Too Many People in Nature's Way 705
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.
But then again (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as there's oil... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:As long as there's oil... (Score:3, Informative)
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 u
Re:As long as there's oil... (Score:3, Funny)
An Alternate Technical Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An Alternate Technical Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Sex is fine -- wonderful even. Having 6 to 12 kids is most certainly not, especially when you're too poor to pay for their existance and instead rely on the system to do so for you. This isn't just an American problem, and it isn't a racial problem either. It's mostly a prob
Re:But then again (Score:3, Interesting)
Dangerous planet (Score:5, Funny)
Well that tears it. I'm leaving. Anyone coming with me?
Re:Dangerous planet (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dangerous planet (Score:5, Funny)
"Despite the high cost of living, it's still popular."
Re:Dangerous planet (Score:5, Funny)
forget it (Score:5, Funny)
From the captain-obvious department (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Insightful)
Additionally, maybe it's time we stopped building homes out of sticks.
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on where you live: what holds up wonderfully against a hurricane or tornado can fail miserably the first time San Andres sneezes.
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:4, Insightful)
Build a reinforced bunker going from a basement to two stories. Built a bamboo and paper house around it.
Trouble on the way, get in the bunker. Cheap to rebuild what gets blown or washed, etc. away.
Problems with this thought?
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/41879 [ourmedia.org]
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's see... let's say there is an exceptionally active tornado season that spawned 500 tornados, each twister 100 yards wide (on the larger side) with a ground track of 5 miles each, which result in approximately 150 square miles (heck... let's round up to 200 square miles) of devestation.
At 2nd landfall Katrina had hurricane force winds extending 105 miles out from the center. Let's pretend that the storm made it 20 miles inland and collapsed, causing no subsequent damage. 2,100 square miles of devestation. From a single storm. That is, on average, only one of multiple storms in any given season.
So compare:
Some communities are faced with the odds of being randomly selected by mother nature to be included within 150 square miles of destruction and make endless plans, preparations, code changes, modifications to standard building concepts and the development of new structures, technologies and strategies.
Other communities are faced with the prospect of being included in over 2,000 miles of destruction, elect a governor more interested in retaining a football team than the Mississippi, and not only wipe out the only natural protection they have (the wetlands) but actively discourage storm-and-flood resistance by incorporating strict historical accuracy codes and walk along the bottoms of their earthworks and never think once that the silt deposits are now several feet above their heads, let alone the ever-rising water surface.
Yeah, the city cared about being prepared.
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:5, Informative)
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:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Interesting)
An eye-witness to the storm, whose home was near one of the breached levees, reported on CNN Saturday that the break was caused by loose barges smashing into the levee, and not a failure of the levee alone.
So, it may be that no amount of federal funding might have had any preventative effect.
Bill Clinton hates black people too (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, those funds were to be disbursed for fiscal year 2006. Iraq or no Iraq, the work would not have been done. And supposedly the levees that were breached last week were not on the list for improvement anyway.
If you can set aside your anti-Bush venom for a few moments, yo
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:4, Interesting)
New Orleans, however, is but a small city within a state. They had a responsibility, as a city, to do everything in their power to protect themselves from predictable natural disasters. They should have done this with their own money, not with money from the Federal government. The local tax rates should have been much higher in New Orlearns (and should be much higher in all coastal areas) so that the goverment could provide adequate protection for the people.
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure... when you're smart, talented, and have a healhty mind and body, it's pretty easy.
But, there are many people who are not as smart as you and have not had the education and opportunities you have had. There are those who are disabled in many ways who simply can't get a better job or a better life. And that's not even considering the racism, age-ism, and classism that exists in our society.
What should the widowed mother of 3 do to improve her lot, when she's already working 2 part-time jobs and can barely get by. She dosen't have a 401k, and if she did, she can't put any money in it anyway. I'm sure you like to cling to the idea of welfare moms eating potato chips and watching Regis, but there are a lot of poor people who aren't like this.
What about the 50 year old mechanic who hurts his back on the job and can't work. His case for workman's comp gets denied, all the way up to the state supreme court. His considerable savings are exhausted to pay his medical bills. And now he can't work in his profession. Try changing professions at 50 when you're not already highly educated. Maybe he'll be able to work at walmart when his back is healed enough he can stand all day.
It must be nice to be inusulated from the hard realities that many people live hand to mouth because there just is no slack to get ahead with. It's bad enough when the resources are limited, but it's made worse by people who prey upon others.
Not everyone who is poor simply chooses to be poor.
I hope you're lucky and don't have the world collapse around you - no amount of planning and preparation can spare you from everything.
The corruption and graft you talk about is usually done by "well off" people with power and connections. It's these people who are preying on the poor, uneducated, and disadvantaged.
Re:From the captain-obvious-lies department (Score:3, Insightful)
There are
Easy on the trigger finger, pardner (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps we shouldn't rebuild on the lands that keep getting destroyed... I hear that's what they did in the days before governmental disaster relief.
Actually, that's not true. The Sumerians consistently rebuilt in the same spots after (constant) floods. Same with the Egyptians. The Romans did not abandon any of the cities around Pompeii (i.e. Capua). Many cities in Africa were completely rebuilt after disasters. The Yangtze floods a lot, and they rebuilt. The Japanese learned to build earthquake-proof buildings. Cultures everywhere still rebuild at the foot of volcanoes. The Indians/Sri Lankans rebuilt after typhoons/tsunamis.
While it's not a great idea, people certainly still do it. While most of them would wait for the city to stabilize naturally, a good location is a good location. New Orleans is a fairly unbeatable location for a port (like Alexandria, which is still there after half the damn went into the Med), and any culture in their right mind would rebuild.
The possible loss of human life in the future, while an awful possibility, does not preclude them rebuilding.
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Informative)
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:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't think you actually need to build a large city around a port these day. In this day and age you need a bunch of cranes to move containers, and a mix of truck friendly freeways and rail lines. You need a town big enough to support the people that work in it but the number of people needed to run a container shipping port is dramatically lower than it was when everything was loaded and unloaded by hand.
In fact all the big ports I've seen are actua
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:4, Insightful)
Well you obviously didn't read my port. The number of workers you need to run a port plunged in the last 50 years thanks to container shipping. You could support a large port with a small town now. Times changed.
A big percentage of the people who were left in New Orleans were unemployed and on welfare. It is a city with vast poverty. They weren't people who had longshoreman jobs. They were freed slaves who landed there after abolition, they started with nothing and in formerly segregated and still racist South they still having nothing today.
"but farming is simply not the reason they're on the floodplain in New Orleans."
New Orleans is where it is because it was a great port 200+ years ago, its still a good one now but you don't need the large urban city for the port.
When it was built there the French didn't grasp that it was sinking. Now in light of the fact its sinking you do either two things:
- Abandon it because its now prohibitively expensive to repair and defend in an era of super hurricanes, or you at least abandon all the low income housing which was substandard before and now is just rank and unlivable.
- Do what the Dutch do and spend billions building massive new levees and pumping systems to reclaim and defend it.
What you don't do is put hundreds of thousands of people in a bowl below sea level AND cut back on the money you spend on the levees which is what the U.S. has been doing for years and which accelerated under the Bush administration, in particular as it diverted the Army Corp of Engineers to rebuilding Iraq instead of the U.S. Bush just signed a bill to build a $231 million bridge to an island in Alaska with 50 people on it some of whom probably like the fact there is no highway. Thats WAY more than New Orleans levees have seen in the last 5 years. What is going on here? Alaska has a powerful Republican congressional delegation and they get a vastly disproportionate percentage of pork. New Orleans being poor, black and Democratic gets nothing from this regime which lead to an accident waiting to happen and then it did. A constant of the Bush administration is they direct their pork to their own. They spend billions to rebuild Jeb Bush's Florida every year, they took care of Republican run Mississippi this time. Democrat leaning Louisiana and overwhelmingly Democrat New Orleans was dead last on their partisan priority list and it showed.
"Industrial scale fertilizer is very useful in the Midwest, the Ukraine, and other farming areas, but farming is simply not the reason they're on the floodplain in New Orleans."
Not sure why you think I said it was. You were referring to all the ancient civilizations that built on flood plains and I was pointing why they did it, that it was by design and with the realization floods were inevitable and in fact desirable.
New Orleans is where it is because its at the mouth of America's largest river. During an era when various factions were fighting for control of a new continent it was a strategically essential location. Times changed.
Another important point is that when New Orleans was built it had a lot of land around it to provide a buffer. Most of that land has sunk in to the gulf thanks to human beings messing up the natural floods of the Mississippi. Its made New Orleans less viable with each passing year.
Re:Blame Bill Clinton (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blame Bill Clinton (Score:4, Informative)
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
Back atcha, Cap'n. (Score:5, Insightful)
Serious. Check out the history of the Yangtzee and Ganges rivers going back almost 5,000 years, and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia at the very dawn of civilization. Cities are generally built where they are useful, not where they are safe.
Those with a Libertarian or Conservative leaning sometimes forget that Taxes purchase something useful for you: civilization.
The government diaster relief you deride so much makes civilization happen in North America. Just the cost of doing business here. Move to Somalia if you want to live someplace where there's no tax burden.
SoupIsGood Food
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:4, Insightful)
Disasters are always just a matter of time.
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah and strangely enough the old part of the city isn't flooded that bad. How is that possible? Because a long time ago people were smart enough to build their houses above sea level.
I'm living in the Netherlands, well known because a big part of the country is below sea level. We have the same problem here, people building their homes next to big rivers, and then complain if their property gets flooded. Because of some big floods over the last ten years
Holy Sysiphus, Batman! (Score:3, Insightful)
If the build takes 15 years, what are the odds of a Cat5 coming along within that timespan to put you back to square one?
Re:Holy Sysiphus, Batman! (Score:3, Insightful)
Past hurricanes in the area [jamaicaobserver.com]
1794
1812
1831
1860(3 major storms)
1915
1947
1956 - Flossy
1964 - Hilda
1965 - Betsy
1969 - Camille
1992 - Tornado spawned from remnants of Andrew
2005 - Katrina
Note that probably only Camille was a Cat5. If you DON'T try to upgrade the levee's, you stand zero chance. Whatever...the build can't be done in a week.
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:4, Insightful)
What a maroon.
Contrary to what you imply, traffic on the Mississippi can get along just fine without the city of New Orleans. Reinforced port facilities could be built without surrounding them with a city that is below sea level. Ports are useful. Cities built without adaquate mitigation are not.
Your reality:
Reality's reality: Require improved building codes and effective fire fighting codes.
Your reality:
Require improved building codes for hurricane resistance. Don't allow people to build directly on flood plains. Don't drain hurricane-buffering wetlands for million dollar condos.
New Orleans is built on delta silt, notoriously unstable and has been documented for decades to be slowly sinking, eventually turning into Venice of the Gulf. For decades the artifically channeled river continues to silt up, raising the water level ever higher, faster than dredging or levy improvements can check.
Your claim: New Orleans is useful so continue to throw money at a losing proposition that is guaranteed to result in massive loss of life and an environmental disaster beyond imagination. (By the way... since all of those toxic chemicals are about to be pumped directly into the Gulf, I would advise against eating any shrimp or other seafood from that region for the next few years).
Do you absolutely need port facilities at that specific location? For the cost of a failed levy system with infinite maintenance and improvement requirements you can build a deep-water port on pilings to bedrock in the middle of the gulf itself, complete with ballast tanks to raise the entire infrastructure well above even 50' storm surges or simply made water-tight and let storm surges wash harmlessly over the entire facility. Multiple rail trestles (including light rail to easily and painlessly transport employees to/from their homes which are located safely inland) ensure efficient transportation of labor and goods.
Don't abandon Florida, simply require everybody to be self-insured. Insurance subsidies of people who want to enjoy ocean views force people living in trailer parks in Des Moines chip in to guarantee that people who build on the barrier islands of North Carolina (which repeatedly get wiped out) are close enough to repayment so ensure that the FEMA assistance will be enough for them to rebuild the same house in the same dangerous location.
"Pretty to live in" is not the same thing as "useful". "Useful" can be engineered. A governor who drives past houses with rooflines 10 feet below sea level on her way to celebrate agreeing to pay $190 million to the NFL Saints so they remain in the city is doing nobody a favor while refusing to even address the problem of the city sinking, the waterways silting up and an increase of hurricanes that exceed the design limitations of the city's levyworks is not "useful" by any stretch of the imagination.
My two cents: rebuild the port but not the houses. If people want to live there, let them assume their own risks. Ditto for people who build on barrier islands that repeatedly get hit by storms and people who build on steep slopes that unleash mudslides every few years.
States along the Gulf get hit by destructive hurricanes than California gets hit by destructive earthquakes: why is California spending so much more on mitigation than Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Insightful)
Contrary to what you imply, traffic on the Mississippi can get along just fine without the city of New Orleans. Reinforced port facilities could be built without surrounding them with a city that is below sea level. Ports are useful. Cities built without adaquate mitigation are not.
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
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Informative)
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 destroye
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do they get their low-cost workers if they don't have a major metro area nearby? Yeah, you can pay to fly them in and out each week (like they do for the oil rigs) but that costs a lot. I doubt shipping companies are willing to pay a premium for labor. Cities were built on the river for a reason - commerce (and therefore jobs) was there. You can't have one without the other (at least 'til the robots and teleoperators take over).
california earthquake mitigation (Score:3, Interesting)
Depending on how you look at it, California isn't mitigating more. Only 13% of Californians have earthquake insurance. That's clear indication that Californians themselves take a relaxed attitude about earthquakes.
Don't tell Holland (Score:3, Interesting)
shh... don't tell holland that it is impossible to live safely on delta silt. They'd have to move their whole country and give up their elaborate system that supposedly protects them from storms.
O
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:4, Informative)
"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)."
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Insightful)
New York is just a disaster waiting to happen. They built a large city full of large sky-scapers that concentrates the population in a small area, making it a tempting target for te
New Orleans can be a new Amsterdam (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because it was built below sea-level it is not a disaster-waiting-to-happen. Holland is proof that you can have a system of levees and pumps and live safely on a river delta below sea level.
For example, they could drain Lake Pontchartrain to the low tide level like the Zeider Zee in Holland... and put up flood gates to keep the high tides out, lower the gates to allow water out of the Lake at low tide. And dredge the bottom of the lake to build the city high enough that water will flow down into the lake from the city... thus having passive flood control. And where you need pumps, use windmill to help pump water (so as not to be dependent on electricity).
You could also use dredged mud to expand the swamps around lake Pontchartrain so as to build a natural barrier to disperse the energy from hurricanes.
That's just one solution. There's lots of ways to make New Orleans safe... and safer than many other major metropolitan areas.
Times-Picayune Op-Ed (Score:5, Informative)
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:Times-Picayune Op-Ed (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:From the captain-obvious department (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing pisses me off more than a Republican in a McMansion living on a flood plain bitching about the "welfare queens".
The solution is obivious (Score:5, Funny)
The big question.. (Score:3, Insightful)
To what degree have we done this to ourselves?
not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
-Sean (OutdoorDB [outdoordb.org] - the Outdoor Wiki)
Population (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I don't think our planet is any more unstable then 100, 1000 or 10000 years ago. Yeah, maybe we have global warming but even so it makes much, much more of a difference that a hurricane making landfall at the Mississipi estuary affects several million people today compared to 10,000 in 1803 or maybe a couple hundred in 500 BC.
Re:Population (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it makes much MUCH more of a difference. Katrina was a Cat 1 when it hit florida, the hot gulf waters drove it to a Cat 5 right quick. Whether that's global warmings fault is debatable, but certainly plausible.
Also, New Orleans used to have 150 miles of wetlands between itself and the open ocean, that could absorb storm surges. Because of human management of the mississippi river it's rapidly eroding, down to about 30 miles of wetlands. So humans are definately doing some things to make the situation worse.
Re:Population (Score:5, Informative)
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:Population (Score:3, Interesting)
That sentence makes little or no sense. Unless of course governments are artificially reducing the price, in which case of course that will happen. The good news is that it's easily fixed: the governments involved just need to stop using price controls.
It seems kind of strange to me because the US artificially increases the price of grain.
Read The Fine Print (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Read The Fine Print (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Read The Fine Print (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Read The Fine Print (Score:3)
"private insurance companies that sell flood insurance compete on service, not on price. These "Write Your Own" companies make their profit from service fees"
Private insurance companies also sell additional flood coverage for additional profits:
"Some insurance companies are willing to expose themselves to higher risks and take on policies in some of the developed barrier areas. Instead of $340 in premiums offered through the government program, a fe
Maybe About time (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it is time to America to Stop rejecting proposals to reduce emissions and to do what the world is asking. Most other countries seem to do alot more, and the states will probably have to have some more Natural Disasters before the Muppets in The white house will understand this.
This is what happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Like every single individuals and kids who died or were orphaned had done stuff to deserve what happened to them.
And then there was the radio show host who said he didnt care about people who couldn't swim.
About new orleans, you the media (sean hannity
Here's a report that contradicts what sean hannity was saying:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/katrina.world.ai
The point I am making is that you have a large segment (thankfully not the majority) of the US population who thinks the rest of the world is all evil and can go to hell. These same people are now sayuing "screw new orleans bunch of savages". Sure there are scumbags causing trouble there
Looting (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd also like to ask a simple question that most news reports I've read fail to address. You're stranded in a city that's virtually abandonned; you have no electricity and your supply of food has run out. Is it looting to break into a supermarket to feed yourself? What about to get up batteries for your radio so you can listen for emergency broadcasts?
Sadly most of those in this situation are already living at or below the poverty lin
Re:This is what happens (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is what happens (Score:3, Insightful)
How good is your swimming skill in 25 mph current?
How long can you stay afloat?
How many impacts with buildings, trees, other debris can YOU sustain and still remain afloat?
Unless you take these factors into consideration, the fact that you *believe* you can swim out of flooding, tsunami surges, etc. only shows that you are bound to be the next victim.
There are water conditions so strong
Runaway (Score:5, Interesting)
By way of example our individual physiologies as systems experience runaway in terms of sexual orgasam ( ya sex, more people ) and in terms of death.
We're not only pushing the envelope in terms of population, we're also pushing the food chain that sustains us. The oceans are being fished clean to feed the growing population. It's not unlikely that the ocean food chain will collapse in our lifetime. Add in global warming and the projected more frequent, more violent storms; mix in our proclivity to live in large numbers on the coast lines, and, the recipe for disaster is all but made, no need to add in a killer like a super volcano.
The lesson of New Orleans is that we can't handle relatively mid range disasters. We speak of the first world in terms of Super Powers in quasi mythological terms that suggest we control nature. We're just outlaw apes broken free of our natural constraints and deluded in belief systems that talk to our immortality as mirror images of the creator of the universe.
The joke about to go very bad. May you live in interesting times.
cheers
"Too Many People" in Nature's Way? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot of people who would even say that Nature's fury can't compare that to the fury of our fellow man. I'd have to wonder about that: Lung Cancer deaths related to smoking kill off about 440 people per day in the United States alone. Compare that to the rougly 2 and a half US soldiers per day killed in Iraq.... I'd say we are far better at intentionally killing our own selves than we are at killing others, and natural disaster takes a distant 3rd... or at least, disasters can't compare to other natural causes such as disease.
Isn't the bigger problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The first rule of risk management is that the amount of time, effort, and money that you spend on security should be proprortional to the probability of a breach times the amount of damage it would cause. I guess Louisana didn't get the memo.
Re:Isn't the bigger problem (Score:3, Informative)
First rule of risk management? (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, they did get the memo years ago. But they thought that the first rule of risk management is don't talk about risk management.
--Rob
Early Warning Systems (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to contradict Miletti, but there are very clear cases where technology in the configuration I described above has done real work averting disasters.
There's such a system deployed by the Civil Defense in Peru, that's one I know about. We're demoing another one at a GIS [ngisc.gov.eg] conference in Cairo next week, that's another. If I understand things correctly, even Homeland Security has done work in this area.
Engineering Not Applied! (Score:5, Insightful)
Planning so so poorly thought out, a kid playing SIM City [ea.com] would come up with better plans. And that is exacly my point. We have simulation software that is inextensive. Tons of historical data to pull from. We know how to design better levee systems, bridges and canals. But the political system fails us again and again.
Re:Engineering Not Applied! (Score:3, Interesting)
Citizens are not "taught" to hate taxes. Taxed are a form of theft by the government through coercion. 60% of what I make is going to support other people, other agendas, or straight into corrupt pockets. I didn't need to be "taught" that, it is basic self-defense!
Politics is at it's core, corrupt. Any large project is almost doomed to fail because of that corruption and lack of controls that being funded by the government enables.
You think the hand-wringing
Re:Engineering Not Applied! (Score:3, Insightful)
Rule #1: Don't build on flood plains (Score:5, Interesting)
From an agrarian point of view the answer is obvious - river floodplain silt is usually excellent for growing (ask the Egyptians and the Dutch.) But how many of the people trapped in New Orleans were agriculturalists? I suspect none.
Living as I do at an elevation of 80M above mean sea level, on a slope with excellent drainage, I take a very philosophical view of this. But I can't help thinking that we are still organising our world according to the preoccupations of much less advanced societies- and that the time to start doing something was over a hundred years ago, but the longer we leave it the worse it will get. London and New York could suffer various degrees of damage when the Azores slippage occurs. The effect of losing two of the world's major financial markets would not be good, considerably worse than losing some refinery capability (if Bush wasn't making so much money out of the windfall profits to the oil companies, he _could_ ration US fuel supplies and reduce prices, but you cannot dole out access to cash and credit and keep a modern society running.) How much would it actually cost in real money - not virtual profits - to plan to relocate the world's major financial and trade centers to safer locations?
The present situation is predicated on the idea that the rich will always suffer minimally in disasters. If my house is swept away or flattened I will have several options as to where to live while it is rebuilt, while the poor won't. But there are disaster scenarios that impact the rich as well as the poor, by making their savings and investment worthless and creating a breakdown in society which will enable criminals to steal possessions - think of the Jews in 30s Germany. If we don't guard against these, we are truly asking for it.
Re:Rule #1: Don't build on flood plains (Score:5, Insightful)
New Orleans is built on a flood plain not because of agriculture but shipping. If you're going to build a deep water port on the Mississippi river, you need to do so near the water.
Increasingly unsafe? (Score:3, Funny)
About time! (Score:3, Funny)
Unspecific Verbiage (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the word "affected". I had a cold last year, was I one of the people "affected" by natural disasters? How are they defining whether or not someone was affected? You could say anyone who donated money to a relief fund was affected, or are they only referring to the number of people injured or that had property damage. What about someone who hid out in his bomb shelter for a week. Was that person affected? Does emotional disurbance count as being "affected"?
I'd prefer a concrete statistic, like number of people killed, number of homes destroyed. Saying that x people were "affected" doesn't tell us anything useful.
Reports like these remind me that we're not in the information age, we're in the data age. The information age will be next when we start compiling all this data into useful information.
PAH! (Score:3, Insightful)
Compaired to Venus? Mercury? Omicron Persei 8? I think not!
I'll tell you what it is... (Score:3, Funny)
The entire city of New Orleans has been destroyed. Wiped out. This is an act of God, just as the Tsunami was in Asia.
Duh... (Score:4, Funny)
All we need now is a comet to come crashing into the Earth before someone come to the conclusion that we live in a very unsafe solar system.
GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! (Score:5, Funny)
New Orleans is not coming back (Score:3, Interesting)
Without the barrier islands, New Orleans needs even bigger and stronger levees to stay above water. The existing system was intended to resist only a Cat 3 hurricane, and that was with the barrier islands in place to slow down the storm surge. With them gone, a relatively minor hurricane could swamp the city again. And minor hurricanes come through all the time. There might even be another one this year. So the city really can't be reoccupied until new, stronger, levees are in place.
There will be some rebuilding. The central business district and the tourist areas will probably be fully protected and rebuilt. There will be housing for oil industry and port workers, but probably not in the low-lying areas. But when rebuilding is over, the population of New Orleans will be much smaller than it is now.
A similar hurricane, in 1900, flattened Galveston, TX. [galvestonhistory.org] A hurricane with 120 MPH winds killed 6000 people and levelled much of the town. The entire town, 500 city blocks, had to be jacked up several feet, and a huge seawall built. The jacking and filling job took eight years. Building the seawall took from 1900 to 1962. Sixty two years. And Galveston wasn't below sea level.
Ever after, Galveston was a smaller and less important city than it was before the 1900 hurricane.
A lot of New Orleans is a social failure as well (Score:3, Interesting)
In both cases you have a lot of poor people living close by the coast and the governments that do not really care what happens to them.
If Katrina hit Amsterdam, for example, it would still be a disaster but not nearly as bad as NEw Orleans was. Thats because Amsterdam is the biggest city in Holland, and they spent the necessary money to protect themselves and take care of their environment, they make sure they are surrounded by farmland that can soak up flood waters very quickly.
However, it is obvious that New Orleans' levys were a low priority and all kinds of construction projects were being approved which destroyed the wetlands around the city. But what is most amazing is that there was no evacuation plan, there was no emergency response from the state or the federal government for several days after the disaster hit. The only way people could leave was if they had their own cars and money for gas, and the poor did not so they were stuck.
And bush sent the Guard in only four days after the disaster hit and then he sent them "to prevent looting" and not to help the thousands of people that were stuck in the flooded city. The governer could not send the LA Guard in because they are in Iraq.
Now there is a huge debate about whether these huricanes are caused by global warming. But even if we stop activities that contribute to global warming, there would still be natural disasters. That cannot be helped.
But what we can do is organise our society so we are able to prevent damage as much as possible and quickly help the victims if disaster strikes. That was obviously not done in this case.
New York City, the flooding sequel (Score:3, Interesting)
But they mentioned the other city in the crosshairs. New York City. It's in the elbow of two long pieces of land, both aimed at the Atlantic ocean.
If a hurricane comes up the water, which it will, NYC is going under as surely as New Orleans did. It's only a matter of time.
Will we move NYC?
Bricks and sticks construction (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a video of a concrete house that's been through two hurricanes without a scratch. You can see blown out screens on the porch but the houses came out fine. This is actually the company headquarters of the company that makes the concrete dome kits in Florida (www.aidomes.com).
Concrete Dome [dangercollie.com]
Both types of homes are cheap to build, will withstand far more wind than traditional bricks and sticks construction and are more energy efficient.
What else do both of those type homes have in common? It's very difficult to get them financed. You can't go through a traditional mortgage because Fannie Mae won't touch the loans, which means you have to get a portfolio loan like we did which is prime plus. Then you get to fight with the insurance company for coverage. Our house won't burn or get blown down, but the original quote was higher than for a conventional house!
As long as we have a such a backward attitude toward home construction and financing more survivable housing structures, then you can expect a lot of flying lumber every time a hurricane lands somewhere. We build the same type homes in danger areas, then act surprised when they don't survive.
True a concrete home will flood just like conventional construction but at least the shell will be in good condition. Rip out the insides, sand blast it clean, rebuild the interior. If you build it right you can even replace the HVAC ducts and wiring conduit to prevent mold growth. It'll be just like new.
These days you can actually watch the lumber in conventional homes get thinner by the day but we're just so stuck in that brick box with a tar paper roof mentality.
Re:Bricks and sticks construction (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Bricks and sticks construction (Score:5, Interesting)
And you're completely full of it, I don't care what your brother does. Maybe the economics don't work on some bastard project but overall the price of steel and concrete is very competitive.
How much will my home cost? Most people get them built for between $45-$60 per square foot. It really depends on how much of the work you do yourself and the finish details on the inside. source: http://www.heritagebuildings.com/faq/faq.asp?secti on=2#ans36 [heritagebuildings.com]
New bricks and sticks construction around here is selling for around $90.00=$110.00/square foot. A couple years ago steel construction was between 10 to 14% higher compared to wood. But with recent increases in lumber prices, increasing faster than steel and concrete construction, those historical differences have all but been erased. We get a steady stream of people stopping by and want to talk about building a house like ours. The numbers always work on construction, but unless they have a lot of cash they can't get it financed.
This place is built with steel I beams, not a trailer built on top of a steel structure, it's a real steel house. I can remove the ceiling panels upstairs and there are steel girders and insulating panels. My roof plates are solid steel plates overlapping so they don't leak and are bolted across the entire top of the house. It will never need replacing. Hail big enough to dent my neighbor's truck...not a scratch. Not a dent. Nothing.
With concrete it depends on what type of house you build. A pre-fab shell kit for a 2,000 square foot house is about $23,000.00, not including the interior fit and finish. We worked out the total cost for ours, including the land, to be about $110,00.00. That was before we found this place.
And it's positively better insulated than conventional houses. I live in a steel home and I can promise you it's quiter, cooler and better built than any conventional home I've ever lived in or stayed in. And 20 years from now it's going to look just like it does today.
Re:Bricks and sticks construction (Score:3, Informative)
Kyoto (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to act NOW, we should have started to act a loooong time ago. In the UK one of the reasons that petrol prices are so high is to discourage use, there are all sorts of other action being taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- it is not enough, but at least we are trying. The USA is doing nothing just in case it hurt's it's economy ... using the excuse that this or that effect is not 100% proven -- sorry: the big picture is well understood, the risks are so huge that to argue over uncertainties is irresponsible.
Sorry guys: time to wisen up; take a hit on your economy today or face many, many more things like this ... which will end up costing much, much more.
No: this is not a troll. My view is shared by many people in Europe. I know that citizens of the USA don't want to think about it, but the problem won't go away just because you shut your eyes to it.
Lobby your senator to ratify the kyoto agreement.
imagine the insurance claim (Score:3, Interesting)
As more people live in more coastal cities, resources from space (beamed power, comm, transport, eventually food and plastics) will provide fast response and rebuilding after disasters. Imagine the new power grid consisting of wire grids spread over an area taking microwaves from orbit. Or getting space-dropped shipments of grain anywhere on Earth.
Vernor Vinge's books feature a deep future where Earth has been repopulated several times after biosphere-destroying disasters. Carl Sagan said that the dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program. We need to work toward becoming a multiplanet species and to create industry in freefall.
Josh
First US Camp deliberate attempt to kill blacks? (Score:5, Insightful)
And Mitchel Cohen [counterpunch.org] writes. . .
What's needed is a name change. (Score:3)
I'm sure Venice will be only too happy to help with gondolier training.
Actually I'm being more than half serious. New Orleans will never be the same again. Too many people will decide that the new lives which they will carve out for themselves elsewhere are not too bad. They'll prefer to stay where they find themselves rather than return to a radically changed situation which only has geographic location in common with what was their previous lives.
Re:Building housing 20 feet below sea level. (Score:3)
Re:Building housing 20 feet below sea level. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Name change (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Name change (Score:5, Interesting)
After several heavy firestorms were destroying Old Dresden, it got a completely new designed block layout, with wide streets and firewalls between the single houses. This then was called Dresden-Neustadt (Dresden New Town), thus turning the former New Dresden into Dresden-Altstadt (Dresden Old Town).
In the 19th century the town grow out of its city walls, creating new suburbs behind the old limits, so Dresden-Neustadt became two parts: Dresden-Innere Neustadt (Inner New Town) and Dresden-Aeussere Neustadt (Outer New Town). Dresden Altstadt kept its name, the new suburbs were instead called Vorstaedte (Suburbs) according to the direction they were: Pirnaische Vorstadt (suburb in direction to Pirna [another town]), Suedvorstadt (southern suburb) etc.pp.
In WW II, most of Dresden's Old Town got destroyed, and except for solitude buildings re-erected because of their representative or historical value, most of Dresden-Altstadt now is in fact a new town, even with a new block layout. To see the historic, old downtown, you have to go to Dresden-Neustadt (New Town).
As you can see: There is nothing impossible with naming a new town
Not Bush's fault that Katrina happened, BUT... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is certainly his fault that the disaster recovery wasn't handled well - the aftermath of Katrina was absolutely awful and Bush seemed asleep at the wheel. That is unforgivable. Disasters have happened all over the world this year - in Portugal and Romania, fire and flooding respecitvely. The people from other countries in Europe, and the governments of those countries, helped the victims. Spanish and French rescue efforts were underway very quickly when the fires in Portugal were blazing - yet in the USA, help was very slow coming from the US itself, and when Europe initially offered the US help, they were turned down - why? What the hell? What the hell is going on with Bush?
Don't criticise Slashdot readers for criticising Bush - they are quite right to. Slashdot's audience, being geeks, are generally more intelligent and well-informed than the average US consumer: Think about it - could there possibly be a reason why so many Slashdotters are criticising Bush? I'll leave you to ponder it.
Re:Not Bush's fault that Katrina happened, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
Many of them hate him entirely for past issues, and are eager to seize upon any excuse to bash him more? I mean, be realistic - for every informed criticism of his policy, there's nine other people just tossing out crude insults because he's not a Democratic-style leftist. This isn't meant as an apology or a defense of him - just that I generally find the level of political discourse to be pretty childish and crude, not well-thought-out at all. It's essentially sand-box name-taunting by three year olds.
Re:Not Bush's fault that Katrina happened, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
That must be why he's getting so much criticism from Republicans finally.
Seriously, you're laughable.
First, you think the Democrats are leftists when they're mainly moderately right wing with a few left fascists thrown in.
Second, your best attempt at a point even then was screeching out "leftist".
I generally find the level of political discourse to be pretty childi
Re:Not Bush's fault that Katrina happened, BUT... (Score:5, Informative)
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.