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Too Many People in Nature's Way
Ant writes "Wired News report that the dead and the desperate of New Orleans now join the farmers of Aceh and the fishermen of Trincomalee, villagers in Iran and the slum dwellers of Haiti in a world being dealt ever more punishing blows by natural disasters... ... "We rely on technology and we end up thinking as human beings that we're totally safe, and we're not," said Miletti, of the University of Colorado. "The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet."
By one critical measure, the impact on populations, statistics show the planet to be increasingly unsafe. More than 2.5 billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters between 1994 and 2003, a 60 percent increase over the previous two 10-year periods, U.N. officials reported at a conference on disaster prevention in January.
Those numbers don't include millions displaced by last December 2004's tsunami, which killed an estimated 180,000 people as its monstrous waves swept over coastlines from Indonesia's Aceh province to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, and beyond. By another measure -- property damage -- 2004 was the costliest year on record for global insurers, who paid out more than $40 billion on natural disasters, reports German insurance giant Munich Re. Florida's quartet of 2004 hurricanes was the big factor.
But generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way, said Thomas Loster, a Munich Re expert. "More and more people are being hit," he said..." I'd also like to point out a project here to find housing for Katrina's victims; it tries to combine lists of sites offering housing, and do a meta-search.
The population is growing. It can't be that unsafe.
"The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet."
Well that tears it. I'm leaving. Anyone coming with me?
Perhaps we shouldn't rebuild on the lands that keep getting destroyed... I hear that's what they did in the days before governmental disaster relief.
Latewire
nature should get out of the way or face lawsuits
..is:
To what degree have we done this to ourselves?
As populations grow, they are going to move into more and more dangerous areas. Given the relative shortness of the human lifespan, any major environmental disaster that occurs with periodicity of more than 30-40 years is going to have humans living in its path. (because humans tend to forget things through generations) Unfortunately since these events are so rare, it is hard to prepare for them. That said, people seem to focus on these things right after a disaster. Remember the New Orleans disaster is one of the largest distructive forces to hit the continental US, regardless of population.
-Sean (OutdoorDB - the Outdoor Wiki)
but generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way
Exactly. I don't think our planet is any more unstable then 100, 1000 or 10000 years ago. Yeah, maybe we have global warming but even so it makes much, much more of a difference that a hurricane making landfall at the Mississipi estuary affects several million people today compared to 10,000 in 1803 or maybe a couple hundred in 500 BC.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Of course we should be listening to the insurance company tell us the "truth" about the disaster. They have no reason to lie to protect themselves. Why would an insurance company try to cover its ass in the wake of a disaster? Insurance companies, especially in countries the other side of the world from teh disaster, care only about the welfare of the victims, not their own welfare and liability. Yes, put the insurance companies in charge of how to remake our society in the wake of the worst disaster in American history. We can trust them to take care of us. :P.
--
make install -not war
Although i agree with the statements made here, that natural disaters and all. The tsunami wasn't caused by climate change, where as the huricane and other floods etc probably have been.
Maybe it is time to America to Stop rejecting proposals to reduce emissions and to do what the world is asking. Most other countries seem to do alot more, and the states will probably have to have some more Natural Disasters before the Muppets in The white house will understand this.
The Dutch manage it. Mind you they invest rather more in maintaining their dykes and building storm barriers.
What are they going to call the replacement for New Orleans? "New New Orleans"? "Very New Orleans"? "Newer than New Orleans"? "I Can't Believe It's Not New Orleans"?
I have to say what shocked me more than the scale of the devastation, was the reports of rioting and looting. Natural disasters are more common than many people think, they're usually not as large of course but they happen every day. I'd just assumed that nothing short of a global disaster would result in the rioting and breakdown of order that followed Katrina, scary stuff..
You had people all over the US talking about how third world uncivilized people deserved the tsunami. And people like michael savage etc. saying no federal aid should be sent to help other countries. Being libertarian, I can agree that with the concept of federal assistance being bad, I dont see why he has a vitriolic resentment of it considering how miniscule the foreign aid budget is (especially after you deduct military assistance to high income countries that somehow counts as "aid"). After the tsunami, I even came across a weblog (ernie i think) that said something to the effect of "those civilizations have been around for thousands of years longer than us and didnt advance so they deserved it. Too bad, f*ck 'em".
/fox) reported a blatant lie that foreign countries didnt step up to offer aid and assistance for new orleans.
d /index.html
.. but a vast majority of people are there because they didnt have the means (no cars & buses) to evacuate in time ..let me stress that not every new orleans person is involved in looting.
Like every single individuals and kids who died or were orphaned had done stuff to deserve what happened to them.
And then there was the radio show host who said he didnt care about people who couldn't swim.
About new orleans, you the media (sean hannity
Here's a report that contradicts what sean hannity was saying:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/katrina.world.ai
The point I am making is that you have a large segment (thankfully not the majority) of the US population who thinks the rest of the world is all evil and can go to hell. These same people are now sayuing "screw new orleans bunch of savages". Sure there are scumbags causing trouble there
By way of example our individual physiologies as systems experience runaway in terms of sexual orgasam ( ya sex, more people ) and in terms of death.
We're not only pushing the envelope in terms of population, we're also pushing the food chain that sustains us. The oceans are being fished clean to feed the growing population. It's not unlikely that the ocean food chain will collapse in our lifetime. Add in global warming and the projected more frequent, more violent storms; mix in our proclivity to live in large numbers on the coast lines, and, the recipe for disaster is all but made, no need to add in a killer like a super volcano.
The lesson of New Orleans is that we can't handle relatively mid range disasters. We speak of the first world in terms of Super Powers in quasi mythological terms that suggest we control nature. We're just outlaw apes broken free of our natural constraints and deluded in belief systems that talk to our immortality as mirror images of the creator of the universe.
The joke about to go very bad. May you live in interesting times.
cheers
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Looking at recent events, such as the Tsunami and New Orleans flooding, it's an eye-catching number... but do the math. The Tsunami triggered by an 9.6-ish-on-the-richter-scale earthquake only managed to snuff out 0.0025% of the earth's population. Looking at New Orleans alone, since estimates are in the thousands, if 10,000 people died, that's about 2% of the population. If nature really doesn't want us around, either it's not trying very hard, or it's just a work in progress while Yellowstone prepares to blow its top again....
There's a lot of people who would even say that Nature's fury can't compare that to the fury of our fellow man. I'd have to wonder about that: Lung Cancer deaths related to smoking kill off about 440 people per day in the United States alone. Compare that to the rougly 2 and a half US soldiers per day killed in Iraq.... I'd say we are far better at intentionally killing our own selves than we are at killing others, and natural disaster takes a distant 3rd... or at least, disasters can't compare to other natural causes such as disease.
But the problems are far from over... The old sand levees are old and weak in many areas due to dryness of the soil/sand. This cause them to blow away or sink. There are major concerns over the current level of protection and the governement has started to investigate emergency responses. Last week members of parliament have asked the relevant minister(s) of government to prepare a presentation to the house about the current response strategies.
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
a lack of preparation? New Orleans has known for a long time how vulnerable it was, but the levee system wasn't built to sustain anything above a category 3 storm.
The first rule of risk management is that the amount of time, effort, and money that you spend on security should be proprortional to the probability of a breach times the amount of damage it would cause. I guess Louisana didn't get the memo.
You heard wrong, unless by "before government disaster relief" you mean "before there were governments and we all ate sticks and berries and ran from sabretooth tigers."
Serious. Check out the history of the Yangtzee and Ganges rivers going back almost 5,000 years, and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia at the very dawn of civilization. Cities are generally built where they are useful, not where they are safe.
Those with a Libertarian or Conservative leaning sometimes forget that Taxes purchase something useful for you: civilization.
The government diaster relief you deride so much makes civilization happen in North America. Just the cost of doing business here. Move to Somalia if you want to live someplace where there's no tax burden.
SoupIsGood Food
It occurs to me that one application of technology to ameliorate the less desirable effects of nature is in Early Warning Systems as built on top of a GIS. (Good example here)
Not to contradict Miletti, but there are very clear cases where technology in the configuration I described above has done real work averting disasters.
There's such a system deployed by the Civil Defense in Peru, that's one I know about. We're demoing another one at a GIS conference in Cairo next week, that's another. If I understand things correctly, even Homeland Security has done work in this area.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
This should be self-evident. As more and more people join us here on earth, they have to fill in the less favorable areas, since the favorable ones have already been taken. Of course, what humanity considers "favorable" is sort of dubious, as we see with the people in California living on top of the San Andreas fault, and with the people in New Orleans living next to the sea, below sea level. But weather doesn't need to change for the planet to become "more dangerous," we just need more people living in dangerous areas. And as we run out of less dangerous areas, the dangerous areas are all that will be left, so of course the global per capita danger level will increase.
rooooar
Planning so so poorly thought out, a kid playing SIM City would come up with better plans. And that is exacly my point. We have simulation software that is inextensive. Tons of historical data to pull from. We know how to design better levee systems, bridges and canals. But the political system fails us again and again.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
From an agrarian point of view the answer is obvious - river floodplain silt is usually excellent for growing (ask the Egyptians and the Dutch.) But how many of the people trapped in New Orleans were agriculturalists? I suspect none.
Living as I do at an elevation of 80M above mean sea level, on a slope with excellent drainage, I take a very philosophical view of this. But I can't help thinking that we are still organising our world according to the preoccupations of much less advanced societies- and that the time to start doing something was over a hundred years ago, but the longer we leave it the worse it will get. London and New York could suffer various degrees of damage when the Azores slippage occurs. The effect of losing two of the world's major financial markets would not be good, considerably worse than losing some refinery capability (if Bush wasn't making so much money out of the windfall profits to the oil companies, he _could_ ration US fuel supplies and reduce prices, but you cannot dole out access to cash and credit and keep a modern society running.) How much would it actually cost in real money - not virtual profits - to plan to relocate the world's major financial and trade centers to safer locations?
The present situation is predicated on the idea that the rich will always suffer minimally in disasters. If my house is swept away or flattened I will have several options as to where to live while it is rebuilt, while the poor won't. But there are disaster scenarios that impact the rich as well as the poor, by making their savings and investment worthless and creating a breakdown in society which will enable criminals to steal possessions - think of the Jews in 30s Germany. If we don't guard against these, we are truly asking for it.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
at least it's not boring here, like it would be in some 'safe' places. Adds a certain air of curiosity - you never know what next gigantic natural process will wipe out another batch of puny humans off the face of the earth.
You can't handle the truth.
It is certainly his fault that the disaster recovery wasn't handled well - the aftermath of Katrina was absolutely awful and Bush seemed asleep at the wheel. That is unforgivable. Disasters have happened all over the world this year - in Portugal and Romania, fire and flooding respecitvely. The people from other countries in Europe, and the governments of those countries, helped the victims. Spanish and French rescue efforts were underway very quickly when the fires in Portugal were blazing - yet in the USA, help was very slow coming from the US itself, and when Europe initially offered the US help, they were turned down - why? What the hell? What the hell is going on with Bush?
Don't criticise Slashdot readers for criticising Bush - they are quite right to. Slashdot's audience, being geeks, are generally more intelligent and well-informed than the average US consumer: Think about it - could there possibly be a reason why so many Slashdotters are criticising Bush? I'll leave you to ponder it.
Liberal Ontarians and French Quebecers are draining Western Canada's wealth. Stop them now! Support Western separatism.
.."statistics show the planet to be increasingly unsafe".. Um, I grew up watching Land of the Lost. Based on my observations, it's safer now. Much safer.
And New Orleans had plans to redo the levee's to Cat5 strength. Wouldn't have been completed until 2020 or so. Katrina got there first.
If the build takes 15 years, what are the odds of a Cat5 coming along within that timespan to put you back to square one?
I live in a town which has several layers of 'new' built on each other. When the town was founded, there was a small trader town named 'Drezdany' (old slawish for: those living at the river banks). To protect the bridge crossing the river, at the other bank a castle was built which subsequently attracted settlers around it. This small settlement was thus called Neuendresden (New Dresden), as opposed to the old trader town Drezdany, now called Altendresden (Old Dresden). :)
After several heavy firestorms were destroying Old Dresden, it got a completely new designed block layout, with wide streets and firewalls between the single houses. This then was called Dresden-Neustadt (Dresden New Town), thus turning the former New Dresden into Dresden-Altstadt (Dresden Old Town).
In the 19th century the town grow out of its city walls, creating new suburbs behind the old limits, so Dresden-Neustadt became two parts: Dresden-Innere Neustadt (Inner New Town) and Dresden-Aeussere Neustadt (Outer New Town). Dresden Altstadt kept its name, the new suburbs were instead called Vorstaedte (Suburbs) according to the direction they were: Pirnaische Vorstadt (suburb in direction to Pirna [another town]), Suedvorstadt (southern suburb) etc.pp.
In WW II, most of Dresden's Old Town got destroyed, and except for solitude buildings re-erected because of their representative or historical value, most of Dresden-Altstadt now is in fact a new town, even with a new block layout. To see the historic, old downtown, you have to go to Dresden-Neustadt (New Town).
As you can see: There is nothing impossible with naming a new town
In recent news, George Bush declared War on Natural Terrorism - a form of terrorism that takes affects through natural disasters. The enemy is yet to be located, but when that is done, it's marine deployment time.
Although this sounds impressive and devastating: "... 2.5 billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters between 1994 and 2003..."
The problem is the word "affected". I had a cold last year, was I one of the people "affected" by natural disasters? How are they defining whether or not someone was affected? You could say anyone who donated money to a relief fund was affected, or are they only referring to the number of people injured or that had property damage. What about someone who hid out in his bomb shelter for a week. Was that person affected? Does emotional disurbance count as being "affected"?
I'd prefer a concrete statistic, like number of people killed, number of homes destroyed. Saying that x people were "affected" doesn't tell us anything useful.
Reports like these remind me that we're not in the information age, we're in the data age. The information age will be next when we start compiling all this data into useful information.
Compaired to Venus? Mercury? Omicron Persei 8? I think not!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
The planetary hazards have been here for millions of years. I believe the collective human population to be increasingly stoopid.
States along the Gulf get hit by destructive hurricanes than California gets hit by destructive earthquakes: why is California spending so much more on mitigation than Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
Depending on how you look at it, California isn't mitigating more. Only 13% of Californians have earthquake insurance. That's clear indication that Californians themselves take a relaxed attitude about earthquakes.
Then he flew back to resume his vacation.
It's called the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It's been prophesied in the Bible, the Book of Mormon and by prophets and apostles old and new.
The entire city of New Orleans has been destroyed. Wiped out. This is an act of God, just as the Tsunami was in Asia.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Actually, they did get the memo years ago. But they thought that the first rule of risk management is don't talk about risk management.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
The population can grow as long as there is energy available to support it. Energy, and oil specifically allows us to insulate ourselves from nature's forces by building habitat, artificially increasing food production etc. Whether it is safe isn't even part of the equation.
When we no longer have the means to protect ourselves (i.e. oil runs out), then Nature will be far more punishing than a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake. Just imagine other cities in the state of New Orleans because there is no electricity, water, gas or food production. All of those comforts are entirely dependent on a shrinking supply of oil.
humans,
quit your bitching. You don't know how lucky you are.
out.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
What governmental disaster relief?
The New Orleans Times-Picayune (which in 2002: published this report which predicted much of the current disaster.) has a scathing open letter to the president that spells out a lot of the FEMA incompetence.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet.
All we need now is a comet to come crashing into the Earth before someone come to the conclusion that we live in a very unsafe solar system.
I just saved 15% on my auto insurance.
Without the barrier islands, New Orleans needs even bigger and stronger levees to stay above water. The existing system was intended to resist only a Cat 3 hurricane, and that was with the barrier islands in place to slow down the storm surge. With them gone, a relatively minor hurricane could swamp the city again. And minor hurricanes come through all the time. There might even be another one this year. So the city really can't be reoccupied until new, stronger, levees are in place.
There will be some rebuilding. The central business district and the tourist areas will probably be fully protected and rebuilt. There will be housing for oil industry and port workers, but probably not in the low-lying areas. But when rebuilding is over, the population of New Orleans will be much smaller than it is now.
A similar hurricane, in 1900, flattened Galveston, TX. A hurricane with 120 MPH winds killed 6000 people and levelled much of the town. The entire town, 500 city blocks, had to be jacked up several feet, and a huge seawall built. The jacking and filling job took eight years. Building the seawall took from 1900 to 1962. Sixty two years. And Galveston wasn't below sea level.
Ever after, Galveston was a smaller and less important city than it was before the 1900 hurricane.
New Orleans is built on delta silt, notoriously unstable and has been documented for decades to be slowly sinking, eventually turning into Venice of the Gulf. For decades the artifically channeled river continues to silt up, raising the water level ever higher, faster than dredging or levy improvements can check.
shh... don't tell holland that it is impossible to live safely on delta silt. They'd have to move their whole country and give up their elaborate system that supposedly protects them from storms.
Oh and by the way, the levees in New Orleans didn't fail. What failed where flood walls. You see the storm surge was higher than the flood walls, and it began to flow over the top of them. This flow ended up washing out the foundation of the flood walls and they collapsed.
Although the worst part of Katrina's storm surge didn't hit New Orleans (It was 30 feet in Mississippi, the highest ever recorded... higher than the Tsunami), but what did hit was higher than the system could cope with.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
There is a lot of talk and headscratching about the ferocity of nature, etc., but I would like to point out that much a lot of the deaths of New Orleans (and the tsunami as well) are caused by failure of society as well.
In both cases you have a lot of poor people living close by the coast and the governments that do not really care what happens to them.
If Katrina hit Amsterdam, for example, it would still be a disaster but not nearly as bad as NEw Orleans was. Thats because Amsterdam is the biggest city in Holland, and they spent the necessary money to protect themselves and take care of their environment, they make sure they are surrounded by farmland that can soak up flood waters very quickly.
However, it is obvious that New Orleans' levys were a low priority and all kinds of construction projects were being approved which destroyed the wetlands around the city. But what is most amazing is that there was no evacuation plan, there was no emergency response from the state or the federal government for several days after the disaster hit. The only way people could leave was if they had their own cars and money for gas, and the poor did not so they were stuck.
And bush sent the Guard in only four days after the disaster hit and then he sent them "to prevent looting" and not to help the thousands of people that were stuck in the flooded city. The governer could not send the LA Guard in because they are in Iraq.
Now there is a huge debate about whether these huricanes are caused by global warming. But even if we stop activities that contribute to global warming, there would still be natural disasters. That cannot be helped.
But what we can do is organise our society so we are able to prevent damage as much as possible and quickly help the victims if disaster strikes. That was obviously not done in this case.
I was watching a rerun on Friday(?) night on the Discover Channel. The documentary, updated that day for Katrina, was not new, and was a complete rundown of what would happen if a Cat 5 hit NOLA.
But they mentioned the other city in the crosshairs. New York City. It's in the elbow of two long pieces of land, both aimed at the Atlantic ocean.
If a hurricane comes up the water, which it will, NYC is going under as surely as New Orleans did. It's only a matter of time.
Will we move NYC?
Here's a video of a concrete house that's been through two hurricanes without a scratch. You can see blown out screens on the porch but the houses came out fine. This is actually the company headquarters of the company that makes the concrete dome kits in Florida (www.aidomes.com).
Concrete Dome
Both types of homes are cheap to build, will withstand far more wind than traditional bricks and sticks construction and are more energy efficient.
What else do both of those type homes have in common? It's very difficult to get them financed. You can't go through a traditional mortgage because Fannie Mae won't touch the loans, which means you have to get a portfolio loan like we did which is prime plus. Then you get to fight with the insurance company for coverage. Our house won't burn or get blown down, but the original quote was higher than for a conventional house!
As long as we have a such a backward attitude toward home construction and financing more survivable housing structures, then you can expect a lot of flying lumber every time a hurricane lands somewhere. We build the same type homes in danger areas, then act surprised when they don't survive.
True a concrete home will flood just like conventional construction but at least the shell will be in good condition. Rip out the insides, sand blast it clean, rebuild the interior. If you build it right you can even replace the HVAC ducts and wiring conduit to prevent mold growth. It'll be just like new.
These days you can actually watch the lumber in conventional homes get thinner by the day but we're just so stuck in that brick box with a tar paper roof mentality.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We need to act NOW, we should have started to act a loooong time ago. In the UK one of the reasons that petrol prices are so high is to discourage use, there are all sorts of other action being taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- it is not enough, but at least we are trying. The USA is doing nothing just in case it hurt's it's economy ... using the excuse that this or that effect is not 100% proven -- sorry: the big picture is well understood, the risks are so huge that to argue over uncertainties is irresponsible.
Sorry guys: time to wisen up; take a hit on your economy today or face many, many more things like this ... which will end up costing much, much more.
No: this is not a troll. My view is shared by many people in Europe. I know that citizens of the USA don't want to think about it, but the problem won't go away just because you shut your eyes to it.
Lobby your senator to ratify the kyoto agreement.
Imagine the insurance claims when a 2km asteroid plows into the Pacific. That 2004 was so costly in insurance claims is all the more reason to promote space industrial development. Hurricane Katrina is equivalent to ~100m asteroid, this is a localized disaster. Imagine this kind of damage on a national or planetary scale provided by a several km impactor.
As more people live in more coastal cities, resources from space (beamed power, comm, transport, eventually food and plastics) will provide fast response and rebuilding after disasters. Imagine the new power grid consisting of wire grids spread over an area taking microwaves from orbit. Or getting space-dropped shipments of grain anywhere on Earth.
Vernor Vinge's books feature a deep future where Earth has been repopulated several times after biosphere-destroying disasters. Carl Sagan said that the dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program. We need to work toward becoming a multiplanet species and to create industry in freefall.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
And Mitchel Cohen writes. . .
Actually, those funds were to be disbursed for fiscal year 2006. Iraq or no Iraq, the work would not have been done. And supposedly the levees that were breached last week were not on the list for improvement anyway.
If you can set aside your anti-Bush venom for a few moments, you might ask why Bill Clinton did not fix this problem back in the days of wine and roses. Nobody ever had a more fortunate time in the Presidency than his two terms in the 90's, what with all the budget surpIuses and peace and relatively minor terrorist problems. But he did fuck-all about it. Too distracted getting his dick sucked, I guess.
Does Clinton hate black people too? That's the logical corollary to all the accusations flying around about Bush.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I've had about $265 in donations. I don't need anymore. That will be plenty to keep my kids fed until we can get more help.
Assholes like Rick and Roll can easily go to my website and see that I'm not a crook... just a guy trying to make ends meet and raise a family. I got the help I needed... wasn't looking to raise a million bucks when others need help too.
As far as asking my extended family... they are in as much need of help as I am right now... so, that won't work.
Just remember one thing about giving money to Red Cross... a lot of the money the collected under the guise of assiting the victims of 9/11 never got anywhere near those people... it went to countries overseas.
And, all you cock-suckers who think America and the South "deserved what they got"... you just wait... your time is coming. Natural Disasters don't do politics. Only a complete moron would see this as retribution over Iraq or whatever. I thought you Slashdotters were smarter than that.
I guess not.
Personally, I don't live my life thinking everybody is out to get one over on me. But, that's what it is to live in the South. If you think the world is shit and everyone is evil, then that is all you will ever see.
All men aren't pigs... we just smell that way.
..but is there some rule that says it must be rebuilt below sea level, so it becomes another disaster-waiting-to-happen right from the start?
Just because it was built below sea-level it is not a disaster-waiting-to-happen. Holland is proof that you can have a system of levees and pumps and live safely on a river delta below sea level.
For example, they could drain Lake Pontchartrain to the low tide level like the Zeider Zee in Holland... and put up flood gates to keep the high tides out, lower the gates to allow water out of the Lake at low tide. And dredge the bottom of the lake to build the city high enough that water will flow down into the lake from the city... thus having passive flood control. And where you need pumps, use windmill to help pump water (so as not to be dependent on electricity).
You could also use dredged mud to expand the swamps around lake Pontchartrain so as to build a natural barrier to disperse the energy from hurricanes.
That's just one solution. There's lots of ways to make New Orleans safe... and safer than many other major metropolitan areas.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
>> It would have been much easier to fix the problems then, than after 9/11 and several years of recession. Exactly. After all, it's not like back in the 90s people didn't see 9/11 or the recession coming. That's why we all moved out of tech stocks before the crash and put those anti-hijack measures into place, right? From what I've seen in the news, it was Bush who cut funding to the levees and ignored pleas that more money was needed, it was Bush who sent half the National Guard abroad, and it was Bush who reoriented FEMA's priorities away from natural disasters. BTW, do you have concrete information that the levees were in bad shape under Clinton or do you just assume that if they were neglected now they must have also been neglected then?
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
There are lots of cities that don't need to be kept on life support 24/7 - the fact that New Orleans needed so much cash every single year should have been the first clue that maybe the planners should have rethought the city. Note that the city of New Orleans was declining in population (down some 2% and some between 1990 and 2000) - the leaders should have encouraged this trend rather than fight to reverse it.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
"Then what explains Bill Clinton's failure to fix these problems?"
...
It can safely be said the Clinton administration funded the levees way better than the Bush administration did. The Bush administration has slashed EVERY Army Corps of Engineer funding request for the levees since they came to power. They've been to busy funding Iraq, squandering money on biowarfare gear for fire departments in Podunk, Wyoming and directing pork to their rich, white Republican friends.
I especially love the fact the Bush administration allocated $100 million, and transfered a key Army engineer in Louisiana, to restore the marshlands in Iraq. $100 million for the wetlands in Iraq this year versus $87 million for New Orleans levees. Really screwed up priorities there, with 20/20 hindsight.
Fortunately for the Bush administration it probably can't be established if the breeches would have been prevented if they hadn't gutted Army Corp funding and personel for levee maintenance and upgrade though an independent investigation will be interesting. Its a certainty that slashing funding for them didn't help. The fact is levees, especially at the extent they exist around New Orleans, are expensive to maintain. Either you have to committ to maintain them, abandon New Orleans or do what the Bush administration did, let them deteriorate in the face of a surge in hurricanes and their intensity and have a catastrophic disaster.
Follows is a great run down from from factchecks.org which is a pretty nonpartisan outfit:
"In the past five years, the amount of money spent on all Corps construction projects in the New Orleans district has declined by 44 percent, according to the New Orleans CityBusiness newspaper, from $147 million in 2001 to $82 million in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30."
A long history of complaints
Local officials had long complained that funding for hurricane protection projects was inadequate:
October 13, 2001: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that federal officials are postponing new projects of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Program, or SELA, fearing that federal budget constraints and the cost of the war on terrorism may create a financial pinch for the program. The paper went on to report that President Bushs budget proposed $52 million for SELA in the 2002 fiscal year. The House approved $57 million and the Senate approved $62 million. Still, the $62 million would be well below the $80 million that corps officials estimate is needed to pay for the next 12 months of construction, as well as design expenses for future projects.
April 24, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that less money is available to the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees and water projects in the Missisippi River valley this year and next year. Meanwhile, an engineer who had direct the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Study a study of how to restore coastal wetlands areas in order to provide a buffer from hurricane storm surges was sent to Iraq "to oversee the restoration of the Garden of Eden wetlands at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, for which President Bushs 2005 budget gave $100 million.
June 8, 2004: Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the Times-Picayune:
Walter Maestri: It appears that the money has been moved in the presidents budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq , and I suppose thats the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees cant be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.
September 22, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that a pilot study on raising the height of the levees surrounding New Orleans had been completed and generated enough information for a second study necessary to estimate the cost of doing so. The Bush administration ordered the New Orleans district office of the Army Corps of Engineers no
@de_machina
So, humanity has settled all the really good land, and cheaper land is being settled by the poor as global population increases.
If a city's population increases 10% in 5 years, as people move off the land to seek jobs, the poor are going to buy the cheap land that noone else wants to buy - because when you've got nothing to begin with, having a job and a house is just brilliant, even if you're living below water level.
If there's been no inundation for 100 years, then it's never going to happen - right? And when you've got thousands of people who started with nothing and have built up their entire lives on that false belief, you end up with shock and disbelief and a deep-felt sense of betrayal.
You just lost EVERYTHING because of government inaction? No - you just bought the demo.
Why do these catastrophes affect the poor? Because they've put their entire lives into the opportunities that come from living near a population centre. They can afford to take the risk on marginal land, because it is better than having nothing at all - better than no hope at all. When the wind/wave/flood comes, they're back where they started.
Of course they're bitter.
With each breath in, a flower somewhere opens; with each breath out, a flower withers away. In between lies beauty.
It's called a rubber, in popular parlance. You folks would rather spin your little fantasies about technological solutions than stand up to the religious weenies and point to the real source of the problem: too many people, and the demonization of birth control by a bunch of farm state morons who think that technology means praying to God for rain.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
I'm sure Venice will be only too happy to help with gondolier training.
Actually I'm being more than half serious. New Orleans will never be the same again. Too many people will decide that the new lives which they will carve out for themselves elsewhere are not too bad. They'll prefer to stay where they find themselves rather than return to a radically changed situation which only has geographic location in common with what was their previous lives.
I disagree that the ACE "did their job well." Several articles -- Google gives me this one and this one -- are pointing out that the construction of the levees directly caused wetland loss, which made New Orleans more vulnerable to big storms. So if the ACE's job was to build levees, then I guess they did good. But if their job was to protect New Orleans, I'd say they did more harm than good.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Let me stress that not every new orleans person is involved in looting.
I'd also like to ask a simple question that most news reports I've read fail to address. You're stranded in a city that's virtually abandonned; you have no electricity and your supply of food has run out. Is it looting to break into a supermarket to feed yourself? What about to get up batteries for your radio so you can listen for emergency broadcasts?
Sadly most of those in this situation are already living at or below the poverty line, and are now vilified for simply supporting themselves. That said, those who are truly looting -- attempting to profit at the expense of the victims of this natural disaster deserve to be vilified. That includes not only the guy robbing people on the street, but any corporates and other businesses who're taking the opportunity to price gouge.
in less than a generation.. Globally.. Its already almost there in most of the developed world. If we can only survive the next 30 years or so, we will turn the corner and technology will start to catch up with the world's population.. Assuming we dont have a war.. If we do, we could be annihilated.. All of us.. And then some... Even the 75% of the people on Earth who know or care next to nothing about the US could end up dying..