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 ...
Had it not been for the 1900 Hurricane, Galveston may have been one of the largest cities in the US, and Houston would have been a suburb of Galveston.
The fundamental purpose of the government to protect the lives and property of US citizens? Isn't New Orleans part of the United States?
If the government fails to protect those citizens, either by ensuring a certain safety level or eviciting people, it isn't unreasonable that it should compensate for that failure. The only question is the size and type of compensation. I'm not talking about paying for everyone's houses, that is why we have home insurance. However, that does not rule out some government aid in the event of natural disasters.
JMHO, of course.
how are they going to pump out the city? how do you fix a levee anyway, do you have to isolate it and then plug it?
I think there will be a serious debate on whether the Nation at large should fund the rebuilding NOLA on its current "mooring".
Galveston is built on a barrier island and not below sea level like New Orleans.
Ahem. That first sentence should read:
"The fundamental purpose of the government is to protect the lives and property of US citizens."
lol
Yeah! That's the American Spirit! Screw everybody! I'm looking out for Numero Uno Honcho!
True. What made Houston grow was the dredging of Galveston Bay allowing ships to dock inland, turning the area into a large sea port with (ironically) Galveston Island there as a buffer from the effects of the Gulf.
Galveston fancied itself as the cultural superior of their neighbors in the late 1800s and was the home of many of Texas' richest people.
I worked in Galveston back in the 1980s and grew up in Houston. I know the area and its history well. Galveston is, unfortunately, a neglected source of history that has become a trash bin for people to party and swim in half the year. It suffers, in some ways the same as New Orleans does, from lack of upkeep but on a lesser scale.
But there are still many who won't invest on the island for fear of what the next hurricane might do there.
I've paddled the breadth of the Okefenokee, and I bet current NOLA is a helluva lot more disease infested.
As it exists now, mostly below sea-level?
Should it?
Should the taxpayers be on the hook for it?
No the contemporary ATLANTIS will not survive for the better interest of our people.
They call them "tells" in the Middle East.
I assume because the tell a story?
The Italian Venice isn't hurricane proof. It is not even tropical storm proof. Ditto the Netherlands.
Seriously, where do you move all that infrastructure, Baton Rouge? Basically salvage the port, and make New Orleans just a port town?
Yup. and folks who push the envelope should be kept out of the same insurance pool as the rest of us (both private and public).
Hate to be the bearer, but there is another thread that says it is gone.
Galveston would not have survived Katrina in 2005.
I've lived on Seawall and worked at Pelican Island and I know
how high the seawalls are and at what elevation the island lies.
It would not have survived.
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