the obligatory katrina post

It was asked in the comments of the last post what Bodie's thoughts were on Katrina. I'm not sure what he thinks, but here's my $.02, just in case you were wondering...

Katrina, Katrina, Katrina. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? What do I think about Katrina? I think it was a massive hurricane that resulted in a horrible tragedy. Hurricanes happen. We’ve seen it year after year, and if you look at historical meteorological data, we’ve been in a hurricane lull for quite a while (until now, that is). It should be no surprise to anyone that a large hurricane hit the gulf coast. The lack of preparedness is what is so shocking.

I want to make it clear that I am in no way blaming the people that live there. Yes, they chose to live in a city below sea level surrounded by levees on all sides in a historic swamp. Yes, everyone knew that a hurricane could hit New Orleans. However, they had been lulled into a false sense of security by these levees. Why would the Army Corps of Engineers build levees to protect a city if there was a chance they could fail? Common sense makes people think that it would be silly to enable a city to grow with protections that wouldn’t withstand natural occurrences.

I don’t want to turn this into a political debacle. Democrats are saying that the Republicans ignored the problem and we need to blame someone. Republicans are saying that Democrats need to get over it and move on with the relief effort. In reality, both sides are partially right. The situation was handled poorly. People fucked up. We do need to move ahead with the relief effort. We also need to figure out what went wrong so something like this doesn’t happen again. We can’t stop natural disasters. We can be as ready as possible though.

Should New Orleans be re-built? No. Maybe it’s easier for me to say this because I didn’t live there, and I’ve never even visited. From what I understand, it was an amazing city, full of culture and life and music and art. It was also an extremely poor, depressed city. It was a city in a never-ending battle to control nature. What happens when we spend billions of dollars rebuilding it and another category 4 hurricane comes through? What if it hits a little further west this time and does even more damage? Do we simply keep rebuilding?

And no, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t rebuild it because it was poor. If the OC was in a similar situation, I’d say the same thing (okay, maybe that’s a bad example). What about San Francisco? I love that city. If it was in an area that had 8.0 earthquakes every 10-20 years, I would suggest that we not keep rebuilding it (or at least build it to be able to withstand the worst). It is well known that we cannot continue to hold the Mississippi in. (For a really good discussion of this, check out John McPhee’s The Control of Nature; one third of the book is devoted to the Mississippi.) How many times do we have to see this devastation? How much longer should we lead people to believe they are safe?

Here's a baby seal to make up for the depressing post.