http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/28/wildfires/index.html
A headline news piece that I'm sure will be tattooed over television screens at seven o'clock eastern standard time this evening. But the crisis with this situation lies not with natural ignition (assuming is was not human caused, although the theory would still hold up) of an area which threatens the lives of many people, but why in the world people would reside in a place which naturally burns.
The town of Sierra Madre, California lies at the base of Mount Wilson, about 20 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. On the edge of the Angeles National forest, 1000 people working or living in the area have been displaced by this raging beast of nature. But the reality of the situation is another example of human beings placing themselves within harms way of natural cyclic occurrences. Like many other cities formed from the urban sprawl and the subsequent white flight of the residents of Los Angeles, people are now living in places where natural "disasters" are frequent.
Lets be very honest with ourselves: these are not disasters. If you live in the city of Sacramento, California, you must understand that you are in a flood plain of two different rivers. If you live in San Francisco, you must understand that you live on the fault line of two tectonic plates and they are constantly moving and friction is caused. We have settled in places where natural cycles of the earth are a threat to the way we currently live. Now there are very few places, if any, where one could be considered completely safe from natural threats to human life. But there are places where the likelihood of "disaster" is much greater than others, and places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans are on the top of that list for this country.
We can already see a reaction to this type of environment if we look at the city of Venice in Italy. Venice was poorly planned and the city was built in a marshland that could not sustain the weight of human housing. Along with other problems such as odor and high costs of maintenance, people are now leaving the city for good and the possibility that the area will be completely abandoned is fairly probable.
This leads to the most prevalent and controversial discussion of similar decision that will need to be made about one of the cities within our border: the previously mentioned city of New Orleans. As many of us now know, New Orleans exists between the Mississippi River and Lake Ponchartrain, and is kept dry by failing levees which were unfortunately breached during the summer of 2005. But the reality is that the city is below the sea levels of these two bodies of water, and it is sinking.As my friend Jon is laboring with blood, sweat and tears (read his account http://notafirefly.blogspot.com/) to try and aid in the rebuilding process, the question becomes whether or not is reasonable to rebuild an area that is going to be hit by "disaster" again. There is not a question of if, but rather one of when.
Is rebuilding New Orleans an example of restoring a historic city which hundreds of thousands call home or a reconstruction of dominos set to topple by the hands of the natural surroundings in which the city was built?
" We gotta be prepared in this day and age, we gotta
be prepared for whatever comes the fuck at us." ~Immortal Technique
1 comment:
Speaking as the New Orleans rebuilder in question, I'd like to add several variables to your calculus here.
First, risk-aversion should be considered; shouldn't potential residents willing to take the risks be able to live wherever they want?
Second, doesn't the fact that they've chosen to live in such dangerous suggest that they gain something from their locations? Examples might include better jobs, lower costs of living, or a unique culture. New Orleans in particular satisfies the latter: from a national perspective, there's no place in the country like it, and from an individual perspective, many of the people who left after Katrina have left their churches, their families, their landmarks behind.
Third, what are the government's responsibilities with regard to preventing further so-called "disaster"? Is it really possible that with our masterful technologies and near-limitless resources, we cannot safeguard our citizens? Or do we, after soberly reflecting on the costs and benefits, throw them to the wolves? In considering this point, know that New Orleans has been flooded at least twice before, both time in the 20th century, and that each time the levees next to the Lower Ninth Ward were demolished by the local government to drain the water away from the French Quarter.
I'll be the first to admit that moving into New Orleans or any of the tinderbox West Coast cities looks a lot like beating one's head against the wall. But there's a lot that can't be replaced in those cities; one wonders whether writing them off costs us more than it saves.
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