Is New Orleans the new Atlantis? Should we rebuild it?
Meanwhile, my friends, and the residents in Gulfport, Biloxi, New Orleans, and the surrounding areas that were hit will now be facing the prospects of needing months to rebuild their cities, and along with those months of time, will need billions in disaster relief, insurance payouts, and other assistance to help get things back to normal.
What I want to ask here though, is should things get back to normal in New Orleans and these other areas? Or, should we instead learn some serious lessons and perhaps instead look at New Orleans as a modern day Atlantis - a lost city that many believe was swallowed by the ocean and wiped from the face of the Earth.
Please don't mistake what I write here as being cruel, heartless and non-caring for the people that were affected by these storms. I don't want to see anyone that lost their home, their possessions, or god forbid lost a loved one or loved ones because of these storms have to endure more hardships, but at the same time, I think a little common sense needs to be brought into the picture here.
Much like the areas of California that are constantly impacted by mud-slides that cause very expensive homes to be lost (literally washed down the hills), the idea that tax money and donations to relief agencies by the bulk of the citizens in the country will go towards rebuilding things implies to me that some responsibility must be placed on the people that will have their homes rebuilt at others expense.
Would we perhaps be wise to move New Orleans, LA to say South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Nevada or some other safer area? I mean quite literally, would we be wise to require that anyone that gets disaster relief money from the government be bound by an agreement to move away from Louisiana, or at the very least, away from the land that was just swallowed by nature's wrath and covered with water because it was already sitting below sea level?
I know that for some New Orleans was a beautiful city, it was their home, the only place they had known, but then again, it also has been described as a city that includes many poor people. People who were working poor, who couldn't afford to move away from the area because they didn't have enough money, or didn't have a job to go to.
Given the almost complete and total devestation of the city, is it time to simply move New Orleans and put it in a much safer place, with a new start for all of it's residents?
Something to ponder....