Re: OT: followup on New Orleans - disgraceful


"Anthony Fremont" <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:XiiSe.30689$Nx.674@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> > The electric utilities, phone companies, and all other utilities
> > should just tell people that they WILL NEVER PROVIDE SERVICE to the
> > flooded area. Not for any reason, ever again. There should be no
>
> Since your power was off for days, perhaps they should have told you the
> same. What about the idiots building on cliffs, the sides of mountains,
> or earthquake faults that are GUARANTEED to move?


Indeed, cities shouldn't be built on top of fault lines either. We should
probably slowly and as painlessly as possible relocate those people to
better locations. However, if the "big one" ever does come along for those
locales, that is an opportune moment to relocate en masse.

New Orleans (currently "Lake New Orleans") is a rather uniquely vulnerable
city. It is below sea level, surrounded by water on all sides (by water
which is above sea level), is rapidly subsiding, and it sits right in
hurricane central. As far as I am aware, these factors make the large city
unique on the entire face of the globe.

Realize that there is no such thing as hurricane immunity. There is only
hurricane resistance. Engineered safety systems cannot be as reliable as
passive or inherently safe systems. Hurricanes are very powerful.

Further complicating this mess is the wetlands to the south of the city are
naturally deteriorating. The wetlands help to protect the city from open
ocean storm surges, as well as to help reduce the energy of incoming
hurricanes. Unfortunately for Lake New Orleans, these wetlands are dying.
The whole area is naturally subsiding, meanwhile sea levels are rising due
to global warming. Small beaver like creatures (which as I understand it
were imported from South America back in the early parts of the 20th century
to help create a fur trade, but have few natural predators so have
multiplied extensively) are eating and killing the natural vegetation that
makes up the wetlands. Once the vegetation dies, the roots rot and the dirt
becomes especially easy to erode any time a storm comes through the area.
Additionally every time a hurricane comes through, the storm surge from the
ocean dumps a whole bunch of salt water onto the wetlands. The plants are
subsequently killed by the salt, thus further contributing to erosion.

Federal funds are currently being squandered in a rather futile effort to
"rehabilitate" the wetlands so as to continue protecting New Orleans.

The levees are also a major vulnerability. In this day and age of
terrorism, the floodwalls and levees are vulnerable to both natural problems
as well as sabotage, explosives, and bulldozers on a rampage. The 17th
street canal floodwall breach for instance was of a thin concrete and steel
barrier only around one to two feet thick. Even if the floodwalls and levee
system is upgraded to normally withstand category five hurricanes, what is
stopping a malicious individual from dumping explosives into the canals on
the interior side (the side with water in it) of the floodwall during a
hurricane that would not normally be expected to breach the walls? During
times of high water, levees and floodwalls are rather like an inflated
balloon. All of the water is pressing against the wall, but the structure
is ordinarily strong enough to hold the flow back. Once even a small breach
is made, the whole structure becomes weaker, and the hole expands to a much
larger size. Ultimately the breach isn't realistically repairable until the
water stops gushing past. The failure is much like popping an inflated
balloon with a pin. The initial hole that is punched in the system is very
small, but it critically weakens the structure that is holding back
significant pressure. Once the whole is made, the structure is made weak,
and a large tear rips through the balloon. Levee systems are notorious for
failing at the most inopportune moments, and there is nothing that we can
realistically do about it until all the damage is already done. A city
can't realistically protect many tens or hundreds of miles worth of
artificial and weak levees and floodwalls.

Given all of these considerations, it is pretty much guaranteed that
someday, New Orleans will be hit with the same type of problem it suffers
from today. Next time the residents might not be so lucky. This time the
hurricane made a quick turn north when it wasn't forecast to do so, and peak
wind speeds substantially fell shortly before landfall. Next time, it
doesn't have to do that, all the wood structures (IE: houses) could be
utterly destroyed, simultaneous with widespread flooding. Under those
circumstances, anyone not killed by the wind damage would most likely drown.

Previous forecasts of the worst case scenario make predictions of
25,000-100,000 deaths. Next time, New Orleans may not be so lucky. All of
these future deaths and cases of wholesale human suffering are fully
preventable. If I were the governor of Louisiana or the president of the
USA, I couldn't possibly sleep at night knowing that if I allowed people to
rebuild New Orleans that someday (who knows when, but surely someday) huge
numbers of people's lives would be needlessly lost. I would consider myself
at least partly responsible for their deaths and their suffering. Hurricane
Katrina wasn't really a natural disaster at all, it was a disastrous failure
with fatal consequences of civil engineering and urban planning. This whole
mess could have been prevented, and it was well predicted long before it
occurred. A true natural disaster is both unpredictable and cannot be
prevented.

Sometimes it is best to put hubris aside and cooperate with mother nature
instead of trying to fight her. New Orleans was probably the most
vulnerable large city in the nation, and now we have been unwillingly
presented with an opportunity to learn from our past mistakes and relocate.
We should take this opportunity, future lives depend upon it.


.

Relevant Pages

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