Thankfully, the latest hurricane to approach New Orleans was just a category two. Its eye passed 30-50 miles west of the city instead of more or less directly over it. This time there was plenty of warning and help to get everyone out who wasn't dead set on staying. Many lessons were learned and applied to Gustav that were cavalierly ignored three years ago during Katrina. This time it is estimated that eight lives were lost, rather than over a thousand.
Yet even still, there was footage of the waters of the Industrial Canal lapping over the levee. Other shots showed parking lots with cars submerged up to the windows, and beach areas under ocean waves for a hundred yards inland. If Gustav had been a category four or the eye wall had passed over the Big Easy, much of it would again be at the bottom of Davey Jones' Locker. And if that had happened, as it someday almost certainly will, we would be left to seriously contemplate the wisdom of continuing to encourage millions of people to live in harm's way.
Certain areas are consistently disaster-prone. One such area is the Gulf Coast at sea level and below. Another comprises similar stretches along the Atlantic Coast from Florida to the Carolinas. There are extremely high fire danger areas of brush and dry forest throughout the West. Several large rivers, such as the Mississippi, have deadly floodplains that regularly become torrents.
Many times, the risk associated with such areas is specifically localized. A strand of beach may be unsavable from a hurricane's tidal surge, but the bluffs only 50 yards from the shore may be perfectly safe from it. Why then do we allow people to build there and be protected and insured at public expense? The answers, of course, are that people like to have beach houses and that such construction is good for local tax bases. Like many other practices in our country, it is good for short-term finances.
But the fact is that once the inevitable disaster occurs--Hurricane Katrina, the Oakland Hills Fire, the latest Mississippi flood--the rest of the people are assessed tens or hundreds of billions of dollars so that the newly homeless can rebuild in the same foolish places. This happens through higher insurance premiums for the rest of us or often through federal disaster relief and its associated loans.
It might be sensible to begin zoning these areas to prevent the construction of new residential developments. To the extent that these risky behaviors are voluntary, it ought to be made clear that people who insist on locating there anyway are on their financial own from now on. If they cannot get private insurance to build there, that ought to tell them something.
I realize that people already on a piece of land may not have the easy option of relocating, and that the public may have to continue to provide for them when disaster next strikes. But to the extent that we can keep more from putting their own lives and those of emergency personnel at risk, we ought to do it. If they go ahead and do so anyway, it might be a good idea to make clear that in that event there will be no government financial help the next time there is a next time. Enough is enough already.
2 comments:
Steve, one of the interesting things I learned when I was in New Orleans is that it is not so much that people are or have lived in dangerous areas, but that governmental policies have all but ensured that people will live in these areas and that the homes they inhabit will not be up to the challenge of the elements.
Consider New Orleans--which is only below sea level away from the Mississippi. Who lives in the high ground? Not the poor. Why do so many poor people of color inhabit the lowlands? Because for many years government lending (FHA and others) supported legal as well as de facto segregation. Well into the 60s, to be a black homeowner in NO was to live in the 9th Ward or other lowland housing development.
The style of building also changed--instead of wood and plywood sheeting built over a brick or rock 1st level, houses began to be built of sheetrock on grade (ground-level). This is cheaper to build and mass produce. The result, of course, is that sheetrock absorbs water and weakens, compared to plywood, and the house can flood because it is never above water level.
So, a people that had naturally adapted to the dangers of an area, building homes on stilts and otherwise preparing for the worst, were forced to accept less than was required in order to continue to call a place home. Add to this the cavalier levee construction (building on a peat-moss base, for example) which was designed to benefit developers and shipping magnates, not homeowners, and the disaster of Katrina was inevitable.
There is much talk of renewal and NO bouncing back. Yet, the Gustav pictures still show a nearly vacant 9th Ward--which until Katrina was all houses. The relocated people of that area have virtually nothing: their land has no value and there is no money to bring them home. They mostly remain dispersed across the country. These are the poorest of NO's residents (former residents) and the storm did less damage to them than the years of segregation and discrimination that preceded it.
If any of this intrigues you or others, I invite you to check out the NO posts at my English&More blog.
Thanks for bringing this up. Interesting that the GOP convention would use NO as a sort of showcase for how community-minded they are. It wasn't that way 3 years ago...
David
Yes, there was good reason why that section was configured as it was. What an insightful and knowledgeable comment. Keep 'em coming, DH.
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