With the two year
anniversary of hurricane Katrina coming up this Wednesday, I
thought it would be a good time to read you an account of
the aftermath of the storm:
"It looks like a massive shipwreck. Everything that the
water has carried in is there. It's going to have to be
cleaned out -- alligators, moccasins and god knows what that
lives in the surrounding swamps, has now been flushed --
literally -- into the metropolitan area. And they can't get
out, because they're inside the bowl now. No water to drink,
no water to use for sanitation purposes...The biggest toxic
waste dump in the world now is the city of New Orleans
because of what has happened."
The Real Story? That wasn't a description of Katrina's
aftermath, it was actually a prediction. It was made by the
czar of public emergencies for Jefferson Parish THREE full
years before the storm hit. The same article said that
scientists put the odds of a major hurricane wiping out New
Orleans in the next fifty years at one in six!
Well guess what, the odds are still one in six since the
storm they were predicting hasn't even occurred yet.
Remember, Katrina was only a category three at landfall;
these scientists are talking about a five.
So what do we do now? The article from 2002 said that some
scientists believe that a major storm would mean, quote,
"the city would have to be abandoned. Bulldoze the rubble,
rebuild someplace else." They summed up by asking this:
"Should the government spend billions of dollars to try to
protect a city from a disaster that might not happen?"
Now that a preview of that disaster has happened, the debate
has shifted to whether the government should spend billions
of dollars to insure homeowners who want to rebuild in high
risk areas but can't get access to private insurance. The
answer is a resounding "no." If you take the emotion and the
politics out of it and use some common sense, it's obvious
that rebuilding --especially with scotch tape and chewing
gum -- in a bowl that's slowly sinking into the ocean is a
horrible long-term decision.
While I know that this is not the politically correct thing
to say, this is the week that somebody needs to say it: It's
not the federal government's obligation to defy all laws of
capitalism and insure people against stupid decisions. You
wouldn't ask the government to insure your new home on the
side of Mount St. Helen's or your shoddily built new
apartment directly on top of the San Andreas fault...this is
absolutely no different.
If you want to roll the dice and hope those one in six odds
don't come up, then that is your right -- but if the worst
happens, then it's also your responsibility and this
taxpayer says enough is enough.
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