Gerry Charlotte Phelps

REBUILD NEW ORLEANS? BEN'S QUESTIONS

Today Ben Blankenship is our guest blogger.  He says"

Get Mardi Gras tickets now.....

New Orleans is the grouchy old uncle living in the attic with his pigeons and dirty pictures. Nobody knows much what to do about him, especially since the accident. Should we try rehab or let nature take its course, since he’s been failing anyhow?

The city’s commerce and culture have increasingly been drained towards more progressive upstarts like Houston, Atlanta and Miami

. Now Katrina has scattered its people elsewhere and buried its neighborhoods, which never should have been built there in the first place. Thus, beyond the obvious needs to restore vital port and river barge facilities and petroleum enterprises nearby, what is the national interest in attempting to reinvent the city itself?

Further, competing priorities for taxpayers’ funds should be considered in doling out municipal subsidies, especially since many other cities unlike New Orleanshave demonstrated at least some competence in political administration. Many places also have taken on the burden of housing the evacuees. Pay them to keep ‘em.

But—“Don’t you know what it means, to be in New Orleans?” Of course. There’s history and all that jazz.  You also have to admire the guts and cussedness of its citizenry. As the AP photo of a sign in a store window read in warning off potential looters: “Don’t try. I am sleeping inside with a big dog, an ugly woman, two shotguns, and a claw hammer.”

Priceless. And I seem to remember a story in history class where the French once helped us in the Revolutionary War to gain independence from England.

So, tell you what. Let’s make the French Quarter a national park. For the rest of the area below sea level, create an environmentally sensitive land-fill program featuring the importation of municipal waste, much as Virginia economically serves now as a trash can for New York City. 

Virginia Beach has its Mount Trashmore. So should New Orleans. Try Bluff Bayou.

Of course that’s a curmudgeon’s pipe dream. For we’re about to witness a tidal wave of Cajun sentimentalism plus federal funding that will swamp New Orleans like Katrina never did. It will make our current local gushiness over the future of Crow’s Nest look even more trivial than it already is. Also, “With as much as $200 billion in federal aid possible for the region…once pie-in-the-sky redevelopment plans suddenly appear possible,” notes a Wall Street Journal article.

Shedding New Orleans’ dirty old man image may nevertheless remain another pipe dream. Despite all the charm, the Creole and Cajun veneer, the city has been sinking, literally.  The land below sea level is “subsiding” further. More importantly, more and more people have been leaving of their own accord, well before the hurricane’s evictions. Here’s Michael Barone, the syndicated columnist: “[New Orleans’] central city population declined from 484,000 in 2000 to 462,000 in 2004—one of the biggest percentage declines in the nation.” Acknowledging that the tourist trade and the surrounding areas will revive, he continues, “But New Orleans’ French heritage of upper-class complaisance and political corruption work against a broader commercial and economic revival…the city will be little more than a theme park, like Venice, not the great commercial beehive it once was.”

Maybe such thoughts were earlier in the back of the mind of Dennis Hastert, the U.S. Speaker of the House, right after Katrina hit. He committed truth: “It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed.” When then asked if it made sense to spend billions of taxpayer dollars in rebuilding the city, he said, “I don’t know. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

That’s curmudgeon-speak. He’s nearly as old as I am. We seniors don’t fully realize how soppily sentimental most Americans have become, and hang the costs. Congress has certainly been acting accordingly in recent years, shoveling out cash like it’s going out of style. But that’s not new. Discipline is no longer a relevant term in public spending nowadays. That’s because just about any pressure group can wrest cash from Congress.  And surely that will happen in the rebuilding of New Orleans, if for no other reason than those terrible images of black looting, poverty and mistreatment during the evacuations.

It’s easy enough to rationalize the scenes. Most of New Orleans is black, mostly in poverty. Crime didn’t just blow in with the hurricane; the city’s crime rate far exceeds most other places. The city and state failed miserably in rescuing its mainly black population. So African-Americans especially have rallied to the cause of rebuilding

New Orleans and supporting the evacuees with what an AP story calls “an unprecedented outpouring of activism and generosity.” You can hear the sermons: If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild here.

In sum, Katrina has generated a gravy train and New Orleans faces a bright future. Just watch. Mardi Gras next winter will be a lulu.

NEW ORLEANS: REBUILDING NOT OPTIONAL

George Friedman of Stratfor argues forcefully that there is no choice whatsoever about rebuilding New Orleans. (www.stratfor.com, 9-8-05)  He makes the point that the combined ports at New Orleans, by tonnage, are the biggest port in the country and the 5th biggest in the world. 

Friedman also is not so concerned about oil shipments, because oil is easier to ship than the other products handled by the ports.  The important products are, first, agricultural products coming out.  They come from the great basin drained by the Mississippia and its tributaries.  This is the "breadbasket of the world."  Much of the world depends on grain and soybeans from mid-America for their food supplies.  Harvest is near, and huge shipments of food will soon be ready to ship.  Many countries and their economies will suffer if there are shortages of food because of Katrina.

The incoming shipments are heavy industrial materials, too expensive to ship except by river barges.  U.S. industry would be severely impacted if these shipments slow down badly.

The ports serve the function of transfering incoming goods out of ships into storage, then into barges.  Outgoing goods arrive on barges, are transferred into storage, then onto ships.  The ports and their storage facilities have been somewhat damaged, but can probably be repaired on time to prevent a serious stoppage of shipping.

But the condition of the ports is not the problem.  It is the workers who staff the ports.  Workers need a city.  They need to live where they have access to groceries, stores, doctors, schools, good housing, etc.  Right now many of the workers are gone, moved out because of Katrina.  Some may not come back.  Those who do will still need a city. 

The reason for New Orleans to exist is the ports.  That is how it was born, why wars were fought over it, and why it still is needed.  New Orleans is essential to the well-being of the rest of the country.  We just have to do a heck of a good job of making it safer.  The importance of these ports and their workers, to the U.S. and to the world, also means that we need to rebuild New Orleans to be, not only safer, but better.

REBUILD NEW ORLEANS AS GALVESTON DID

Another email from my friend, Attorney Weldon Ponder, about filling in the New Orleans "bowl," also points to how Galveston did that, but with much more information.  It follows:

"I was most interested in the suggestion about starting to 'fill in the bowl.'  Don't assume that this can't be accomplished, even when there are already structures.

"Have you ever read the story of the grade-raising on Galveston Island after the storm of 1900?  The storm killed 6,000 people on the Island alone, and several thousand more on the mainland.  In the years after the storm, not only did the authorities build a seawall to protect the city: they also raised the grade of the island (an average of 6 feet, if I recall correctly; more in some areas and less in others.)

"It is a fascinating story of what can be done when people are determined to do it.  In some of the museums there, and in some of the books about the history of Galveston, you will see pictures of the whole process.  They dug canals across the island so that boats could carry in the fill material.  In other places, they were able to pump the material through large pipes.

"The fill material came from an area of the island that is now known as Offatts' Bayou, basically an inner-city lake that is now used for recreational purposes.  Before the grade-raising operation, it was just dirt.  I think some of the material was also dredged from Galveston Bay and from what is now the Houston Ship Canal.

"All existing structures were either elevated sufficiently to accomodate the increase in grade, or the first floor was filled in and basically eliminated.  Example: the elegant Ashton Villa, now a tourist attraction in Galveston, went from being a 3-story mansion to a 2-story.  One amazing  picture I've seen is of this magnificent old church (a small cathedral, actually), made of concrete and stone, being raised with hundreds of jacks, to make room for the fill material.

"I haven't heard the Galveston story mentioned in the press during the current disaster coverage, but it is truly a testament to what can be done by determined people with a 'can-do' attitude.  BOI's (Galvestonians who were 'Born On the Island') are stubborn and fiercely proud of their Island heritage, much as the life-long residents of New Orleans are."

NEW ORLEANS, LOOK TOWARD GALVESTON!

This morning my old friend Bob Martin emailed me about yesterday's post on rebuilding New Orleans, particularly about the idea of filling in the "bowl" it sits in, to raise the bottom.  Here is what he wrote:

"You are correct about the Coast 2050 Project.  It should have been done before, and it still needs to be completed.  However, filling in the 'bowl' using silt from the river would not be a good idea.

"JoAnn and I took a 3 hour tour of New Orleans last November and it took us into a subdivision by Pontchartrain.  They built a levee there, and filled it in with silt.  They were told not to build houses on it because it was not a stable foundation.  However, one politician found a loophole and built a home, and others soon followed.

"It was the biggest mess I have ever seen.  The driveways and slabs are all cracked and crooked.  Almost every house had to be raised and leveled.  This ground is constantly in motion, and this will be an ongoing problem.

"You would have the same problem if you used this type of fill in New Orleans.

"After the 1900 storm in Galveston, they raised the east end of the island 4 to 7 feet.  They used sand from the ocean.  It is more stable, and after 100 years it still seems to be stable.

"Bob

"P.S.  I forgot to tell you, some of my family on my mother's side was lost in the 1900 storm.  Also JoAnn was born in Galveston.  Her family arrived there shortly after the storm, and her mother told her about temporarily raising the wooden sidewalks while they were raising the island.  Her mother's dad moved the family from the West End to the East End because he was afraid the children would fall off of the high sidewalks.

"P.P.S.  JoAnn said be sure to tell you, she was born in Galveston, but it was long after the storm!"

FIRST "COAST 2050", THEN REBUILD NEW ORLEANS

Much of the destruction in New Orleans during the hurricane "Katrina" might have been avoided if a plan called "Coast 2050" had been put into effect when it was proposed in 1998, according to Scientific American writer Mark Fischetti.  (See his article in the New York Times, "They Saw It Coming," September 2, 2005, at www.nytimes.com.)

"Coast 2050" was a plan jointly designed by scientists, Army engineers, metropolitan planners and Louisana officials.  It would have cost around $14 billion, not out of line with similar plans like that to save the Florida Everglades.  But action was not taken, and the moment passed. 

Building "Coast 2050" now would help protect New Orleans in the future.  It would also open a new port, replacing the old one which cannot handle the new, super-large ships now being built.  It would help rebuild and protect the disappearing barrier islands and wetlands, which have deteriorated too much to protect the mainland from hurricanes by weakening their winds, and by cutting down their waves and sea surges, as they once did.  It would also:

"Erect huge seagates across the pair of narrow straits that connect the eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, which lies north of the city, to the Gulf.  Now, any hurricane that blows in from the south will push a wall of water through these straits into the huge lake, which will in turn threaten to overflow into the city.  That is what filled the bowl that is New Orleans this week.  But seagates at the straits can stop the wall of water from flowing in.  The Netherlands has built similar gates to hold back the turbulent North Sea, and they work splendidly."

"Finally, and most obviously, raise, extend and strengthen the city's existing but aging levees, canal walls and pumping systems that worked so poorly in recent days."

In addition to "Coast 2050," I would think it would be worthwhile to start filling in the bowl New Orleans sits in.  Starting with the lowest areas, and while they are still waiting to be rebuilt, seems a good time to start bringing in a steady flow of landfill, from wherever is a good place to bring it.  Perhaps the silt constantly being dredged up from the Mississippi to keep it open for big ships, could be brought into New Orleans to make the bowl more shallow - raising the ground far enough above sea level that water covering the first story of a house would no longer be possible.  The lowest parts of the city, the ones most in need of rebuilding, could be a good place to start raising up the bottom of the bowl.

Such in-filling would hardly have been possible while structures covered the ground.  But now much of the surface of New Orleans may be without houses, after the clean-up.  While that could hardly have been anticipated by the planners, and while no one ever would have wanted such a tragic clearing of structures from the land, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to raise that land while it is vacant, before new structures are built.  If huge trucks can bring in food and water, why can't they also bring in dirt and landfill?

Though America may be the most ingenuous country in history, it cannot stop the enormous power of hurricanes.  But "Coast 2050" would not only improve America's huge and crucially important Mississippi port.  It would also add much greater protection so that the cost of the next "Katrina" will not be so tragic. 

The time for such a huge project is while New Orleans land is newly-vacant, before rebuilding takes away the opportunity to elevate the surface with landfill, if that turns out to be practical.  So - first "Coast 2050," before new building activities in New Orleans get started.  Then, with the new protection in place, and when any new landfills have had time to settle some, will be the time to rebuild a much better-protected, and truly new, New Orleans.

WHAT KATRINA REFUGEES NEED MOST? JOBS!

Many American refugees from Katrina are already arriving in other cities.  I know of three shelters in Texas already, in Houston, San Antonio and the covered Burger Statium here in Austin.  Arkansas has some too, and more are coming.

As an old hand at helping poor people move up out of bad situations, I want to make a suggestion to all those trying to help these storm victims.  Whether they were poor or not before, most of them are now.  What they need is to get back on their feet somehow, soon.  Handouts just won't achieve that.  They need jobs.  The only way out of such a deep hole is to work your way out.  That can only start with a job.

But aren't they too stressed, too depressed, too much in shock and grief?  Actually, a job would help them with all that.  The great psychologist Rollo May said that the only cure for grief is time and work.  Work is healing!  Being unemployed often leads to feeling worthless.  A job brings confidence, a sense of being worth something.  It faces us toward the future and brings hope.  And the money to apply toward our hopes.

But do we have enough jobs for them in America?  Before I stop laughing at the idea, let me put on my old economist's hat for a minute.  Yes - there are plenty of jobs in America!  Presently we are at 5% unemployment, or more-than-full employment.  Full employment is defined as about 5.6% unemployment.  (That level is where those who want to work are working, except for those temporarily moving from one job to another.  For instance, worker B is busy applying for the job worker C just left, while worker A is preparing to apply for the job worker B just left.  This movement between jobs is called "frictional unemployment."  It is a normal part of the work world, involving about 5.6% of the workforce at any one time.  It is not the same as true unemployment.  That is why 5.6% unemployment is considered "full employment.")

The U.S. economy, after all, is the one that has somehow absorbed around 11 million illegal immigrants into the job market, yet still has more-than-full employment!  It is the economy that continually outsources more and more jobs overseas, while still continuing to increase the total jobs in the U.S.  It is the economy that bounced back from a 2000 recession made sharply deeper after 9/11, in just 2 to 3 years.  It happens to be the economy that fuels all the other economies in the world.  And we don't have enough jobs to employ all these refugees?

Excuse me, but that is just silly.  If anyone tries to make such a claim, the only rational response would be mirth and amazement.  After all, there were only some 500,000 people in all of New Orleans.  That many would not make a serious dimple in our workforce.

As an example, when the unemployment rate was much higher, at 7-8% in California during 1988-92, we made the families in our homeless shelter get jobs.  Impossible?  Heartless?  Well, not one of them (out of a few thousand) failed to get a job.  Please!

A big risk is that the Katrina homeless may never want to leave their new shelters.  After the great earthquake of 1989 in the California Bay Area, some of our San Jose Family Shelter staff went to Watsonville to see what was happening in the tent city there.  We had trouble believing what we learned.  After a year in the tent city, everything was ready for them to leave.  And they did not want to leave!  Some were planning to actually refuse to go.

Why?  They had become dependent.  They had gotten used to having food, water, shelter, everything they needed, brought directly to them.  They did not have to lift a finger for any of it.  They also had formed a new, though artificial, community.  They did not want to leave it.

Who are the thousands needing help because of Katrina?  They are most likely to be the very poorest of New Orleans and the other stricken communities.  The more prosperous, the ones with cars, are most of the ones who got out on time.

New Orleans was already thought of as socially "the last helpless city in American."  (See Nicole Galinas, former resident of New Orleans, at City Journal, www.city-journal.org.)   It had a crime rate 10 times higher than the rest of America.  She writes of an economy completely dependent on tourism, with no real competent government or civil infrastructure.  The best and most affluent corporations and people had fled for years, leaving behind a population largely dependent on the government.  The 10% or so who stayed in New Orleans to wait out the hurricane were largely the ones without cars, mostly from this dependent population.  (HT to James Tarranto, Best of the Web Today, Wall Street Journal, 9-1-05.)

These Katrina refugees need jobs.  They need, not further dependency, but independence.  Those who help them can help the able-bodied among them best by prodding them into jobs, and by requiring them to work in order to continue to receive help.  Anything short of that will also fall short of true compassion for these stricken people.

There is a guidebook for helping the poor in this way.  I wrote it out of my long experience, but never published it.  Right now, I pledge to get it up online, where anyone can read it for free, just as fast as I can.  Anyone planning to work with Katrina refugees is going to need it, or something like it!  Until then,  God bless all of you as you try to help your neighbors - the refugees from Katrina.

UPDATE #2

Just now, coming back in from my daily "walk-in-the-heat" program, I saw two empty taxicabs in the parking lot of my apartment house.  They did not look like the taxis from around here.  Then I saw their license plates said "Louisiana."

We will probably be seeing more and more "refugees" from New Orleans very soon.  Although, since they may not be labeled "Louisiana" like these taxis, we may not know right away that they are refugees from the Katrina disaster.  But we need to watch for them, in order to show them kindness. 

Americans look out for each other.

UPDATE ON NEW ORLEANS:

Thousands finally reached the designated 'safe place,' the Superdome, yesterday.  They have been outside, on a raised concrete platform, for 12-24 hours now, wondering when someone will come for them. 

They see the air full of helicopters, but none are coming for them.  Why not?  Well, they are still trying to find people worse off than them.  Just yesterday the helicopters rescued over 3000 people, plucking them out of houses where they were trapped, or up from the waters where they were floating, still alive.

The government has already called this the worst disaster to ever hit this country.  We are also making effective, heroic rescue and relief efforts, the biggest ever for such a disaster.  Yet it is so far from enough that appalling death rates are expected.  And no doubt, still increasing.

This is not only a time for giving, but - as the governor of Louisana keeps saying - for prayer.  Pray for them!

RELIEF NEEDED NOW!

In New Orleans, the people who found 'ultimate shelter' in the Superdome, now are having to be evacuated.  There is no water in the Superdome.  Toilets are running over.  Hot, no cooling system, dark.  Getting these people out of their 'safe shelter' now has become an emergency.  A convoy of buses will carry them over 300 miles to the unused Astrodome in Houston.

More and more water is flooding into the city.  Hospitals must all be evacuated.  Already, nurses are pumping ventilator machines by hand.  Many dependent on ventilators to breathe will not make it.

Meanwhile, on the parts of freeways still above water, all kinds of people are trying to walk several miles to get out of the city.  Old people, people with diabetes or heart conditions, sick people without medication.  There is hardly any food left in the city, or drinkable water.  Yet thousands are still there, without almost everything needed to stay alive, trying to get out.

Just as we would hope that others would come to our aid if we were trapped like this, we should come to their aid.  Now!  This is about as urgent as it gets.  We should find a good outfit, and give to it today.  They all will be running low on funds soon, given the size of this disaster.

My recommendation is the Salvation Army.  It is just about the best out there (in addition to being one of the many good Christian Charities.)  Call 1-800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769) or go to www.salvationarmy.org.  Or if you prefer another organization, good.  But - today is the day!

As the Bible says, "Give and it shall be given unto you."

REBUILD NEW ORLEANS IN ITS BOWL AGAIN?

It is early to consider this; but with some things, the earlier they are considered, the better.

What kind of sense does it make to have a city near the Gulf and its hurricanes which is the size of New Orleans, in a bowl 8 to 20 feet below sea level?  If it does not make much sense, should it be rebuilt there?

We do not yet know how much of New Orleans will have to be rebuilt  But we can guess that there will probably not be a single structure that has not been damaged.  Each of these structures will have to be repaired, with either insurance or government money.  Many will have to be essentially replaced.  The cost will be so great that the government may have to bail out the insurance companies.  Either way, we the people will be paying for most of the rebuilding.

We are happy to rebuild New Orleans!  We would expect the same if such a disaster happened to our own cities.  It is simply the right thing to do, and we will do it.  Without complaining, I hope and expect.  But if almost the entire city must be rebuilt, wouldn't this be a good opportunity to rebuild it in a different location, on higher ground?  New Orleans has been a disaster waiting to happen for decades.  Its being hit by a hurricane has been ranked as, I believe, the second largest natural disaster that could possibly hit the United States.

If we are going to spend the money and effort to almost totally rebuild it anyhow, why not build it in a location that is not in a bowl below sea level?  Where we would have more hope of not having to rebuild it again after the next hurricane?

While the desirability of such a move cannot be determined until the damage is assessed, still, we would have little time to start looking at such a decision.  The reason is that payments to start the rebuilding will start almost immediately, considering the need to get New Orleans back on its feet.  The rebuilding money will be almost totally committed before long.  Can we not at least look at moving this stricken, and still very vulnerable city before we start rebuilding it in a place which remains simply another such disaster waiting to happen?

THE BEST PROTECTION FROM NATURAL DISASTERS? PROSPERITY!

Watching the devastation from hurricane Katrina, and the rescue and restoration efforts afterwards, we should remember how much was lost in big natural disasters in other countries.  The Tsunami tragedy less than a year ago; the recent floods in Bangaladesh; the earthquakes in Iran; and others.  Especially, we should note how much less the loss of life and property is here during Katrina, and think about the reasons why.

The unavoidable answer is that in natural disasters, it is mostly national prosperity that makes the biggest difference.  Early-warning systems, such as did not exist in many poor countries hard hit by the tsumanis.  Preparation for disasters, with disaster-readiness equipment like generators for hospitals.  Personnel already trained and drilled.  Local and national teams already equipped to move in quickly, restore the most vital services such as power and water.  Quick restoration of order, prevention of looting.  Trained, well-equipped rescue specialists.  Quick, excellent medical care for the injured. 

Then the national means to rebuild, with really amazing ability and quickness, what was lost.  Good insurance and financial help to assist that rebuilding.  Plenty of people willing and able to do it.  Then the ability to learn from each earthquake, flood, fire, hurricane or tornado, drought, how to better withstand the damage the next time.  Then the ability to build that new knowledge into the infrastructure.

This may seem so obvious as to not be worth mentioning.  But it is important to notice that it is prosperity that is key to preventing loss of life and property, and to restoring what was lost.  Why?  Because knowing the power of national prosperity to save lives and property helps us to understand that it is not purely selfish.  Not at all.  Building national prosperity is one of the most important things that we can to do save lives.  It is also one of the most important things we can do to help the poor, since the poor suffer much more from natural disasters  than the others. 

It is also one of the very most important things that we can do to help the poor in poor countries.  Everything we can promote to increase their national prosperity - capitalism, free trade, freedom from corrupt and thieving governments who steal from the country and increase its poverty, freedom from systems that stifle individual freedoms to start small businesses - all these not only help the poor in those countries rise above poverty.  They also help save their lives in the next big natural disaster they have.

In short: capitalism, free trade, economic freedom and freedom from oppressive, corrupt governments not only help the poor vastly more than handouts; they also help save their lives when the next huge tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters hit.

Handouts are important when disaster strikes.  But they matter less than having reached greater national prosperity.