I might disagree with the guy on a lot of things, but Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) asks a good question: ‘What precautions do you take?’
Hastert has asked the very legitimate question of whether it’s reasonable to rebuild an entire metropolis after such a disaster:
It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that’s seven feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.“It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,” the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois.
Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA) was displeased, to say the least. Hastert later backed away from his statement, releasing another that said he was in fact not questioning whether New Orleans should be rebuilt, although I find it hard to read his prior statement as anything else.
I get the distinct sense that any legislation that comes up to rebuild New Orleans will pass unanimously, or nearly so; however, I’d urge a little more thought before signing a blank check. (But I guess I’m no senator yet, so I guess it doesn’t much matter what I think.)
Brian (Briandot)
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Categories: Hurricane Katrina
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September 1st, 2005 at 11:25:44 pm
She and Blanco were pretty pissed…
September 1st, 2005 at 11:27:52 pm
The city’s image might be an issue.
See this Yahoo headline
New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes
AP - 22 minutes ago
NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out, cops turned in their badges and the governor declared war on looters who have made the city a menacing landscape of disorder and fear.
September 1st, 2005 at 11:38:57 pm
The timing was bad - during the crisis is not the time to start having a debate on the reconstruction, and Hastert has legitimately been criticized for that.
However, the question should be raised at some point, before repairs start, as regards the wisdom of reconstructing housing in the lowest parts of the city so long as the levees remain at their current strength.
September 1st, 2005 at 11:44:15 pm
I expected some such statement from a backbencher moron…but for the Speaker to say it…wow, with bodies still adrift…really, really stupid of him.
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:03:49 am
Nevertheless, he’s absolutely right.
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:03:57 am
While I agree that this debate should be had, now is NOT the time, and the Speaker of the House is NOT the man to mention it first. Sheesh.
We need to wait until the rescue efforts are over before discussing whether rebuilding is a good idea or not. At least, the politcians need to.
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:04:52 am
I had a conversation this morning about the very question. I kind of think they should do the San Francisco thing: just build on top of it. Of course, they’d have to clear out all of the toxic sludge left behind after they flush out the water, but why not just smash everything down and build on top of it. It would give much-needed elevation, and you wouldn’t have to worry about where to put all the rubble. I’m not a civil engineer, so I’m completely ignorant of the logistics of such a plan, and whether it’s even feasible, but considering there really aren’t earthquakes (which would be the primary problem: liquefaction), it seems pretty reasonable to me.
But then, I’m not from New Orleans.
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:36:00 am
It should be pointed out that when New Orleans was built it wasn’t below sea level, but sunk there over the past couple hundred years.
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:36:12 am
So let’s say we build a system of levees that will definitely hold in any hurricane. What would be the point of building a levee to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane, when everything inside the levee would be levelled?
If New Orleans is to be rebuilt, will it consist entirely of concrete domes surrounded by an overengineered, impenetrable, super-levee, with pumps served by their own impregnable power station?
Or will we accept some level of risk?
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:37:40 am
Next time Moline and Rock Island, Ill are flooded by the Mississippi River, I hope Hastert has the balls to tell the citizens of his state not to re-build.
Denny is a dickwad. New Orleans is the largest port in the country and is of strategic importance economically. What are we going to do? Abandon it?
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:47:00 am
actually I think some towns in Ill. were moved uphill after the floods in the 1990’s
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:21:56 am
They were. 1993 was a bad year for riverside towns in the Upper Midwest. Or a good year, if you consider reconstituting in a safer location a good thing.
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:34:33 am
Iron-
So I guess re-building New Orleans with the proper levees would probably be cheaper than moving the entire city (including port).
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:39:52 am
I am a New Orleans native and I just wanted to chime in. The original city, the French Quarter and American Sector both fared remarkably well and did not sustain flooding. It was all the expansion out into the swamps over 200 years that has caused most of our city to be in such a danger zone. Although, we have been trying for years to get better levees. I agree that some area’s probably should be filled in, however, such a solution is only temporary, because the entire region is sinking. Without silt from the river to replenish it, the region is on a perpetual slow decline into the water.
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:47:00 am
I read in a WSJ article what happened to Galveston after it was destroyed in 1900: close to a quarter of the residents were dead, and the entirety of the island had been submerged: part of what stopped some of the damage was debris from buildings that simply built up as they were pushed across the island. But those who remained were determined to rebuild, and so they a. built a 10 mile long and 17 ft high seawall and b. raised the entire city by rebuilding houses up one floor and filling the area beneath with wet sand.
Interestingly, some years before, the nearby town of Indianola, TX had suffered heavy losses from a hurricane and decided to rebuild; they were hit badly again 11 years later and after that second incident (while they were still in the midst of rebuilding), they decided to abandon the city.
Which example do you think New Orleans will follow?
September 2nd, 2005 at 3:26:34 am
Another interesting data point in this debate is that the levee that failed was not actually a levee, it was a flood wall. And according to this nytimes.com article, the 17th st. canal was one of the most recently upgraded parts of the system. Though the reporter seems to totally miss the implications of this.
As an engineer, what this tells me is that the mechanism of failure was not understood. There was probably some kind of resonance set up, or a low-cycle fatigue on the wall that wasn’t taken into account by the designers. The important thing is that this gives no confidence that some hypothetical “category 5″ protection system would work as designed. In systems like this, the complexities are what get you - there’s always something else you didn’t take into account. It’s like what the mathematician in Jurassic Park was always saying.
September 2nd, 2005 at 9:25:42 am
We’ll be asking the same questions when Las Vegas runs out of water and when the New Madrid fault–potentially much worse than the San Andreas–rips through Middle America. Will our answers be the same then?