborhood. However, the old system of levees and pumps is probably history.
Maybe they could turn it into an American Venice.
Bring in landfill from northern Louisiana and Mississippi, and fill all the streets of New Orleans to at least the level with Lake Ponchartrain (or maybe a few feet higher). THEN rebuild the city.
Or relocate it further up the Mississippi, say like just south of Baton Rouge.
New Orleans will come back bigger and better, but not because of either the Democrat Mayor and weak brained, useless Democrat Governor!!!
"Either the city needs to become Cat5-proof..."
How would you make it Cat5-proof? Cat5 is an open-ended category, both as to size, strength and forward speed.
Well, then, point out where on Earth there is a place that is immune to any concievable natural disaster, and everyone can move there and call it Safe-T-topia.
Geez. Some folks have no sense of how history and the love of the land can bind people to a place.
Go to hell.
If insurance co's consider it too high a risk (it is) they won't have a choice.
No more Mardi Gras? To be replaced by the Veil Prophet in St. Louis?
Maybe the rest of the world will help us in our time of need.
Bravo!
Well said...
That is all correct except the Galveston hurricane was in September 1900.
I have mixed feelings on this. EVERY region has their own style of disaster potential. Some are more hard core than others. Every 1500 years or so a big earthquake happens in Washington. It has been about 1500 years since the last one. It would destroy Seattle, because Seattle was built on material that will turn to liquid in a massive quake. The tall buildings may actually topple.
Midwest, tornados.
Southeast, hurricanes.
Southwest, earthquakes.
Alaska, earthquakes.
Hawaii, tsunamis.
So what happens in the North East aside from Kerry?
DK
"Prayers for the folks in NO and Mississippi."
Glad you remembered Mississippi...they're getting somewhat lost in the shuffle in most accounts. So sad to see such destruction in such history-rich, beautiful places and to so many good people.
Having visited Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis's home, right on the ocean in Biloxi, MS, a year or so after Camille, I'm hoping it may somehow have survived this, too, but it the odds are against it, I guess.
Just the loss of all the huge, magnificent live oaks makes my West Texas heart ache. Structures can be rebuilt...but
those trees are irreplaceable.
Blizzards and Taxes.
The latter is worse.
I guess they will have to build Super Duper New Improved Orleans somewhere else.
I still can't wrap my brain around just how catestrophic this has been.
I had no idea the situation would get worse after the hurricane was done.
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