Dagmar wrote:

Assuming they actually manage to rebuild New Orleans, that is.

I don't think they should. When I first learned about the geography of New Orleans in middle school, I thought to myself, "What happens if a hurricane hits it?"

We're seeing the answer now. Sometimes common sense isn't so common. Generation after generation just kept building more stuff there. No one remembered the lesson of Galveston, TX in 1900 it seems.

I feel sorry for everyone in New Orleans who died because of or is suffering from this hurricane, but the land is not a practical place to have a city. I'm reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."

RE: New Orleans Decends Into Barbarism