Hurricane!

Lots of good perspectives on Hurricane Katrina from someone on the ground.

There have been many voices, including that of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, saying that New Orleans isn’t worth rebuilding, that the region is too disaster-prone to be worth the usual investment in disaster relief from the federal government. That’s balderdash. It is true that New Orleans is mostly below sea level and kept above water by levies. However, only three truly major storms have hit New Orleans in the past 60 years — the ‘47 hurricane, Hurricane Betsy in ‘65, and Hurricane Katrina in ‘05. That’s not a track record which shows an extreme predisposition to catastrophy. Southern California and Florida are far, far more expensive in terms of disaster relief (probably even on a per-capita basis). New Orleans simply isn’t the albatross around America’s neck that some people want to portray it as.