All you engineers and costruction people out there...........
What is the answer to this "rebuild NO" stuff.
When a home is flooded half-way up the ceiling, is the damage to the drywall, studs, insulation, etc. fatal? Can a home stay flooded that high and be salvageable or would it be too costly to repair?
If it is a total loss, how in gawds name can they rebuild some entire neighborhoods on taxpayers' back? If so, I can see a $300 billion to $1 trillion repair job.
I read this on Slate earlier. It's not really very feasible if it's under water for days and so deep.
http://www.slate.com/id/2125351/
If it is a total loss, how in gawds name can they rebuild some entire neighborhoods on taxpayers' back? If so, I can see a $300 billion to $1 trillion repair job.
Insurance companies will take a lot of time to process the claims on any insured properties, and they'll end up paying a substantial part of the cost (assuming that most of these buildings are insured). Don't feel bad for them, though -- because insurance is their business and they make a lot of money for themselves anticipating how to cope with a major catastrophe like this. Insurance stocks always take a huge hit in the aftermath of a disaster of this magnitude, but they end up recovering quite nicely because their losses are usually far less than even "smart" investors anticipate.
Insurance settlements in New Orleans may be smaller than you think, since an insurance company is obligated to cover the loss of the structure itself -- but not the land on which it sits. If I live in a $500,000 home that is comprised of a $250,000 house on a piece of property worth $250,000, then the insurance company's maximum exposure is $250,000, not $500,000. In an area like New Orleans that was below sea level even before it was inundated with water, most insurance companies (actually, all of them) will write checks for the entire value of the structure and pay out the claim rather than rebuild the structure.
On a few other threads I posted my list of reasons why I don't think New Orleans is ever going to rebuilt to its former state. Any comments on these would be welcome:
1. If you could start all over again, you wouldn't build New Orleans where it is located right now -- mainly because the terrain has changed so much over the years (it's been sinking continuously) that the city no longer has the "advantage of place" that made it a viable area to settle 200+ years ago.
2. Point #1 could apply to a lot of places (someone mentioned places like San Francisco, Anchorage, etc. in this regard), but from a practical standpoint it never makes sense to just get everybody out of a city, destroy the buildings, and start all over again everywhere else. In this case, however, these practical obstacles to shutting down an entire city do not apply. The city already has been evacuated, and at least 80% of the buildings already have been destroyed or so severely damaged that the cost of repairing them won't be much less than the cost of replacing them. The most sobering aspect of this disaster is that for the first time in U.S. history, it was deemed necessary to fully evacuate a metropolitan area of 1.4 million people. Step back for a moment think about that -- and realize the implications of this unprecedented measure.
3. From a political standpoint, I don't think anyone who looks at the situation objectively would even want to see New Orleans rebuilt. This is mainly because from this point forward it could only function as a massive public works project that turns into a city in which the government owns 100% of the land. Just think about this for a moment . . . the most far-reaching implication of this disaster is that land titles in a city below sea level are basically worthless. This means that no prudent investor will ever buy a piece of property, no bank will ever extend a mortgage without extensive government guarantees, and no insurance companies would underwrite a property/casualty policy in a rebuilt New Orleans.