Thoughts on the Disaster

I was in New Orleans in June 2003 for the AMS weather conference I attend each year. We stayed at the Hyatt across from the Superdome. I've seen pictures of it in the last 24 hours. Not much left of that very swank hotel.

After the conference session I walked through the French Quarter with my wife and son and took a ton of pictures. This may not be here much longer I told my wife when she asked why I was going crazy with the camera. No feat of ESP there...any Meteorologist would tell you the same thing.

Looking at the latest news tonight, it makes me wonder if we should just total New Orleans and move on. That's right, do not rebuild.

New Orleans was a disaster just waiting to happen. They built the city on soft sediment and then pumped water and gas and oil from beneath that sediment that caused the city to sink even more. Without millions of dollars of intervention by the Army Corps of Engineers, even the Mississippi River would have changed course and by passed New Orleans.

Coast lines are the most unstable chunks of land on our planet. They are constantly changing and that will not change. So, if we drain the wetlands that Mother Nature uses to protect the coast and fill the barrier islands with condos, we should accept the fact that a hurricane or a tsunami will come along and cause billions of dollars in damage and a great loss of life.

It may be the insurance companies that stop the madness by refusing to write policies along high risk coast lines.

There has been talk at conferences I've attended that the delay in allowing evacuated people back after a storm may cause fewer people to evacuate in the future. (I know, if my home was in such an area, I would want to get back and salvage as much as I could. Yes the power may be off and there may be glass in the street. But, I'm a big boy and can take care of myself.)

Much different situation tonight in New Orleans. A true catastrophe with no drinking water and deep flood waters, certainly not safe by any standard to go back to.

In the out lying areas though, it may be different. Keep people out of their homes just because the power is out and there is some debris in the streets and next time they will stay though the hurricane and then salvage what they can before leaving.

So, will we learn after this that if you build a city below sea level that a catastrophe awaits and that if you build multi-million dollar homes along a beach, without a wetland barrier to protect them, they will get wiped away?

Somehow I doubt it.

Later,
Dan