Interesting piece on the realities of the New Orleans situation:
New Orleans is utterly dependent for its survival on engineered landscapes and the willful suspension of disbelief that technology has allowed its citizens to sustain. As most people know by now, much of New Orleans lies well below sea level and also beneath the Mississippi River, which flows high above the city it helped create. If you visit New Orleans you can’t actually see the river unless you’re willing to climb its steep banks, mini-mountains that jut above the Mississippi’s endlessly flat delta. From the relatively high ground of the French Quarter, you might catch a glimpse of a huge container ship, seemingly levitating above the roofline of most houses. New Orleans is, in other words, a shallow bowl surrounded by a ridge of levees, which are supposed to keep out water from the Mississippi and from Lake Pontchartrain at the city’s rear—and this week didn’t. When the levees fail, as they have many times before, a flood occupies the recessed terrain in the city’s center. Like the people trapped in the football stadium, water has no natural way to leave New Orleans. It must constantly be pumped over the lip of the bowl formed by the levees.
New Orleans’ dysfunctional relationship with its environment may make it the nation’s most improbable metropolis. It is flood prone. It is cursed with a fertile disease environment. It is located along a well-worn pathway that tropical storms travel from the Atlantic to the nation’s interior. From this perspective, New Orleans has earned all the scorn being heaped upon it—the city is a misguided urban project, a fool’s errand, a disaster waiting to happen.
It has become clear that a lot of people simply have never been to New Orleans, and have never stood in the city looking out at the massive bodies of water surrounding the city on many sides. When normally reasonable people like Kevin Drum can’t imagine thousands of dead, I can only attribute this to a complete inability to understand the geographic realities of New Orleans.
scs
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(Alright- figured out the grey box thing- the old Bq uote)
John, I imagine you have never been to the New Orleans, because if you are downtown, you don’t see any bodies of water. Like the article said, you can’t even see the Missiissippi river cause of the steep earth banks they built up around it. Lake Poncho, however that’s spelled, is beyond the interstate and out of the center of the city.
scs
By the way, I want to again point out that the French Quarter, downtown and the historical districts such as the Garden District and Uptown are above sea level, as most people seem to not realize that. I say keep those areas, and move out all the rest to higher grounds.
Don Surber
SCS:
Good points
Don’t rebuild there
(I caught a lot of flak for saying this after the 1996 floods in eastern WV, but they did rebuild outside the flood plain)
KCinDC
I have no idea how many dead there are, but I think the difficulty people have in believing the estimates of tens of thousands is that their impression is that the flooding did not occur as a giant wave sweeping in like the Asian tsunami — that instead the water rose slowly as the levees failed gradually. Is that impression incorrect?
Jim Allen
While there are many great arguments for not rebuilding, somehow it would be like telling Italy not to rebuild Venice should it get hit by something equivalent. Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense to rebuild there, but emotionally I’m not ready to let go.
John Cole
SCS:
I have been there several times, including one of the best weeks of my life right after the first Gulf War, when I was on leave, had boatloads of money, and everywhere you went in the country, people were buying soldiers drinks (which is my standing policy nowadays- if I am ever in a bar/restaurant, and I see military personnel, I buy a round for them).
In fact, I stayed in NO long enough to have to do laundry, so I went to a “Washeteria,” something I have only seen in NO, a sort of bar/grill/laundromat. I got so drunk and stupid that I went home without my laundry and had to go pick it up the next morning.
But I see your point. Many people may have just been to certain sections of NO, where it is not obvious.
Doug
That’s undoubtedly why they are historical districts. It makes an enormous amount of sense to have a population center at New Orleans. The Mississippi hitting the ocean is a big deal, making that spot on earth an inevitable commercial district. But engineering a way to build beyond the spots above sea level is rolling the dice. Eventually, you’re going to lose. Now, the question is whether it is a wise policy for the rest of the country to subsidize the loss. I mean, we will. No question. And to the extent that means feeding, sheltering and generally helping the stricken survive, that’s absolutely a good thing. A bit less so, perhaps, to the extent that means rebuilding in the same, vulnerable spots.
Sean P
I should say at the outset that I’m not a civil engineer and know next to nothing about civil engineering, so I don’t know if this is an intelligent question or not, but here it goes: Is it possible to reduce the flood risk by clearing out the portions of the city that are farthest below sea level (and completely destroyed by the flood) and turning those areas into basins to hold water the next time the levy breaks? I doubt such a system would have completely prevented the flooding in this case, but it may have been able to reduce the severity of the damage.
demimondian
Actually, it is an intelligent question, and the answer to it is enlightening.
Technically, yes, actually, no. In the case of New Orleans, the city was tiny until it became possible to settle outside of the very few pieces of relatively high ground. Almost all of the city is a natural swamp — if you don’t settle in the lowlands, you don’t settle.
Kathleen
that instead the water rose slowly as the levees failed gradually.
well a report I saw had a man quoted that his house filled up with water in 10 minutes. So, no, I don’t think it rose slowly at all.
John Cole: I agree those who can’t imagine thousands dead don’t know what they are talking about. I wish they were right.
scs
I am glad that you all noticed my point that the historical areas can be saved whereas the rest is a problem to be solved.
Zifnab
Well, slowly is a relative term.
That said, you can hardly blame New Orleans for being populated. It’s like saying “How dare you try to cram several million people onto Manhattan Island?” or “How stupid can you be, living on the active volcanic chain that is Hawaii?” This is capitalism. People are drawn to where the money is. And when there’s lost of money down in New Orleans, inevitably there will be alot of employement and alot of opportunity. I agree everyone would be more safe living in Pennsylvania or West Virginia, but they’d also be less rich and less employed.
capelza
It’s like living on the fault line up here in the PNW. We are due for a big one (earthquake). Should Seattle, Portland and Vancouver BC just get up and move to North Dakota?
scs
No, but you should all build to the best building codes you can. And by way, the North Dakota has tornados doesn’t it?