New Orleans

[evangelion]

Re: New Orleans

Good question...I'm wondering the same thing.

[MasterWA]

Re: New Orleans

I did understand WHY they are not using the Military Bases they closed last week to house the people.
Most of them are like small towns with Schools & etc.Plenty of Space & the people won,t feel crowded in.

I see that Super-Dome thing is really going to be very bad.

[evangelion]

Re: New Orleans

The up close and personal footage of the looting is absolutely unbelievable. If you don't think you are doing anything wrong, then why are you covering your face as soon as you see a camera???!!!

[Yao]

Re: New Orleans

Bart actually has a point, albeit inadvertently. How smart was it to found a major city on the gulf of Mexico that lies 10+/- ft. below sea level?

Well, it's not as if cities have historically been just founded and built in a spot that has been evaluated and assessed for major risks in the way that a shopping mall or suburban housing development is built. Cities tend to grow over time, and that growth is fueled by natural resources and trade routes among other factors. In the case of New Orleans, it's right at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which was and is an excellent port into the "New World." Do you think the Europeans who settled there and built the city in a totally new and different environment halfway across the world from their native home could have predicted the changing global climate contributing to the increase in number and intensity of hurricanes hundreds of years into the future? Surely hurricanes were experienced in the early history of New Orleans, but obviously the benefits of the location outweighed the risk posed at the time, thus the city remained and grew into a prominent major U.S. city.

I might change your question to ask, how smart is it to move to an area now with a known history of major and relatively regular occurance of natural disaster, with no indication that the risk will diminish in the future? But even this is a poor question, as sometimes people just have to make decisions and take actions that oppose obvious safety logic for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which are financially related.

And it took 3 pages to finally get someone to post a sensible answer. I cannot believe this. Learn your history people...it is exaclty as cneill says here: cities have mostly been built on places where there was an economical reason for existence: a river, a delta, a place with natural resourcres, you name it.

As for the wooden houses: poor people cannot afford sturdy brick houses in the first place of course, and seeing that the South of America is relativly poor in comparison to the North, that is quite obvious. Another reason I've once been given (because even in rich disaster stricken areas wooden houses make up a larger percentage than you'd imagine) is that when your house gets destroyed, a wooden one is easier to rebuild. If I lived in the hurricane zone, I'd definitely opt for a wooden house instead of a brick house I think...in some areas the risk of losing your house is just too big...