Tom_H
Veteran Member
Re: New Orleans 8\' under sea level Rebuilding????
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Especially when it sits right on the ocean /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif )</font>
Actually, it's not right on the ocean. It's WORSE! It's a fair piece to the ocean (40 miles or so if I remember right). The levees that broke are the ones that hold back Lake Ponchetrain. The heart of the old town is right by the side of the Mississippi River, which, at that particular location, is several feet ABOVE sea level. You can stand on THIS DIFFERENT LEVEE (the one that DIDN'T break) and look west, "Oh, there's the surface of the Mighty Miss about 15 feet below me. And hey, that water's kinda' flowin pretty fast too. And, hmm, look over here to the east of me. There's the street about 27 feet below me."
I've stood there and just shook my head several times. If a Cat 5 storm had raced straight up the river channel and busted THAT levee, we wouldn't see buildings standing in stagnant water, we'd just see a new channel for the Mississippi River, and no ruins standing of ANY kind.
Nobody's talked about how much worse it coulda' been, but it really could have been far worse. That New Madrid earthquake around 1812 moved the river 50 miles away from its previous course (even made church bells clang in Boston too). A quake that size in that region today could wipe out the entire center of the country.
Another thing is, N.O. wasn't always this low. As part of the Mississippi flood plain, the soil is highly organic. When they built the levees, the soil dried out while simultaneously compacting AND oxidizing off into the atmosprere. The organic stuff in the soil (made of Carbon), rots (binds with Oxygen in the atmosphere) and turns into Carbon Dioxide, a little Carbon Monoxide, etc. and just floats off into the air. Same thing has happened in parts of Florida, the inland delta of central California, and other places.
Lookin' back, 9/11 did not cause nearly as much physical damage as this. 9/11 and this catastrophe have both wounded our psyches, but in really different ways. Though this is hard to take, I guess it's easier to accept it from Mother Nature than from a bunch of insane extremists. Still, maybe it begs the question, post 9/11, have we allocated our resources for disaster response the right way? I don't have the answers, I'm just thinkin' out loud (kinda'). If terrorists could set off a nuclear bomb, it would create a somewhat similar situation as this, possibly lesser in scale (it'd go off at ground level, which is far less effective than 1500-2000 ft. up-and thank God they don't have the wherewithall to build any THERMONUCLEAR, i.e. fusion-Hydrogen bomb type devices). Seems like if we were prepared for that kind of event, the same response would have been made to this. I'm not gonna say I'm for or against the war, however there are a lot of Guardsmen off in the middle east who might otherwise have been near home to respond to this thing.
Oh well, I've rambled away enough. Hope my thoughts don't come across as offensive to anybody. I apologize now if they did. Have a good Labor Day weekend fellas. I think I'll spend some of mine just making a list of all the blessings I have in my life compared to a lot of other people.
</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Especially when it sits right on the ocean /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif )</font>
Actually, it's not right on the ocean. It's WORSE! It's a fair piece to the ocean (40 miles or so if I remember right). The levees that broke are the ones that hold back Lake Ponchetrain. The heart of the old town is right by the side of the Mississippi River, which, at that particular location, is several feet ABOVE sea level. You can stand on THIS DIFFERENT LEVEE (the one that DIDN'T break) and look west, "Oh, there's the surface of the Mighty Miss about 15 feet below me. And hey, that water's kinda' flowin pretty fast too. And, hmm, look over here to the east of me. There's the street about 27 feet below me."
I've stood there and just shook my head several times. If a Cat 5 storm had raced straight up the river channel and busted THAT levee, we wouldn't see buildings standing in stagnant water, we'd just see a new channel for the Mississippi River, and no ruins standing of ANY kind.
Nobody's talked about how much worse it coulda' been, but it really could have been far worse. That New Madrid earthquake around 1812 moved the river 50 miles away from its previous course (even made church bells clang in Boston too). A quake that size in that region today could wipe out the entire center of the country.
Another thing is, N.O. wasn't always this low. As part of the Mississippi flood plain, the soil is highly organic. When they built the levees, the soil dried out while simultaneously compacting AND oxidizing off into the atmosprere. The organic stuff in the soil (made of Carbon), rots (binds with Oxygen in the atmosphere) and turns into Carbon Dioxide, a little Carbon Monoxide, etc. and just floats off into the air. Same thing has happened in parts of Florida, the inland delta of central California, and other places.
Lookin' back, 9/11 did not cause nearly as much physical damage as this. 9/11 and this catastrophe have both wounded our psyches, but in really different ways. Though this is hard to take, I guess it's easier to accept it from Mother Nature than from a bunch of insane extremists. Still, maybe it begs the question, post 9/11, have we allocated our resources for disaster response the right way? I don't have the answers, I'm just thinkin' out loud (kinda'). If terrorists could set off a nuclear bomb, it would create a somewhat similar situation as this, possibly lesser in scale (it'd go off at ground level, which is far less effective than 1500-2000 ft. up-and thank God they don't have the wherewithall to build any THERMONUCLEAR, i.e. fusion-Hydrogen bomb type devices). Seems like if we were prepared for that kind of event, the same response would have been made to this. I'm not gonna say I'm for or against the war, however there are a lot of Guardsmen off in the middle east who might otherwise have been near home to respond to this thing.
Oh well, I've rambled away enough. Hope my thoughts don't come across as offensive to anybody. I apologize now if they did. Have a good Labor Day weekend fellas. I think I'll spend some of mine just making a list of all the blessings I have in my life compared to a lot of other people.