Raise New Orleans, Move It, or Abandon It. Hurricane Katrina has plunged 80% of New Orleans under water because the city had over the past several decades sunk to some 7 feet below sea level. A disaster such as that which today befell the city was bound to happen sooner or later. It turned out to be sooner.
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If engineers cannot figure a way to raise New Orleans permanently and significantly above sea level, the low portions should be abandoned, forever. No reconstruction below sea level should be permitted, period.
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I have very limited sympathy for the people who refused the "mandatory evacuation". It wasn't a "recommended evacuation". It was a "mandatory evacuation". Everyone in the city was told in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of the city, and if they couldn't do so, to go to the Superdome. From there, the various governments responsible for emergency preparedness should have evacuated the poor. No such massive government assistance was forthcoming, and poor people used the absence of such help as an excuse to stay put. Now the Nation is being asked — required, actually — to save the people of New Orleans from their own stupidity and obstinacy, and I for one resent it.
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There's an old joke about an elderly man who refused a mandatory evacuation in the face of an approaching storm. A local rescue team came by in a bus and offered to take him to higher ground. He replied that he wasn't afraid: God would save him. The waters flooded the first floor of his house, and he fled to the second. A rescue team swung by in a boat and insisted he come with them. He refused, insisting that God would save him. The waters rose even higher, and he fled to his rooftop. A rescue team hovered overhead in a helicopter and lowered a powerful man in a harness to take him to safety, but he refused, adamant that God would save him. And then the waters rose over the peak of his roof and drowned him. On arriving in Heaven, he saw God and asked why, despite his infinite trust and faith, He didn't save him. God said, "I sent you a bus, I sent you a boat, I sent you a helicopter...."
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We're not God, and it's not up to us to keep trying to save people from their own obstinate stupidity. If the people of Louisiana want to rebuild New Orleans where it is, below sea level, the rest of the Nation should say, "Do what you want, but we won't lift so much as one little finger to save you from the next hurricane" — and stick to that resolve. After all, scientists keep telling us that global warming is bound to raise sea levels even higher, so with every passing year, New Orleans falls farther and farther below sea level. When do we give up and get out?
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New Orleans is not Venice, another city perennially on the edge of drowning. N.O. is a relatively old city by U.S. standards, and has its tourist attractions. But it is not a World Heritage Site, an irreplaceable human treasure. We have the technology to move individual important buildings to high ground, just as we moved Abu Simbel in Egypt from the rising waters of Lake Nasser. If we do not, however, have the technology to raise the entire city of New Orleans, then let's move what we can and let the rest sink beneath the sea.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,880.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:13 PM