Diddle E Squat
01-05-2007, 02:22 AM
Many Houses Built in Areas Katrina Flooded Are Not on Raised Foundations
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 4, 2007
NEW ORLEANS -- By ones and twos, homeowners here are reinhabiting neighborhoods, even the most devastated ones, and many view their return as a triumph over adversity.
But experts involved in the rebuilding believe that the helter-skelter return of residents to this low-lying metropolis may represent another potential disaster.
After Katrina, teams of planners recommended that broad swaths of vulnerable neighborhoods be abandoned. Yet all areas of the city have at least some residents beginning to rebuild. With billions of dollars in federal relief for homeowners trickling in, more people are expected to follow.
Moreover, while new federal guidelines call for raising houses to reduce the damage of future floods, most returning homeowners do not have to comply or are finding ways around the costly requirement, according to city officials.
"It's terrifying: We're doing the same things we have in the past but expecting different results," said Robert G. Bea, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a former New Orleans resident who served as a member of the National Science Foundation panel that studied the city's levees.
"There are areas where it doesn't make any sense to rebuild -- they got 20 feet of water in Katrina," said Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor who served on an Urban Land Institute panel for post-Katrina planning. "In those places, nature is talking to us, and we ought to be listening. I don't think we are."...
...A few blocks over, Vincent Gangi, 54, a real estate broker, is restoring a large brick house adorned with Greek-revival statues.
"I just don't think it's going to happen again -- something like Katrina happens only once in a hundred years," he said. "By that time, I'll be dead."...
...In the fall of 2005, planners from the Urban Land Institute, working with the city's Bring New Orleans Back Commission, recommended that large sections of Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward be abandoned, at least temporarily. The panel called for the government to purchase homes at pre-Katrina prices.
There were two reasons for the planners' proposals. First, the levees had proved catastrophically fallible. Even now, they are not guaranteed to stand during the strongest hurricanes. Moreover, the wetlands that once protected the city from storm surges continue to erode, and hurricane experts, including Max Mayfield, the outgoing director or the National Hurricane Center, have repeatedly warned that many homeowners are taking on unacceptable risks in U.S. coastal areas.
Second, it seemed likely that New Orleans's post-Katrina population was destined to be smaller. It made sense to consolidate neighborhoods, planners said, to prevent blight from overtaking sparsely populated, partially abandoned areas.
"What we said was that, in the areas that had gotten 10 feet of water, don't commit to rebuilding anything yet, because it probably won't happen anyway," said Joseph Brown, head of the urban design panel at the Urban Land Institute.
But Nagin, who was hearing complaints that shrinking the city's footprint was unfair, particularly to African Americans, rejected the idea. Everyone should be able to return to their homes, he said...
For all of the article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010301593.html
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/01/03/PH2007010302007.jpg
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 4, 2007
NEW ORLEANS -- By ones and twos, homeowners here are reinhabiting neighborhoods, even the most devastated ones, and many view their return as a triumph over adversity.
But experts involved in the rebuilding believe that the helter-skelter return of residents to this low-lying metropolis may represent another potential disaster.
After Katrina, teams of planners recommended that broad swaths of vulnerable neighborhoods be abandoned. Yet all areas of the city have at least some residents beginning to rebuild. With billions of dollars in federal relief for homeowners trickling in, more people are expected to follow.
Moreover, while new federal guidelines call for raising houses to reduce the damage of future floods, most returning homeowners do not have to comply or are finding ways around the costly requirement, according to city officials.
"It's terrifying: We're doing the same things we have in the past but expecting different results," said Robert G. Bea, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a former New Orleans resident who served as a member of the National Science Foundation panel that studied the city's levees.
"There are areas where it doesn't make any sense to rebuild -- they got 20 feet of water in Katrina," said Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor who served on an Urban Land Institute panel for post-Katrina planning. "In those places, nature is talking to us, and we ought to be listening. I don't think we are."...
...A few blocks over, Vincent Gangi, 54, a real estate broker, is restoring a large brick house adorned with Greek-revival statues.
"I just don't think it's going to happen again -- something like Katrina happens only once in a hundred years," he said. "By that time, I'll be dead."...
...In the fall of 2005, planners from the Urban Land Institute, working with the city's Bring New Orleans Back Commission, recommended that large sections of Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward be abandoned, at least temporarily. The panel called for the government to purchase homes at pre-Katrina prices.
There were two reasons for the planners' proposals. First, the levees had proved catastrophically fallible. Even now, they are not guaranteed to stand during the strongest hurricanes. Moreover, the wetlands that once protected the city from storm surges continue to erode, and hurricane experts, including Max Mayfield, the outgoing director or the National Hurricane Center, have repeatedly warned that many homeowners are taking on unacceptable risks in U.S. coastal areas.
Second, it seemed likely that New Orleans's post-Katrina population was destined to be smaller. It made sense to consolidate neighborhoods, planners said, to prevent blight from overtaking sparsely populated, partially abandoned areas.
"What we said was that, in the areas that had gotten 10 feet of water, don't commit to rebuilding anything yet, because it probably won't happen anyway," said Joseph Brown, head of the urban design panel at the Urban Land Institute.
But Nagin, who was hearing complaints that shrinking the city's footprint was unfair, particularly to African Americans, rejected the idea. Everyone should be able to return to their homes, he said...
For all of the article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010301593.html
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/01/03/PH2007010302007.jpg
