Two years ago today, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana as a large Category 3 storm. While parts of coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama suffered the onslaught of the storm's surging waves and wind, most of the world's attention was paid, and is still being paid, to the City of New Orleans, where dozens of levee failures flooded most of the city.

More than 1,800 people were confirmed killed by Hurricane Katrina or in its wake, with 705 still missing, according to Wikipedia.

Literally millions of words have been written ascribing blame for the human failures that contributed to the loss of lives and property brought by this hurricane. The blame and blame-shifting continues to this day, and will be echoed, no doubt, long after the second-hand memories of the storm fade.

But this is not a post about past culpabilities, but those mistakes we are currently making in our all-too-human arrogance as we try to reclaim a disaster.

This is map of what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expected the Louisiana coastline to look like in 50 years, prior to the massive erosion and seafloor damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and also before the current fervor over global warming began predicting significant sea-level rise. The effects of Katrina and Rita have obviously shortened this timeline, and any sea-level rise that occurs will only hasten the demise of the city known as the Big Easy which is being killed, not protected, by the very levees and dikes that politicians seem so eager to keep building and rebuilding. Experts at LSU predict that the delta protecting New Orleans from a hungry Gulf of Mexico will be gone by 2090.

Several days ago, Presidential candidate Barack Obama unwittingly cited an appropriate passage from the Bible, even though, like most politicians, he drew exactly the wrong conclusions from the scripture he noted:

"Getting ready to talk to you today, I recall what Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount," Obama said at New Orleans' First Emmanuel Baptist Church. "He said, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock."

"The rains descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house. But it did not fall, because it was founded on the rock," he continued.

Most foundations and cities in America are built on rock, clay, or similarly durable soils, while New Orleans exemplifies the agonizing reality of the other house in that parable, the one that Obama didn't mention... that one made by foolish builders upon the sand, as noted in Matthew 7:24-27:

²⁴"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

The shattered fool's house in Matthew was built upon the sand.

New Orleans is built upon an even more unstable soil, silt, that is constantly compacting and sinking. What's more, that sinking, unstable soil is in a bowl below sea-level surrounded by the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Pontchartrain, bodies of water that are eating away the coastline at a rate of 25 square miles or more each year.

In September of 2005, I interviewed a geologist who was the former Dean of his southern university's Coastal and Marine Studies program. His closing, unsolicited recommendation was that New Orleans "should be largely abandoned as a city."

New Orleans is doomed city, a geographical mistake destined to fall to geologic and hydraulic forces beyond our control. It is sad they we are too arrogant to concede this failed city to the sea, and seem destined to waste the billions of dollars that could be spent moving the inhabitants to higher ground.

Instead we seem intent on enticing back the poor and the destitute with promises of rebuilding what should not be rebuilt, just to put their lives in danger once more.

8/31 Update: Over at Reason, Steve Chapman is on the same page:

Before the nation undertakes the extravagant project of rebuilding New Orleans and securing it from the elements, we might ask if there isn't a better option, not only for the nation but for the flood victims.

The Democratic debate over the future of New Orleans somehow passed over the instructive example of Valmeyer, Ill. In 1993, the town of 900 was swamped, not for the first time, by a rain-swollen Mississippi River. It hasn't been swamped since, because it's not there anymore. Rather than remain in a vulnerable spot, the residents voted to relocate their village to a bluff 400 feet above the river.

But no one wants to suggest similar discretion in Louisiana.

New Orleans, like Valmeyer, had long been a natural disaster waiting to happen. Most of the city lies below sea level, surrounded by water on three sides, and it's sinking. On top of that, it's steadily grown more exposed to hurricanes, thanks to the loss of coastal wetlands that once served as a buffer. It's a bathtub waiting to be filled.

As one scientist said after Katrina, "A city should never have been built there in the first place." Now that we have a chance to correct the mistake, why repeat it?

Gee, that sounds familiar.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:41 AM | Comments (34) | Add Comment
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As you are no doubt well aware of by now, the I35W bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during rush our this evening.

Dozens of vehicles have fallen into the river or the ground below; others have been crushed by the falling span. As I write this, authorities are stating that they can confirm seven people have died, that more than 30 are injured, and that 20 people or more are thought to be missing.

My heart goes out to those who have loved ones involved in this disaster, and I ask those readers who are religious to please consider saying prayers for those involved in this disaster, their families, the first responders, and attending medical personnel.

Update: James Lileks is continuing to update the story.

Worth noting are the stories of the heroism of ordinary people amid the disaster, as many people nearby and on the bridge rushed to aid others.

From Lileks at 10:21 PM:

I’m listening to a story on the news about a man who survived the fall – then ran to help the kids on the bus. I’d guess the fellow never considered what he might do in such a situation. Never thought about it much. Who would? But then you find yourself on a bridge that’s crashed down into the Mississippi, and you’re struggling with the seat belt buckle. It works , but your hands feel thick. You’re alive – which doesn’t seem that odd, really, you’ve always been alive, so this is just different, but you have strange thoughts about insurance and a mad swirl of panic and there’s blood in your hair but you can stand – and then you see a school bus. So you go to the bus. Of course you go the bus.

Most of us would. ItÂ’s a remarkable instinct that wells up and kicks in, and itÂ’s something you never expected to experience. As someone said about humans: WeÂ’re at our best when things are worst.

Would you have run to the bus? I'll answer for you: yes.

And from what I'm hearing, many did exactly that.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:15 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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