Hurricane Katrina - To rebuild or not
By youdontsay
@youdontsay (3497)
United States
March 30, 2007 1:12pm CST
For those of us untouched by Hurricane Katrina it seems to have happened a long time ago. But for those in New Orleans it must be like every day is the day after Katrina. It is so hard to even imagine what it must be like to have everything swept away, whole neighborhoods of homes, automobiles, people, pets, everything - gone. And they still try to rebuild, recreate that which was swept away. In the face of losing everything, of having nothing left and no help forthcoming it must be an overwhelming task.
Is it more dream than reality? Can they truly replace all that was lost? Not the lives that were lost, of course, but how can they recover when many of them had so little to begin with?
And then I wonder why they would be determined to rebuild in the same place. The sea level continues to rise with global warming. That puts them at risk for more disasters to a city built below sea level.
Do you think they should relocate or rebuild in the same place? Should we contribute to aid for them to rebuild where there is ever increasing risk to losing it by flooding again? Or should we contribute to aid for them to re-locate?
What do you think?
1 person likes this
2 responses
@kgwat70 (13387)
• United States
8 Apr 07
I think it would be bad to rebuild it since they are prone to hurricanes and their situation is worse than it was before. They are extremely vulnerable to more hurricanes. Whatever they rebuild will more than likely get destroyed again by another hurricane. You can never replace what you had before, even if it was a small home. Those people probably had lots of wonderful memories there and they also lost their material items that had their memories in them, like photo albums and other things. There city and state needs to be elevated higher or the walls protecting the city need to be bigger and stronger.
1 person likes this
@youdontsay (3497)
• United States
8 Apr 07
I think I agree. I was reading about the flood control in the Netherlands. We could learn a lot from them. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to pour money into it at this point when there is no plan to deal with the rising sea levels.
@Alexandria37 (5717)
• Ireland
2 Apr 07
I feel so sorry for all those people who have lost everything because of the hurricane. I think it would be better if they rebuilt in another location because like you say, they same thing could happen as soon as everything is again rebuilt again. It is very difficult to say whether or not we should contiue to help them to rebuild in the same location, but I would certainly be in favour of contributing to help rebuild somewhere safer. I know this would be very difficult for older people who do not want to leave the locality but when they have nothing, surely to relocate would be better for them.
1 person likes this
@youdontsay (3497)
• United States
2 Apr 07
I think so, too. But I know how sentimental the idea of New Orleans is. Could it be recreated somewhere else? Just so many factors to consider.
Probably there will have to be more disasters before people will be willing to leave to rebuild elsewhere. That's kind of sad, too.
