Why Don't They Leave?

[howeird]

I'm getting real tired of hearing these idiots on the radio and TV and web wondering with open-mouthed, glazed-eye awe why they ever built New Orleans in the first place, and why people continue to want to live there even after The Worst™ has happened.

Why does anyone stay anywhere?

• When I was a kid on Long Island, we were hit by a major hurricane every couple of years. We stayed.


• Three weeks after we moved to Seattle, it was hit with a major earthquake. We stayed.


• Seattle has since seen another major quake, and the eruption of a nearby volcano, and the predictions are for Mount Rainier to follow suit, possibly in our lifetimes. But my Parents stay.


• In 1989 I was living in the Bay Area, we got hit with a major quake in October, I left the country in November. But it was only for a month, and I came right back.


• One of my friends lived in Northridge when they had the big LA quake, and she moved away. To the Bay Area.

Face it, anywhere you live on this planet, there is some sort of natural disaster which can do you in. Sure, you can go to the moon or mars, but the same rule applies there too.

Okay, maybe that's a straw man. New Orleans is built in a place which by its very geography is prone to more natural disasters than most places. Why would anyonw want to live there?

Well, it's also near the mouth of the big river and the Gulf of Mexico, a more natural place for a warm-water port doesn't exist in this country.

Or we can take the other tack, which is, why would anyone want to live in

• The antarctic


• The north Atlantic


• The Amazon


• Any desert


• Washington, DC


• Mars

The answer is people live where they can. The Inuit have it pretty rough, but some of them like it that way and stay. Ditto the Bedouins. Compared to them, the people of NOLA are in paradise.

One thing which the people of Seattle did which the people of Nawlins did not do, was raise their town above the prevailing marsh. Seattle actually washed down a couple of its hills and used the dirt to fill in the lowlands. New Orleans doesn't have any hills, so it's not an easy solution for them. But I suspect that when the water is drained, a significant number of NOLA neighborhoods will start their romance with Phil Dirt.

Comments

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, draining is the wrong tact. The thing that keeps the water level is letting it stay in the wetlands.

As my Dad points out, the Mississippi River has migrated from one area to another over the years, and it's a human idea that the path of such a river should stay the same over hundreds of years. New Orleans makes sense for a port as the river was when it founded, but the river wants to move.

Of course, once the river moves, perhaps New Orleans will be an easier place to live...

--Ember--

[howeird]

Can't say I agree with you that they shouldn't drain the city. It was actually the lake, not the river, which broke its levee. The wetlands are on the other side of the city from the lake.

The wetlands helped buffer the city from the storm, and things were fine until part of the earthworks broke which holds the lake in.

All rivers (and bays, for that matter) want to move. But a moving shoreline doesn't make for a practical port.

Knowing a little bit about you, I'll guess that you would rather let the earth decide where it wants its waterways. A major part of me agrees, and isn't too heartbroken about the concept of this meaning we would have no major cities, and civilization as we know it would not exist.

But another part of me is kind of stuck in civilization as we know it...

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

Well, on the one hand, water flows. Faults slip. Winds blows. Lava erupts. Rocks fall. People die. That's the way it is. Nevermind how it should be.

But by the exact same token, we have civilization as we know it. Cities are here, the population is this big, techology exists. It's rather late in the game to complain that we should have allowed for this all along. This is how it is.

It would be good if we were already in the habit of accounting for the natural tendancy of a watercourse to be somewhat fluid. Since we're not, I can't just declare that I'd prefer if we let the water go wherever it may, no matter what it harms. I get kind of unhappy when large quantities of my species die - it's perfectly natural to be biased in favor of my own kind.

What I wish we would do is develop better habits from a better understanding of nature. Learn to move with nature instead of against it.

--Ember--