Hopes Washed Away

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the situation in New Orleans has quickly devolved into chaos. Armed thugs are roaming the streets, looters are stealing everything in sight, and people are being assaulted in the Superdome. What makes this remarkably sad is that people are dying, and because this situation is happening here in the United States, not some Third World country. Despite all of the technology and resources this country has, the underlying infrastructure is so fragile.

One of the things that suprised me was how many people stayed despite the recommended evacuation warnings prior to Katrina. And many people stayed afterwards (and continue to stay) despite having lost everything. There were people who were in their homes with water several feet high, and yet they refused to leave when they were offered the opportunity. At first, this completely suprised me. My own personal response would have been to swim, walk, or crawl (whatever I was capable of) and made my way as far away from New Orleans as possible. But as I thought about it more, I realized that the reaction of these people was not that unusual. Many of these people are poor, and they cling to what little they still have.

Many political figures have been saying that disaster aid was delayed to New Orleans because most of the population is poor. In some cases, there are insinuations that race played a role. But I think that neither poverty nor race was a contributing factor. Instead, I think that the breadth of the problems in New Orleans was so enormous that people were either shocked, or didn't know where to begin. After all, how does one start fixing a city that is effectively now part of the Gulf of Mexico? Even FEMA's "worst case" scenarios didn't envision the levees breaking and the city being under water. The rapid breakdown in social order didn't help either. It's hard for rescuers to perform effectively if they are worried about losing their lives to gun-toting thugs.

Once all of the people have been rescued and evacuated, people will start discussing how to rebuild New Orleans. The question I have is whether New Orleans should be rebuilt in it's current location. The location of New Orleans is under sea level. The same levees that protect New Orleans from the sea also prevent the Mississippi from filling the area with silt. As a result, New Orleans is slowly sinking further. No matter how well we rebuild it, if we rebuild the city in its current location, it will always be susceptible to the same kind of damage that we are seeing now. Do we really want to chance the same toll on human lives in the future just to preserve the historic character of New Orleans?

My heart goes out to all of the people in New Orleans, from the people who have lost their homes to the rescuers working dilligently to save peoples lives. So many people have lost so much. It will take a monumental effort in order to bring some level of "normal" life back to New Orleans. It has been heartening to see so many people offering aid to the victims of this tragedy.