The Doomed Cities

http://jewishworldreview.com ^ | Michael Ledeen

[manny613]

As we mourn New Orleans, let us also celebrate it, as New Orleanians famously celebrate their own dead. The city has long been admired for its literary creativity, its exceptional food, and its wonderful music, and deplored — albeit also frequented — because of its legendary corruption and degradation. The possibility of its destruction no doubt played a role in the character of its people, and it is no accident that an annual bacchanal took place there, in the riotous celebrations of Mardi Gras.

[goldstategop]

The Decline And Fall Of New Orleans. As Michael Leeden writes, its preoccupation with death prefigured its eventual fate. Is there a Garden Of Gethesmane scene coming next? We'll see.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[pepsionice]

OK, so what are the doomed cities? Vegas? Reno? Jersey City? I'd really like to know.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Tijeras is definitely on the "C" list/

[DeeOhGee]

Washington, DC

[loreldan]

From what I've read recently Seattle should be listed as a city living on borrowed time. I've read a lot of articles about experts worrying about Rainier (a volcano). They said if it did blow it could be a massive eruption.

[mvpel]

Wiggum:
Long before the SuperDome,
Where the Saints of football play,
Lived a city that the damned called home,
Hear their hellish roundelay...

Cast:
New Orleeeans...
Home of pirates, drunks, and whores!
New Orleeeans...
Tacky, overpriced, souvenir stores!
If you want to go to Hell, you should make that trip
to the Sodom and Gomorrah on the Mississipp'!

New Orleeeans...
Stinking, rotten, vomiting, vile!
New Orleaaans...
Putrid, brackish, maggoty, foul!
New Orleeeans...
Crummy, lousy, rancid, and rank!

New Orleeeans!

[cbkaty]

OK, so what are the doomed cities? Vegas? Reno? Jersey City? I'd really like to know.

Nuevo Laredo? If you are from Texas....you understand....

[Kenyon]

This is an exceptional piece of writing on the spirit of New Orleans. The operative sentences are the last:

Doomed cities with an intimate relationship with the dead are special places, incubators of exceptional qualities of spirit and thus of extraordinary inventiveness. If we have lost one of those cities to the forces of nature, it will impoverish our world far beyond the enormous human tragedy. Even if it was long foreseen.

[FDNYRHEROES]

From what I've read recently Seattle should be listed as a city living on borrowed time. I've read a lot of articles about experts worrying about Rainier (a volcano). They said if it did blow it could be a massive eruption.

"massive?", as in "Seriesly Hugh"?

[RobRoy]

Remember, the main story here is no longer the hurricane damage. The main story is the reaction of the people of NO compared to other cities devastated by other hurricanes.

It is pathetic.

[concrete is my business]

New Orleans does not have to be doomed.

Isn't the whole of The Netherlands below sea level?

What about Venice?

I think New Orleans may rise again.

[wolfcreek]

"Nuevo Laredo? If you are from Texas....you understand...."

You got that right, maybe a few other border towns too.

[Kokojmudd]

Interesting article.

[Nateman]

My first choice for doomed city: San Francisco. One of these days a really big earthquake is going to hit it hard. LA suffers from the same problem, but after fires, mudslides, floods, riots and liberal governance it still is around so I suspect its just too tough to die

[Clemenza]

We have a bigger threat from earthquakes than volcanos here in Seattle. Mt. St. Helens would be a bigger threat the the SW part of the state (Vancouver, WA) if it had a bigger eruption than 1980.

[sinkspur]

I think New Orleans may rise again.

Not as we knew it. The port is vital, so it will be rebuilt, and the French Quarter will be resurrected, with some residential areas.

But a businessman would have to be nuts to rebuild in a city that's below sea level.

[SE Mom]

Not sure whether to start a whole thread for it- but I'm going to post it everywhere..must read for perspective:
http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/RELEASES/02-06_1927_Flood_Anniversary2.htm

[megatherium]

My impression is that Rainier will erupt at any time in the next two or three centuries. When it erupts, the primary danger will be lahars -- the glaciers on the mountain will melt, and cause enormous debris and mud flows. Hundreds of thousands of people live in immediate danger from such an event. There are warning sirens in communities downstream from the mountain. Rainier would put on a hell of a show for Seattle, and cause much local misery. But it wouldn't destroy Seattle.

The real danger to Seattle is the Juan de Fuca fault, which lies off of the Oregon and Washington coasts. This fault ruptures every three to six hundred years with magnitude 9 earthquakes. The last such event occurred in January of 1700. This would cause unbelievable devastation in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver BC.