mikhail

After New Orleans - would you move here? | Paul Simons - Times Online

"It was a close shave, but New Orleans just managed to escape Hurricane Gustav’s onslaught on Monday. But the stark truth is that the city’s days are numbered. Its fate was sealed in 1717, when French explorer Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville chose a sharp bend in the Mississippi River to found “Nouvelle-Orleans”, in the teeth of opposition from his chief engineer, who warned him of flooding ahead.

And it didn’t take long before the first flood struck. Today New Orleans is a hopeless case. It can play around with levees, floodgates and sluices, but the seas are rising higher and the natural flood defences of surrounding marshlands are disappearing, But at least New Orleans has a network of flood defences. Miami is far more vulnerable and in 1926 was totally swamped by a hurricane storm surge, although it was then only a small town. And many other large cities around the world face other appalling natural disasters."

With the effects of Global warming is it worth rebuilding New Orleans? or is it just delaying the inevitable?

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Hugh_Akston

I believe New Orleans is a lost cause, but I disagree that the global warming myth has anything to do with it.

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Cephus

It's a hopeless cause as a lot of people want it, which is how New Orleans has always been. If you keep rebuilding a city with all the same faults as it had, you'll never stop rebuilding. Honestly, the best choice at this point is to bulldoze the city and start over, taking into account the storms and flooding and build it to overcome these obstacles.

Just rebuilding the same old mess is pointless.

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obvious Child

Geographically?

Yes.

The city is a bowl below sea level in hurricane zone. That's just ASKING for trouble. We'd need 10,000 year storm levees like they have in Holland to make the city safe.

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Kandahar

Depends what you mean by a "hopeless cause." New Orleans will continue to lose people over the next few decades, as it should. However, it will never disappear completely nor will it ever be a small city. It has more geographical importance than just about any other city in the country.

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Hugh_Akston

Yes, New Orleans is an important city in terms of it's location, but it is also in a location prone to repeated destruction. Whether it be hurricanes, the Mississippi flooding or sea levels rising, it is built below sea level and is becoming ever more dangerous, and I haven't even touched on crime and corruption from a local government standpoint.

I think rebuilding homes for those who live there and continuing to prop up a corrupt and inept government is a losing cause. Rebuilding levies to protect the shipping and oil/gas industry is a viable endeavor, but putting people up in FEMA trailers, hotel rooms, feeding and clothing them and giving them cash with taxpayer money because they live in a dangerous city that is built below sea level right at the mouth of the nations largest river and the Gulf of Mexico is just wrong. If Katrina should have taught the people of New Orleans anything, it should have been to move elsewhere. You are not safe in a city that is where New Orleans is. You would be safer inland or in a city that isn't below sea level on the coast. At some point as taxpayers we have to say enough is enough. If the destruction that happened as a result from the levies breaking, as did from Katrina, happens again, I say those that live there are on their own. There will be enough outpouring from charitable donations to provide them with food and shelter until they can get back on their feet, but nary a taxpayer dime should be spent housing these people.

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buttonpsi

Yes, but the people who live there are too stupid to move.

Joby

Which isn't that bad, since nobody wants them.

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buttonpsi

Hell, they moved to downtown Dallas and the crime rate went up considerably. I would rather them drown than rob and shank people.

Trinity

It's home to almost half a million ppl pre-Katrina.

It is such a heritage-rich place and occupies so much of US history and importance and culture. Imagine losing all that. That is incomprehensible.

My friend was born there in New Orleans and lived 30 yrs there. When Katrina struck, he had to fly in to evacuate his mum. He was there when the eye of the Category 4 Katrina hurricane passed right over. Saw the whole home flood. He was telling me the double-door huge refrigerator was just floating around in the kitchen as the whole 1st level flooded. Had to swim out of his street in 7-8 feet of water pulling some 10 rubbish bags of stuff and see their car had floated away. And then stay at the Superdome until help finally came.

And after Katrina, he always wants to move back home.

I advise him not to, cos it is still dangerous. We both support the rebuilding of New Orleans.

What is the problem with building stronger and taller levees, installing a better and more powerful pump system? (Even while rebuilding New Orleans, they stinged on an inferior water pump system and levees that won't even hold a Category 3 hurricane off.)

I think New Orleans shd be rebuilt. It is losing too much of US heritage all at one go like this.

Not to mention it is one of the most impt ports in US.

Just have a look at the amt of culture u need to lose by not rebuilding New Orleans here : New Orleans, Louisiana - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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