Should we move our population centres inland ?

[OCgringo]

places that get hammered will always get rebuild if they can get insurance or a government bail-out,

 

the beachs of Malibu, fire areas in California,

beach areas that get hammered by hurricanes,

places the get flooded by the local river every few years,

 

 

All " disasters" that would be less if the same places were not rebuilt again and again

 

OC

[chuckwoww]

It looks like property values are soaring in places like Mobile and Baton Rouge. Makes sense.

[chuckwoww]

Among the Ruins, Something to Build On

 

By Christopher Hawthorne, Times Staff Writer

 

NEW ORLEANS ? It is hard to imagine that any city has ever looked quite the way this one does right now. If you took a major metropolis famous for its canals ? Amsterdam, say, or Venice, Italy ? and jerked it violently to one side so that half its neighborhoods were flooded and the other half left to rot and stink in the late-summer sun, you might begin to approximate what Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding have done to New Orleans and its handsome, peeling polyglot buildings.

 

Lurking beneath the putrid body of water that still covers more than half the city is a level of damage that won't be fully measurable for weeks or even months. But it seems clear that much, if not most, of the city north and east of its center will need to be razed.

 

 

http://tinyurl.com/8sufl

[gobbledonk]

OK, I left the pot to boil for a few days, and you've all raised some very valid points. I think Chuck's last post re the *degree* of the devastation in New Orleans is at the core of what I'm trying to get to : we cant relocate big population centres on a whim, but when Banda Aceh, New Orleans or a Phuket township is so utterly devastated by a natural disaster (and one which has a high probability of revisiting these low-lying areas), should we even contemplate rebuilding anything beyond the port and/or tourist facilities ? How much easier would it have been to evacuate New Orleans if the only occupants had been tourists and the associated hospitatlity workers ? Fantasyland, I know, but to put the population back in the same place seems a lot crazier.

 

The question of jobs and homes for the displaced is a huge one, but surely the worlds richest country can rebuild their own communities ? If anything, this is an opportunity for the Bush government to show that it can do more than simply funnel cash into its war on terror. If the US cant get people back on their feet, what hope Indonesia ?

 

I dont have the answer to the long-term poverty question, and I can appreciate that many people won't want to leave the city of their birth. My question is whether or not that city even exists any more, and whether anyone would want to live in a non-stop construction site where the ghosts of 2005 lurk around every corner. Utah / Kansas / whatever may not be 'excitement central', but I suspect that the survivors have had enough excitement in their lives.

[chuckwoww]

It looks like the French Quarter and the commercial buildings can be salvaged. But we won't get the real story on the suburbs until people get back and see what's left of their homes.

 

A lot of people talk about rebuilding as if it's just another obstacle to be overcome. It's great that people feel that way but false optimism isn't going to help anybody in the long term.

[rickfarang]

Just want to point out that even in a disaster such as this, some people always seem to be able to turn the situation to their own advantage.

 

[sayjann]

more R'n'R for George and his Dad i see..................

[Steve]

What I would like to see happening is the mayor, governor and the federal government meeting with the top businesses in the area to see what their concerns are in rebuilding their businesses. Which ones will come back, which ones plan to rebuild, what their obstacles are, etc.

I would like to see them offer some sort of special tax abatement, perhaps an amortization of costs to rebuild. Basically something to encourge businesses to get back and start. The real problem long term problems are the jobs that are lost for the masses of poor and unskilled people who make up the majority of the populace. An engineer, teacher, doctor or lawyer will always find employment. Either in N.O. or another city. The poor have no option. They don't have the money or the job skills to relocate to a different area of the country and have no choice but to go back to New Orleans. Plus its all they know. They were born and raised there and traveled very little outside of the area.

I'd like to see the government meet with the insurance industry lobby group to find out what they plan to do. I'm sure they are looking for ways out of it. Perhaps come up with an agreement like the tobacco companies or the asbestos companies where they agree to a set amount of money.

I would also like to see any awarding of city, state or government contracts for any type of rebuilding include jobs for the local residents as much as possible. Some of the jobs are highly skilled but there are also plenty of jobs that require no or little training. There are always people on construction sites whose job is just to transport things back and forth or hold the 'construction ahead' sign. The ones here get very high union wages for standing there with a 'slow' or 'stop' sign for drivers as they pass by. ::

 

Finally, this talk of 'moving' the population smacks a little of china. What about property rights? Can you tell thousands, if not millions of people they have no more property and they will permanently 'relocated' for their own good? America has a very strong property rights tradition that has been slowly eroding for over 200 years with 'imminent domain' and local governments forcing out people to build highways, etc.

[chuckwoww]

Biloxi?s new gamble

Gulf Coast casino businesses hope to rebuild on higher ground

 

Scott Waller, The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger

 

Numbers count

The Gulf Coast casinos employ 14,000 people and were paying $500,000 daily in gaming taxes.

 

That money is divided among the state, county and city governments.

 

Gaming and sales taxes pour $189 million ? or 4.7 percent ? into the state?s general fund, said Mississippi Sen. Percy W. Watson, D-Hattiesburg.

 

Casino companies are ready to return to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and begin rebuilding.

 

Gaming officials believe the casinos can be a catalyst as the area recovers from Hurricane Katrina. Just how much of a spark the casinos generate and how quickly they return lies squarely on the shoulders of Mississippi's legislature, said one casino executive.

 

"We could be open by New Year's," said Tim Hinkley, president and chief operating officer of Isle of Capri Casinos Inc., the only publicly traded gaming company based in Mississippi.

 

In order for the Isle to open so quickly, Mississippi's law stating where casinos can locate will have to change.

 

http://tinyurl.com/amz6e

[gobbledonk]

Gaming officials believe the casinos can be a catalyst as the area recovers from Hurricane Katrina.

 

That's what we need - a gambling-led recovery ...

 

I'm sure the casino owners would point to their employment record, and the aforementioned tax revenues, but does anyone have the figures on the cost to communities in terms of :

 

- crime, major and minor

- 'problem' gamblers and the accompanying domestic tragedy

 

Assuming that Louisiana has the best-behaved gamblers in the known world, how many of them will return to the Gulf so soon after the 'train wreck' ? My guess is that they will still be finding bodies 3 months from now, and I cant comprehend the sort of landfill they will need for the debris : the twin towers site required trucks and dozers for weeks on end - what will be needed to clean up an entire city ?

 

Even if it were an island off the coast, I doubt they'd get the punters they need.

 

CS, I take your point re the authoritarian tone of my initial suggestion. As a homeowner, I value my property rights, but how valuable is a lot of the NO land going to be anyway ? One report I saw indicates that 75% of residents had no 'flood insurance' : they were insured against 'storm damage', but the industry insists on a specific policy for flood damage. When Australian companies tried this on in Wollongong a few years ago, public outcry got enough pollies off their arses and the beancounters had to honour the 'storm damage' policies : it will be interesting to see how it pans out in NO. Assuming the worst, many homeowners may find themselves with a block of land that they cant *give* away ...

 

Moving back 'home' carries emotional connotations on top of the financial cost - many of the survivors of the 2003 bushfires in Canberra simply took their insurance payouts and went elsewhere, others were able to rebuild, but they all accept that it will never be the same again, despite a rebound in property values two years on.

 

Perhaps the media keeps showing us the worst ten or so blocks of NO, but the aerial shots make it look a thousand times worse than Canberra. The tragedy is that both natural disasters were predicted years before they actually happened.