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September 01, 2005
2005 - An Historic Year
The year 2005 just entered the history books - because of the flooding of New Orleans by the huricane Katrina.
This is a natural disaster on the scale of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. Almost 100 years later another large American city is rendered uninhabitable by a natural disaster and the effects on the city will be felt for decades to come. The Wikipedia article is a remarkable and up-to-date source of information on the subject. Anyone who doubts the value of the Wikipedia should end them now.
Comments: first, this is a major tragedy for the hundreds of thousands of people who used to live in New Orleans. The majority of houses in the city are flooded and thus, destroyed. With 80% of the city under water, this really does mean 80% of the housing (if not more) will have to be torn down.
Most of the multi-story buildings are located on what passes for high ground in the area and have not suffered from flooding. You can see an elevation map of New Orleans here. The historic tourist destinations (i.e. the French Quarter) are built on the high ground as well. But the vast residential areas are sunk.
The future of the city.
The gamble which was made 90 years ago to drain large sections of swamp near the old city and keep the water out with huge pumps (mostly of work of A. Baldwin Wood) has proved to be a bad bet. What were the odds of a powerful hurricane hitting New Orleans? Over a 100 year period, at least two major hurricanes have passed over New Orleans.
Several factors worked together to make this disaster. 1) Over the 90 years of pumping, the city has sunk deeper below sea level as ground water has been taken out. New Orleans is not built on bed rock. 2) Marshlands down river of the city have been shrinking for decades, due in part to levees which keep the silt from flowing into the Gulf. 3) The Gulf of Mexico frequently has hurricanes pass into and over it.
Note: I don't have a solution. While the simplest choice would be to abandon New Orleans and relocate the town, that isn't going to happen. Bigger, stronger levees and dikes? Emergency water control systems on Lake Pontchartrain like what was installed in London and in Venice?
My prediction is that New Orleans will rebuild. While many people will give up on the city and move out forever, many more will stay and new people will come to the city, drawn by cheap houses and jobs. The hope is that in the next decades the city and state will come up with better solutions to the problem of keeping the water out of New Orleans the next time a Class 4 or 5 hurricane passes over The Big Easy.
Update
This is a dire essay which predicts at least 40,000 deaths. The writer also argues that nine cities have been destroyed: New Orleans, population 1.2 million, Slidell, pop. 26,000, Bay St. Louis/Waveland pop. 12,000, Long Beach, pop. 17,000, Gulfport, pop. 71,000, Biloxi, pop. 50,000, Ocean Springs, pop. 17,000, Psacagoula/Moss Point/Gautier, pop. 42,000, and Mobile, pop. 198,000.
Is Mobile destroyed? Moss Point? Biloxi?
Further Update
The writer is unduly alarmist. Mobile is not destroyed and the death toll outside New Orleans is not likely to go over 500. I have no idea what the death toll will be inside New Orleans though.
Posted by rakhier at September 1, 2005 08:55 AM