Only city of its size in the US below sea level. I imagine they will/should rebuild it, but it will be a long time indeed before it is the same.
Perhaps that it'll take an insane amount of money to rebuild it, but it'll still be susceptible to the same situation. And because you'll have to call it New New Orleans and that sounds dumb. But I say why in the world not?
What would you say if someone asked you if your city should be rebuilt after a gigantic hurricane hit it?
I guess that Muslim scholar's prediction is coming true that US will be wiped out by 2007 due to tsunami/flood type disasters. Scary!!
There - added the poll. I don't think the city should be rebuilt as is. Theey really need to raise the city or figure out how to make the levees & pumps unbreakable. That or everyone who moves back there to rebuild has to sign off on insurance waivers. It seems like sheer insanity to just pump the water out and then rebuild exactly as before. Do we never learn our lesson? Beachhouses in Florida, homes built over faultlines, farmhouses on the Mississippi flood plain. Insane. When are we as a society gonna grow the balls to tell people that they cannot build in some of these places? Or maybe we tell them that they are more than welcome to, but if Mother Nature ever destroys their homes, we're not paying for it. I feel for these people so much, but I hope to God that we do not make the same mistake again as to the reconstruction... Personally, I think they should just rebuild the port & the French Quarter and make the place an amusement park. That or have the city float up high in the clouds & make Bily Dee Williams the mayor.
That would depend on whether I lived in a city that was below sea level - in between a lake and a river. So because these people say "but we lived there!" we should just pour in the money to rebuild it they way it was? Are we not smarter than that? It WILL happen again. They need to redesign that city, its layout, its protective walls, its protective marshes that had been lost to development...
Something tells me that the government might try and step in and not allow the city to be rebuilt. Either that, or they may discourage it, by not offering any federal funds, so something like this doesn't happen again.
Of course you rebuild it. Bring in Dutch engineers. They know how to handle these conditions and protect the city. It'll coast a freakin' fortune, now. Too bad they didn't spend hundreds of millions in the past to prevent a disaster like this one, whose cost is a couple of dozen billion, or more, and priceless lives and history drowned by the gulf. Now the cost will be huge, but you have to do it. What would you say to Venice? "Turn out the lights, and don't let the door hit your butt as you leave." You save New Orleans, but it will never be quite what it was. Who knows... maybe it will be better.
I don't know about faultlines or the Mississippi, but I don't think you can get windstorm or flood insurance for a beach house. But I figure if somebody is rich enough to own a beach house, they have the money to pay to get it rebuilt. As for New Orleans, is there a seawall? It seems to have worked pretty well for Galveston. I also remember that Galveston actually trucked a bunch of sand in after the big storm of 1900 and raised every building a few feet off the ground. Of course, that was when the population was a lot less...
Yes, but it must be redesigned with better flood control management. A city that is literally in a bowl below sea level bounded on one side by Lake Ponchartrain and on the other side by the Mississippi River requires state of the art flood control.
What will an insurance waiver do? All insurance does is protect the investment. If insurers are willing to insure it, then let them. If they are not then you won't get a loan without collateral. I guess the govt could "re-zone" and not allow residential planning in the lowest areas. Or they change the building code and require houses to be built on blocks. All of this is meaningless unless they figure out a way to keep the levees from breaking or high enough to keep out the storm surge. That will cost a bundle.
Its called eminent domain. The city could buy up their land and tell them they have to rebuild elsewhere.
They did "add land" underneath them to raise their elevation. But Galveston is merely a little island compared to the size of New Orleans. And a seawall doesn't address their problems...they're completely surrounded by water. I don't think New Orleans will ever be the same again. Frankly, that makes me very sad. I imagine many of the refugees will never return. Too costly to rebuild. Too scary to go back. Too painful. As a business owner, I certainly wouldn't invest there again. I can't imagine insurance companies will jump right back in. All of that dampens the prospects for rebuilding. The city has become the river. It's become the lake. We've been reading about this for years. Eventually New Orleans will sink. It seems it has.
They could not offer Fed. flood insurance and probably no private insururer will provide flood or storm insurance to that area. I voted NO should be rebuilt but redesigned. I think its pretty obvious that site is a bad place for a major city but for something smaller that's primarily geared towards tourism. What happened to NO might be like what happened to Galveston. It survives but nothing like it was prior.
