Pretty much…
nails it.
Which brings us to the other issue: People can’t live there. There are, incredibly, still people insisting they won’t leave, but they’re as out of their minds as they surely had to be to stay in the city in the first place. As was mentioned earlier, the vast scale of the flooded area and the completely destroyed infrastructure means that effective relief is impossible. Even if the capability did exist to somehow bypass the massive logistical challenges and try to feed and supply these people, they would die there. The place is a deathtrap, filled with desperate predators, swarming pests, and rotting corpses. The floodwater is so laden with chemicals that it could actually burst into flames, like the old Cuyahoga River. Plagues that we have not thought about for generations may rage down there. There’s nothing we can bring these people that will make it safe for them to stay in there in the coming months, and a lot of people don’t seem to understand that. Bush can’t fly down, wave his hands and part Lake Pontchartrain like Moses through the Red Sea. The situation is simply too vast to be effectively relieved.
Read the whole thing.
Uncategorized | tree hugging sister | 
September 1, 2005 10:30 am
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Hey, that guy’s from my old neck of the woods! Holla!
A smart conservative from Carbondale? I thought they only existed in memory or faded photographs.
It was stupid to build a city there in the first place….
Well, the early settlers here were not to brilliant on their site selection. The Brits were especially prone to settle in swamps.
“It was stupid to build a city there in the first place….”
Not at all. Say you’re Bienville and Iberville, sent out by Louis XIV in 1698 to take control of the vast new territory named after him. Where do YOU put a port to control access to the Mississipi? You put it exactly where they did put it: where the river’s still deep enough to bring ocean-going vessels; where access by land is limited to a few choke points to prevent attacks by the British, the Spanish or the local Indians; where the crescent bend makes attacking from the water extremely difficult and the lake gives you a third avenue of retreat; and where the tides from the Gulf and the currents from the river bring a supply of seafood in abundance and variety.
If putting New Orleans there was stupid, the same exact thing could be said of Venice, or indeed of almost the entirety of the Netherlands. Much of the logic behind it may not be there any more, but it was hardly irratiional at the time.
Especially since they’d already given it a shot at Pensacola (America’s FIRST colony, mind you)…and it didn’t work out well at all.
Man, we’d be America’s oldest city, if it wasn’t for frickin’ hurricanes.
Major Dad adds: “1559 ~ Cat 5 ~ Global warming!”
(I’d include: “El Niño!”)
THS, the oldest European colony in Florida was French, not Spanish: the name escapes me at the moemnt, but St. Augustine was indeed built to its south to get rid of it. It was populated primarily by Huguenots, and the Spanish burned it to the ground. What Pensacola and St. Augustine are forever fighting over is who is the oldest CONTINUOUSLY POPULATED city.
On the off chance you’re ever in the main lobby of the state capitol building in Tallahassee, you’ll notice that the Great Seal of Florida in the center is surrounded by five smaller circles bearing the coats of arms of the five governments that have controlled territory in Florida, with the fleurs-de-lis of France in the seniormost position (the others being Spain, Britain, the USA and the CSA).