Too Many People in Nature's Way

Ant writes "Wired News report that the dead and the desperate of New Orleans now join the farmers of Aceh and the fishermen of Trincomalee, villagers in Iran and the slum dwellers of Haiti in a world being dealt ever more punishing blows by natural disasters... ... "We rely on technology and we end up thinking as human beings that we're totally safe, and we're not," said Miletti, of the University of Colorado. "The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet." By one critical measure, the impact on populations, statistics show the planet to be increasingly unsafe. More than 2.5 billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters between 1994 and 2003, a 60 percent increase over the previous two 10-year periods, U.N. officials reported at a conference on disaster prevention in January. Those numbers don't include millions displaced by last December 2004's tsunami, which killed an estimated 180,000 people as its monstrous waves swept over coastlines from Indonesia's Aceh province to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, and beyond. By another measure -- property damage -- 2004 was the costliest year on record for global insurers, who paid out more than $40 billion on natural disasters, reports German insurance giant Munich Re. Florida's quartet of 2004 hurricanes was the big factor. But generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way, said Thomas Loster, a Munich Re expert. "More and more people are being hit," he said..." I'd also like to point out a project here to find housing for Katrina's victims; it tries to combine lists of sites offering housing, and do a meta-search.

Re:Read The Fine Print

[Doc Ruby]

Insurance companies are subsidized by us, the taxpayers, to offer flood insurance in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. It's an extremely lucrative business. Most homes of people above the poverty line (maybe 50%) were insured. And this insurance company, Munich Re, is a reinsurance company, which insures lots of retail companies around the world. So they're hit by every disaster that comes along. And of course FEMA and other federal aid is insurance paid by us, the taxpayers, that our politicians siphon off for other pet projects when they can downplay the priority of the hurricane risk.

Really, you're talking out your ass. This disaster isn't some videogame debate. So check your facts first, before you post more jive. The next disaster that strikes your house needs to be mitigated by systems like this, and you're only making it harder for us to help you, too.

Re:Building housing 20 feet below sea level.

[DenDave]

But the problems are far from over... The old sand levees are old and weak in many areas due to dryness of the soil/sand. This cause them to blow away or sink. There are major concerns over the current level of protection and the governement has started to investigate emergency responses. Last week members of parliament have asked the relevant minister(s) of government to prepare a presentation to the house about the current response strategies.

Re:Isn't the bigger problem

[wk633]

I don't think the problem was a breach of the levee. What the levees can't do is protect you from water from above. In fact, they serve to keep the water in. At least that's what I remember from a documentary I saw over a year ago, which predicted exactly this situation. Which I could remember the title.

Re:From the captain-obvious department

[nickos]

It's interesting to read about why a settlement developed in that area - from wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

"The site was selected because it was a rare bit of natural high ground along the flood-prone banks of the lower Mississippi, and was adjacent to a Native American trading route and portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John (known to the natives as Bayou Choupique)."

1998 Coast 2050 Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1998, most of the parties in Louisiana agreed on a plan to let the silt from the Missisippi river rebuild the barrier islands and the coastal wetlands and to strengthen the levee system. It was called Coast 2050. It would have cost $14 billion. In hindsight, this is a small sum compared to losing a major city.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/opinion/02fische tti.html?n=Top%2FOpinion%2FEditorials%20and%20Op-E d%2FOp-Ed%2FContributors [nytimes.com]
http://www.coast2050.gov/watermarks/wrda.htm

Re:Not Bush's fault that Katrina happened, BUT...

[CockblockTheVote]

but the states can't call up their national guard when the fed has taken them to iraq. so did the state of LA screw up by letting bush take the NG to iraq?

Re:Population

[TapeCutter]

Nobody can say if Katrina was caused by global warming, but global warming will tend to impart more energy to the atmosphere (storms, high winds). I live over in Australia and had seen documentaries about New Orleans venerability over 10yrs ago, yet the nation was unprepared?

The scientific community is doing a lot of arm waving and unified declarations, basically saying Humans are an endagered species. The biggest threat ever to mankind and yet most US (and Australian) polititians would prefer not to look at it, let alone acknowlage it. How many times does the media report that the Global demand for grain has outstripped supply five years running and that reserve stocks have fallen by 50% since 2000. People are either not interested or don't understand that the biggest dangers from increased CO2 is not rising sea levels and extreme weather. The biggest and arguably most imminent[sic?] dangers are prolonged crop failures and acidic oceans.

Re:Maybe About time

[PlusFiveTroll]

People talk about global warming and how it can change weather, but many steadfastly refuse to look at any weather history...

Galveston Hurricane of 1900 [wikipedia.org]

It was a hot year in the US in 1900 with may people dying of heat stroke, the waters in the gulf were above 90 and then a huge hurricane erupted smashing in to Galveston. No one back then railed about how we need to stop burning coal. No rallies to stop people from driving there SUV's.

Unless we drop our planet in to ice age conditions we are going to have hurricanes, thats just part of living on an eastery coast line. Armchair Envro-ecologist are addressing the wrong problem. Let me yell this to get the point across

[voice: yell] CARBON EMISSION IS NOT THE ISSUE, BEACH AND WETLAND EROSION IS. [/voice]

Saying this hurricane was caused by or made stronger by global warming shows your misunderstanding about the nature of mans destruction of nature. Greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is the least of our worries. Building huge levees the distance of our rivers should be a greater concern, it stops yearly flooding, but aggrivates the great floods, channeling billion of gallons of water at high speed down river. At the first weak place in one of the levees, destruction is certian.

The faster moving channeled water also carries sediment far out into the gulf, barrier wetlands and islands suffer. The wetlands subside and wash away in to the ocean, and all of the sudden you have ocean front property where you shouldn't, and that property has NO protection from storm surge.

So I recommend we keep blaming global warming, and not focusing on the real problems, so when the next natural disaster occurs we can have thousands more dead.

Re:From the captain-obvious department

[ultranova]

Actually, that's not true. The Sumerians consistently rebuilt in the same spots after (constant) floods. Same with the Egyptians.

Um, floods of Nile were not disasters to Egyptians. They fertilized and watered their farmlands. Those floods came each year at the same time and rose to the same height; they were the source of Egypts power and riches, not negative in any way.

Or did you perhaps mean some other kind of flood ?

Re:This is what happens

[cold fjord]

Lets just add in some of the details from the article [reuters.com] so that nobody is confused by your shorthand:

Accustomed to being a rich donor rather than on the receiving end of charity, the United States initially seemed reticent about accepting foreign aid, but later said it would take up any offers. The hurricane devastated New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast, killing hundreds and possibly thousands.

"Anything that can be of help to alleviate the tragic situation of the area affected by Hurricane Katrina will be accepted," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

"America should be heartened by the fact that the world is reaching out to America at a time of need," he added.

Earlier, President George W. Bush said in a television interview that the United States could take care of itself.

"I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it," Bush told ABC's "Good Morning America."

McCormack said there had not been a change of position over accepting foreign aid and White House spokesman Scott McClellan also said later the United States would take up offers of help.

The State Department said offers so far had come from Canada, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Britain, China, Australia, Jamaica, Honduras, Greece, Venezuela, the Organization of American States, NATO, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, South Korea, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Assistance ranged from medical teams, boats, aircraft, tents, blankets, generators and cash donations.

State Department officials said it was likely some of the offers would not materialize and, as a wealthy nation, the United States would be uncomfortable taking funds from poorer countries.

Re:Not Bush's fault that Katrina happened, BUT...

[evol262]

955,609 (about 36%) of our total Active Duty/Reserve/National Guard forces of 2,656,300 have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan during this period. 651,622 (24.5%) have one deployment during this period, and 303,987 (11.4%) have deployed more than once.

For active duty, 708,428 (48.2%) of the force has deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. 494,482 (33.6%) have deployed once, while 213.946 (14.6%) have deployed more than once.

For the National Guard and Reserves, 247,181 (20.8%) have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Sound like 10% to you? No. We're at 40% commitment over the next 3 years (including rotations). Start using a more reliable source.

Times-Picayune Op-Ed

[EccentricAnomaly]

What governmental disaster relief?

The New Orleans Times-Picayune (which in 2002: published this [nola.com] report which predicted much of the current disaster.) has a scathing open letter to the president [cnn.com] that spells out a lot of the FEMA incompetence.

Re:From the captain-obvious department

[TrevorB]

Photos of entire subdivisions with each house sporting what appears to be a bank vault that serves as a safe room demonstrate what can happen when people actually care about what might happen.

So the people so poor that they're living paycheck to paycheck, unable to build a "bank vault" to protect themselves in, or even have the common decency to own a car and be able to fill it with expensive gas didn't care enough to live?

Those bank vault storm shelters were completely paid for by the goverment, their either subsidized or paid for in full by the residents of the suburbs, am I right?

New Orleans itself is in the same situation, living "paycheck to paycheck". They've been begging for federal funds for years before this happened to upgrade the levees. Those funds got redirected to Iraq for the past two years.

(Rant considerably more nasty before editing, consider yourself lucky... :)

Re:Maybe About time

[Solder Fumes]

China also has 1.3 billion people, bringing the total pollution output to approximately half of the U.S. Your figures are also outdated, the last measurement I've seen is 2.72 per capita in 2002. China's emissions have grown 30% in the last decade, and they are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol. It is a runaway situation and while U.S. companies continue to acquiesce to EPA emissions requirements, China is fast approaching a situation where they will be the top polluter and no way to halt the pollution without a massive economical effect. Ignoring China at this stage is pure folly.

Re:Times-Picayune Op-Ed

[cluckshot]

The National Geographic spelled it out in Oct 2004! This disaster is about 1 part natural and about 9 parts man made suicide.

It begins with the city of New Orleans sinking into muck by natural processs of settling. It continues with the flood control stopping more muck from recovering this in the name of flood control. All of that might have been bad enough but then came the oil men. The Oil Industry removed from the region enough Oil, Natural Gas and Brine to sink the region at nearly a foot a year. No amount of levees and preparation can recover us from this damage. If we slake our thirst for energy the area will continue to sink.

For those who don't know, when you withdraw oil and gas, somtimes 100 times the amount of material withdrawn for use is withdrawn as brine or other stuff. Sometimes it is more. The Norphlet structure of southern Alabama, Mississippi, Most of Lousiana and part of Texas is actually sliding at about 1 foot a year into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Oil and Gas extraction. This is causing earthquakes and much more. Nearly 1/2 of the State of Lousiana is sinking into the Gulf for this reason. Sure the US Army Corps of Engineers flood control efforts are making this worse but the culprit is Oil/Gas operations. The loss of land here is due to the industrial activities here. I am sure somebody will disagree but they cannot change the facts here. I am not against Oil/Gas production. I just report what is going on.

The situation in New Orleans is definitely one of FEMA Incompetence to the point of Criminal Negligence. For example they have yet to place a call to the civilians to ask for small boats to handle the situation. This is our Dunkirk but nobody is calling for the boats. Make no mistake this is the Bureaucratic mentality at work here. Bureaucracy is probably the only force on the planet able to destroy the human race.

The FEMA and other government types have also neglected that as an echo of the situation the trucking of the South Eastern USA is shut down for lack of fuel. This is seriously hampering the recovery and threatens mass civil disruptions and possible mass starvation. The situation is most serious.

Re:From the captain-obvious department

[SnapShot]

Flood insurance is basically government welfare. In the U.S. private insurance companies don't provide flood coverage only the government provides it [ National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) ] at highly subsidized rates.

Nothing pisses me off more than a Republican in a McMansion living on a flood plain bitching about the "welfare queens".

Re:From the captain-obvious department

[mrchaotica]

True, it can get along fine, but the next major river city is Saint Louis. What, praytell, should they do with the warehousing of the goods going from the river out to sea, and visa versa? The oil from the Gulf going to the refineries? There is not a port that can take up the slack in the meantime.

It sounds like you're saying we should rebuild New Orleans because it could be done faster than building a new port from scratch. Here's news for you: for all practical purposes, New Orleans is totally destroyed. Considering that they'd have a two-month head start (the time it'll take just to pump out the water), building a safer port from scratch would be faster!

Ok, that's true. I don't know about "notoriously unstable," but it's definitely not safe and sound. Guess what? Texas is sinking too. Most of the places on the Gulf are. People prevent flooding, and it sinks. We caused this problem, and it's not restricted to New Orleans.

I don't understand -- how is that an argument for rebuilding New Orleans? It sounds like one against it!

Yes we need port facilites at that specific location. The nearest major port city on the river is Saint Louis. New Orleans is the only location where we can warehouse river good and goods from the Gulf for redistribution.

No, it's not. Gulfport and even Mobile are close enough to the Mississippi to work, too.

The cost of constructing a port on pilings in the Gulf would be extreme. Offshore derricks aren't safe, and the city wouldn't be either. What happens if there's tectonic movement? Do all the rail trestles break? Do you seriously expect the cost of such a feat of engineering to be less than rebuilding New Orleans 3 times? This isn't even mentioning the tourist economy, location of the airport, business travel, etc.

He wasn't talking about building a city there, just a port! The city is what the rail trestles connect to, and would be on dry land (above sea level).

I dare you to get flood insurance for a home on a floodplain. Really. Yes, the barrier islands are an idiotic place to build, but people simply cannot get insurance, unless you want it federally mandated. What about all the people who can't afford it?

That's such a braindead question I can hardly believe I need to answer: Obviously, the people who can't afford it shouldn't live there! They should live somewhere else where they can afford it. Incidentally, this applies to everyone on earth, not just poor people in New Orleans.

I agree with this, in principle, but a city will simply not succeed without convenient access for tourists/normal workers. See above. Unless you want this to be a corporate town...

Exactly! Tourism has nothing to do with shipping, and by putting the port in the low areas and the rest of the city in the safer, high areas you make plenty of room for tourism that doesn't have the ugly port in the way.

Maybe it's because taxes are a lot higher? Because earthquakes happen a lot more than Cat4/5 hurricanes hit major cities? Since people there are, by in large, much wealthier than in the South? I assure you, people the don't WANT to lose everything.

Then they should raise taxes! And if the poor people in the South really don't want to lose everything, then -- as I already said -- they should leave. That's just common sense!

Re:From the captain-obvious department

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody smack that boy with a clue by four.

a) The descendant of slaves requires M instead of m

b) You obviously aren't a Bugs Bunny fan

c) Anybody who goes looking for, or is quicker than the average individual to spot and or claim racism is a racist, having made one's skin color a more important factor than those around him.

Re:Blame Bill Clinton

[demachina]

"Then what explains Bill Clinton's failure to fix these problems?"

It can safely be said the Clinton administration funded the levees way better than the Bush administration did. The Bush administration has slashed EVERY Army Corps of Engineer funding request for the levees since they came to power. They've been to busy funding Iraq, squandering money on biowarfare gear for fire departments in Podunk, Wyoming and directing pork to their rich, white Republican friends.

I especially love the fact the Bush administration allocated $100 million, and transfered a key Army engineer in Louisiana, to restore the marshlands in Iraq. $100 million for the wetlands in Iraq this year versus $87 million for New Orleans levees. Really screwed up priorities there, with 20/20 hindsight.

Fortunately for the Bush administration it probably can't be established if the breeches would have been prevented if they hadn't gutted Army Corp funding and personel for levee maintenance and upgrade though an independent investigation will be interesting. Its a certainty that slashing funding for them didn't help. The fact is levees, especially at the extent they exist around New Orleans, are expensive to maintain. Either you have to committ to maintain them, abandon New Orleans or do what the Bush administration did, let them deteriorate in the face of a surge in hurricanes and their intensity and have a catastrophic disaster.

Follows is a great run down [factcheck.org] from from factchecks.org which is a pretty nonpartisan outfit:

"In the past five years, the amount of money spent on all Corps construction projects in the New Orleans district has declined by 44 percent, according to the New Orleans CityBusiness newspaper, from $147 million in 2001 to $82 million in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30." ...

A long history of complaints

Local officials had long complained that funding for hurricane protection projects was inadequate:

October 13, 2001: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that federal officials are postponing new projects of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Program, or SELA, fearing that federal budget constraints and the cost of the war on terrorism may create a financial pinch for the program. The paper went on to report that President Bushs budget proposed $52 million for SELA in the 2002 fiscal year. The House approved $57 million and the Senate approved $62 million. Still, the $62 million would be well below the $80 million that corps officials estimate is needed to pay for the next 12 months of construction, as well as design expenses for future projects.

April 24, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that less money is available to the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees and water projects in the Missisippi River valley this year and next year. Meanwhile, an engineer who had direct the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Study a study of how to restore coastal wetlands areas in order to provide a buffer from hurricane storm surges was sent to Iraq "to oversee the restoration of the Garden of Eden wetlands at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, for which President Bushs 2005 budget gave $100 million.

June 8, 2004: Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the Times-Picayune:

Walter Maestri: It appears that the money has been moved in the presidents budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq , and I suppose thats the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees cant be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

September 22, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that a pilot study on raising the height of the levees surrounding New Orleans had been completed and generated enough information for a second study necessary to estimate the cost of doing so. The Bush administration ordered the New Orleans district office of the Army Corps of Engineers no

Re:Important.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I did look it up. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/07/99071 2080500.htm [sciencedaily.com]

And I found you were wrong. It is a natural phenomenon. You are a complete moron.

I wasted 45 seconds of my life to find this for you.That's 45 seconds you owe me!

Re:As long as there's oil...

[nathanh]

When we no longer have the means to protect ourselves (i.e. oil runs out), then Nature will be far more punishing than a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake. Just imagine other cities in the state of New Orleans because there is no electricity, water, gas or food production. All of those comforts are entirely dependent on a shrinking supply of oil.

No, they are not entirely dependent on oil. In the USA, oil powers only 14% of your power plants, which is a large chunk of your energy usage. Many countries use less oil than the US, relying instead on water, wind, coal or nuclear. Cars can be converted to run off ethanol, biofuels, and even electric power. Admittedly right now it's at a slightly higher cost than oil, but it's not a stupidly higher cost. It's close enough that even now you have some people in extreme situations choosing non-gasoline vehicles.

There are plenty of energy sources waiting in the wings. Oil rules the roost now because it's cheap, not because it's indispensible. Alarmist predictions about the end of the world once oil runs out are plain silly.

Actually, it will stabilize, then start to SHRINK

[ultraworld]

in less than a generation.. Globally.. Its already almost there in most of the developed world. If we can only survive the next 30 years or so, we will turn the corner and technology will start to catch up with the world's population.. Assuming we dont have a war.. If we do, we could be annihilated.. All of us.. And then some... Even the 75% of the people on Earth who know or care next to nothing about the US could end up dying..

Re:Bricks and sticks construction

[NaturePhotog]

That may be for an odd-ball project like sticking a manufactured home on top of something else, but for a normally framed house, steel studs are a great way to go, only slightly higher in cost than wood studs. One of the local Habitat for Humanity [mtdiablohabitat.org] affilates has done steel stud construction, and Habitat builds houses very inexpensively (not even counting the whole volunteer labor thing).

Re:Bricks and sticks construction

[NaturePhotog]

Yep. As I posted about earlier [slashdot.org], I'm in the process of building an addition to my house, and I used insulated concrete forms [quadlock.com] (ICFs) for the foundation. If I were building a house from scratch, I'd build the whole thing that way. Reinforced concrete is a great way to go, and easy to build with using ICFs.

They're resistant to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, termites, even bullets (well, not the windows or roof, but the rest sure is). And they create a very well insulated structure. If you're in a more extreme climate, you can use thicker ICFs and walls and make an R-50 insulated wall (compared with R-13 or less for normal walls).

And with some planning on the design end, you can make them safer in floods, too, by keeping the ground floor as garage and storage, and living quarters higher up. But even that won't help with a 30 foot storm surge or if you build 20 feet below sea level, but you can make a lot safer, more comfortable, more energy efficient house using reinforced concrete than with traditional stick framing. And concrete is pretty darn cheap, too.