The so-called thought process

The Guardian is running a piece suggesting that the improved federal levee system protecting the city of New Orleans may have exacerbated problems downstream in Plaquemines Parish.  No one seems to have any data, so the story mostly quotes people speculating according to their own predilections:  the problem is those rich people upstream, who don't care about us down here, or the problem is that city folks are doing the usual dirty on the rurals, or the problem is that those uncoordinated local hicks refuse to get with the centrally planned federal system.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of building at or below sea level in one of the world's great deltas without going up on stilts, and then deciding to ride out a direct hit by a hurricane.  On the news they were reporting that after landfall the authorities were just getting around to issuing a mandatory evacuation in affected areas.  That included the evacuation of a nursing home, if you can believe it.  Can you imagine waiting around for local officials to tell you to get out?  When you've got bedridden patients on your hands?  The ambulances couldn't even get in there by the time someone hit the panic button.  There were people interviewed on camera who couldn't swim.

6 comments:

Grim said...

What are you going to put the stilts on that will be secure enough to host a city?

New Orleans is there because it has to be. The real reason the Civil War was fought was control of New Orleans and the Mississippi river, which (especially before the fully-formed railroad network) controlled the traffic of the Midwest, and the near West. The United States might have accepted separation from South Carolina, but it could not accept a potentially hostile power in control of such a powerful point of interest.

As for riding out hurricanes, well, it isn't wise. As you say, though, if you wait around on the government to tell you what's wise, you'll always be a little too late.

Texan99 said...

We're talking about different areas. There isn't a big city out on the edges of Plaquemines. I wouldn't put anything out there that couldn't fit on stilts, unless it was so temporary I didn't mind writing it off every ten years or so.

The historic core of New Orleans proper seems to weather storms surprisingly well. Now and then a really big storm surge is going to destroy large outlying below-sea-level neighborhoods, thus teaching us that neighborhoods where people can't afford to go up on stilts don't have much of a life expectancy in below-sea-level areas. Very rich, resourceful people probably could get away with it, but not the Ninth Ward or Plaquemines Parish.

Texan99 said...

We're talking about different areas. There isn't a big city out on the edges of Plaquemines. I wouldn't put anything out there that couldn't fit on stilts, unless it was so temporary I didn't mind writing it off every ten years or so.

The historic core of New Orleans proper seems to weather storms surprisingly well. Now and then a really big storm surge is going to destroy large outlying below-sea-level neighborhoods, thus teaching us that neighborhoods where people can't afford to go up on stilts don't have much of a life expectancy in below-sea-level areas. Very rich, resourceful people probably could get away with it, but not the Ninth Ward or Plaquemines Parish.

MikeD said...

I have long held this argument with others. To build the Port of New Orleans where it is is eminently sensible. It must be there, because that's where the Mississippi exits into the Gulf. It can be nowhere else. To build HOUSING in the basin is criminally stupid. I understand that people want to live near where they work. And then businesses appear to service that community. Then housing for THOSE people follows shortly thereafter. New Orleans as a residential city is historically understandable. But following a huge disaster, is it not the time to re-evaluate this? One should not rebuild a San Francisco and hope "it won't happen again". One should say "here's what MUST be at this risky location, now let's build the rest of the city over here where it's safer."

Which is funny as heck for me to hold as an opinion, because I believe that if someone wants to do something personally risky, it's not my place to tell them "no that's too dangerous." I don't own them. The problem is, I also recognize, they're going to want to have me (and the rest of the taxpayers) bail them out when their risky decision bites them in the butt. If they'll sign a waver saying "I understand that I'm a moron for living on a faultline/in a floodplain/near a volcano/whatever and hereby absolve my fellow citizens of paying to make me whole in the event that I'm hit by the obvious disaster looming over me", THEN I'd be ok with it. But until then, I have to keep paying the monster that is government to be flood insurance for people who refused to purchase it themselves.

Anonymous said...

The Garden District and Burbon Street area sit on natural levees of the Mississippi. That's why the core of New Orleans is where it is - the French found the high ground. Their Franco-Spanish descendents got the left overs.

Levees exacerbate flooding downstream, be they natural (river-built by silt deposits) or human made. Levees act as venturies, accelerating the flow of the water between the embankments. When the water passes the constriction, it spreads out with more force, eroding more and (if you build things) causing more damage. At an extreme you end up with situations where the river is higher than the land around it because of silt and thousands of years of levee construction, and channelize the river all the way to the sea.

In an ideal world, everything would move out of the old Mississippi River floodplain starting near the headwaters, and houses and towns would shift well back from the streams. The states and federal government would allow the levees to collapse, and the river would solve its own problem. And when that happens, I expect to see three squadrons of pigs flying in formation over the ceremony! :)

LittleRed1

bthun said...

"I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of building at or below I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of building at or below sea level in one of the world's great deltas without going up on stilts, and then deciding to ride out a direct hit by a hurricane. in one of the world's great deltas without going up on stilts, and then deciding to ride out a direct hit by a hurricane."

Ah, yup. In another age, those individuals living below sea level in one of the world's great deltas and deciding to ride out a direct hit by a hurricane would have been washed from the gene pool within one or two iterations.

A modest proposal... Rather than provide taxpayer subsidized flood insurance and disaster funds to rebuild each and every single flippin' time Ma Gaia pulls the cord on those living by the sea, maybe each subsidized survivor who is determined to live at or below sea level, yet expects Uncle Sam to cover all flood expenses, ought to be housed like the folks in Aberdeen are housed. Not the folks at the Proving Grounds in Maryland, but those who live and work in Aberdeen Harbor, in Hong Kong, in their boats/boathouses.

Batten down the hatches ye scurvy dogs.