The Flood Insurance Program is deeply in the Red and will be more so shortly. It might well be put to sleep, but no private insurer will touch flood coverage.
In Coastal Florida and Texas, homes destroyed on Barrier Islands & the Keys should not be rebuilt- the government should buy the land and turn it over to the Interior Department as they did with the worst areas of the dustbowl. It is stupid to rebuild in low lying coastal areas in the face of normal weather and especially in light of climate change.
Make no mistake, this involves every American, as Flood Insurance is Federal and the grant money is also Federal. Huge sections of New Orleans should have been likewise bought out and restored to wetlands. It may sound harsh, but after the Midwest floods in the 1990s, whole towns were relocated or bought out.
6
Many of my comments are not being posted on this article. I'll ask another difficult question.
What's the crime rate in New Orleans East compared to Lakeview? How much does this crime cost the city and the community?
Go on. Don't run away from the uncomfortable. Address the question. I, and everyone else in New Orleans, already know the answer.
3
Mr. Horowitz: This doesn't overtly relate to your Katrina story. I would like for you and the NYT to draw attention to the horror of nursing homes in the USA. I beg you and your readers to read the story in the Miami Herald regarding the criminal conditions where 9 elderly people died. Take a moment to read all about the owner. I share the link here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/…/hurricane/article173059891.html
3
Even if, for argument's sake, you discount the effect of climate change: does it really make sense to allow people to build/rebuild in areas that are known to be flood-prone? And especially to build chemical and other types of plants that could wreak havoc by their devastation in a storm/flood?
While I agree that there may be excess regulation in a number of areas, housing and the construction of 'potential threat' industry facilities should be regulated with an eye towards the safety of our citizens.
4
The standard for most insurance policies is to pay fair market value, not full replacement costs. Of course every homeowner can pay for the coverage they want. It's not a racial thing.
4
All will be repeated in a few years and their will be a pledge to rebuild - mostly with taxpayer funds. What likely will not happen is a well planned effort to move people out of flood zones and coastal areas that should revert to barrier islands and estuaries. Building codes and zoning regulations must be improved and enforced even in Texas where they seem to believe those things are not necessary and they turn to evil government for help when things go wrong. Failure to take those type of actions will make things even worse with the next climate change driven storm.
6
The public, not just the politicians, has to share in the blame. I'm angry with people who support Trump, but I'm even more perplexed by some members of minority groups who support him. But this is part of a broader pattern, with people from every ethnic group in the U.S. who are not in the wealthiest tax bracket, of voting against their own interests. Maybe it makes them feel powerful? But it comes back to wreak destruction.
3
This is an email sent by a friend , Don Molino, living in Baton Rouge, La., about floods there last yr:
It took us a full 8 months to move back home after the flooding.
The first thing the Houston area folks are gonna need is an honest contractor because there will be tons and tons of crooks showing up. And the problem is there are only so many good contractors to go around so it's gonna be hit and miss. And i really don't think there is enough sheet rock on the planet to replace what has been lost in Houston, Beaumont, Galveston, etc.
It took a couple of weeks just to get everything out of the house so it could start drying out. I've found out the heaviest substance know to man is wet carpet! But even after all the sheet rock was thrown out and the furniture and the appliances and the clothes and the sheets and the beds and the books were at the street, all the sheet rock in the house had to be removed even though we only got 2 1/2 feet of water inside.
After a month of trying to get house dry (all work had to stop in the meantime) we finally figured out there was water under the brick floor in the kitchen and dining room. That had to be removed which took another 2-3 weeks. But after the bricks were removed it only took about another few weeks to dry the house enough the re-building could start up again.
Oh, and the paperwork! A permit here, a permit there. Then dealing with FEMA inspectors and flood insurance inspectors and city inspectors.
(more later)
8
Here's the rest of Don Molino's commentary on rebuilding in Baton Rouge: (all that fits)
They should get ready for hassles with whoever holds the mortgage on their home because that entity is the one that will be doling out the flood insurance money. So much to begin, so much more when the repairs are 25% complete, so much more at 50% and so much more when all repairs are completed. That's all well and good but how can you get to 100% complete with only 50% of the flood insurance money? No one has ever been able to answer that question.
We still have neighbors who are not living in their homes a year after the flood. Can't find honest contractors even now. Some contractors are sitting in jail. They took money and never did any work. Houston folks are gonna have to hope and pray they find someone they can trust.
We had flood insurance on the structure but not the contents, so we're now deeply in debt for the rest of our lives. And we don't expect any help from the $1.6 billion Congress authorized for Louisiana (of which less than a half million has been delivered to flood victims) because we had flood insurance. Yet another federal government hassle. And that SBA loan we had to take just to finish our home can NOT be paid back with any of that $1.6 billion appropriated by Congress.
Sad to say, the flood victims in the Houston area are in for a long and miserable existence for the foreseeable future. I would be surprised if things are back to normal a year from now.
9
Mr. Horowitz bluntly defines the costs of the policy choices to be made by decision-makers far from the areas hit by the weather events that changed the lives of people in the paths of Harvey and Irma or the western fires in 2018. Katrina was a warning. Did enough people learn what needs to be done to help everyone who suffers in 2018 or will the racial gap be even greater now?
In our local communities we will be active in telling our stories and asking detailed questions of those we have elected to represent us in the corridors of power. Those who counted on people just voting for who they always voted for had better up their games if they want to keep their jobs. What they do, what they vote for or against suddenly matters more; Now it is personal.
We demand our representatives fight the industry lobbyists and the conservatives blinded by their economic ideologies (and free from the worries of ordinary Americans). We will not accept vague promises that taking money from the National Hurricane Center, FEMA and the other weather forecasting and recovery budget items will be changed in a new 2018 budget proposal. Photo ops from Trump are not sufficient; he has to show he learned his lesson about what Americans need--really need-- to predict, prevent and recover from those "acts of G-d" insurance does not cover.
If the Republicans in TX and FL can't change after Harvey and Irma, they need to lose even more "bigly" in 2018 than their failures had set them up to do.
1
Everyone wants big government when they have big needs. Otherwise, they (the right wing in particular) see it as a give away program to help people other than themselves. These positions are often based on sheer ignorance and politicians exploit that night and day. Many voters, for example, think that foreign aid is a major part of the federal budget when, in fact, it is less than 2% and a lot of the money that goes into foreign aid is spent, by requirement, on acquiring goods and services from American companies.
When the tea party crowd first appeared in en mass in DC in 2009, some carried signs saying, "Keep your government hands off my Social Security" or the same for Medicare, both government programs set up to help create a healthy and balanced society.
4
State politicians, engineers and architects are going to have to change how they plan cities. Flood zones may have to be left vacant to absorb excess water, and houses may have to be built on stilts if built at all. And construction codes will have to be re-evaluated to make sure they can meet Cat 5 hurricanes. We need to change our mindset about how and where people can build.
7
The same people who are so concerned with inequality are responsible and support inequality by encouraging the mass migration of poor unskilled immigrants to "take jobs Americans won't do." Restrict the size of the domestic labor pool and wages will increase and the poor will find opportunities without the assistance of government.
As HL Mencken so aptly stated: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
4
An awful lot of what the government does, especially the federal government, to try to help backfires. Take the National Flood Insurance program as an example mentioned in this commentary.
If you can get insurance, you can build in dangerous, flood prone areas. If can't get ordinary insurance, the federal govt. steps in to provide it, increasing the ability to build where building is questionable.
I fully understand that people in New Orleans would consider it an insult to even consider whether the city should be rebuilt, but this is a reasonable debate. New Orleans is a cultural gift to the nation in many ways, jazz being only one of them. (A place for Texans and others to go and get falling down drunk? Well, that's another.) Of course the city should be preserved and advanced, but at what cost? What if reasonable estimates show the cost at 1 trillion dollars or more every 10 to 20 years?
As ocean levels rise and mega-storms become more common, as is likely, the word "retreat" will be heard about Miami, the lower end of Manhattan and a thousand other places here and around the world. If we have 500 billion or a trillion dollars to spend, how much should we consider using to help people start a better life elsewhere?
Fortunately (?) the victims in Houston come from all economic strata, the poor to the very comfortable in big, brick houses. The misery and the decisions about recovery will be shared and pressure put to act fairly for all. We can hope the call is heeded.
15
"It was the Army Corps’s failure, not the 2005 hurricane, that flooded the city."
Meanwhile Mr. Trump wants to cut the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers. Pick one area nationally---North Dakota, where there's federal funding for the $2.2 billion diversion for flood control to protect Fargo-Moorhead from Red River flooding.
Add 49 more states, where countless high risk projects are needed for remapping flood plains.
Trump could kill off the civil-works budgets of the Corps nationwide. Plus he wants to end the Agriculture Dept.'s water program that would devastate rural localities. The areas on the coasts. Major hurricane protection/ water resource projects in Louisiana receive no funding under his fiscal 2018 budget for the Army Corps of Engineers.
And he plans to slash federal money funding the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the Chesapeake Bay and other projects. Shockingly, Trump's budget document in discussing cuts to the Corps had the statement “lower priority work or for which savings can be found.”
His budget also kills a federal law that requires sharing more than a third of offshore oil and gas revenue from the Gulf of Mexico with Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama. Is Trump planning on taking their oil?
11
This is such a good comment. All over this country are the floods which damage property and take people's lives, but are too small for national media coverage. Many of us will never forget the sight of the buildings on fire surrounded by flood water in the middle of Fargo during one especially severe flood season. The Red River flows north to Canada so the flood issue is particularly difficult to manage in this drainage system. Small town politics everywhere make it very hard to use "buy-outs" or to move large residential areas from routinely flooded areas to higher ground (if any is available).
The many states which use rivers as boundaries make legislative activity difficult if not impossible to coordinate. The easy way out is to blame the Army Corp of Engineers and wait for the next flood hoping it does come while you are still in office to make the hard decisions.
4
The 4,500 housing "apartments" would not have been easy to restore, even before the storm. They were an eyesore, a monotonous conglomeration of dilapidated housing units, known locally as The Projects. They were not fit for human habitation. As a whole, they were the land of eternal Welfare, with no way out. The promise of the city, as I recall, was to build little townhouses scattered about, with rent subsidized by the city. Maybe some of that was done. I don't know. But I doubt it. And Charity Hospital, which is still standing strong, I suspect wasn't restored, as then-governor Jindal wouldn't want a monumental symbol of what the government can do for you with the 1 percent's money (note to middle class: I did not say "your money"). Of course, Huey Long, who built it, wanted just that.
4
I worked in Charity Hospital for a short while. It's an old building and would have been too difficult and costly to bring up to modern standards. It had wards with maybe a dozen, or more, beds in one large room separated by curtains. How many hospitals today have wards? The bottom floors were flooded for several weeks and during that time mold was able to grow throughout the building. Several hospitals, even modern ones, were abandoned for that reason.
1
'Don’t Repeat the Mistakes of the Katrina Recovery' Do you mean Move Away From An Area That Regularly Floods?
6
One positive note on the Katrina response and recovery, it has been cited that corrections to the errors made there contribute to a more effective response and recovery for Harvey and Irma. We shall see if that is true. Also, Katrina resulted in the loss of 800,000 housing units, I'm not certain on the losses for the two current storms but it seems like there will be much less damage to housing.
1
It's natural that people would like their cities to be restored but with global warming already creating climate refugees in places like the South Pacific, it turns out that the poorest people in the world are the main victims of climate change everywhere. Water levels are rising and islands are already disappearing, as it appears many coastal areas in the U.S., particularly around the Gulf of Mexico, will be disappearing. Does it really make sense then, to rebuild in areas that will very likely not exist in 20 or 50 years, after yet more people are put through the trauma of Hurricane losses? Denying global warming doesn't make it go away.
24
We have already repeated one of the mistakes: denying the impact of climate change on the severity of hurricanes.
Harvey and Irma are the evidence supporting this claim.
After Katrina, America did NOTHING to mitigate the increasing impact that climate change will on all future disasters, including the next disaster that will occur in New Orleans.
5
New Orleans and Houston's location are the mistake, New Orleans especially should be relocated or the repeat will come. There will always be vulnerable poor people subject to whatever the politicians decide after a disaster. Why can China build huge as yet unpopulated "ghost" cities in their north and we, the "greatest nation in the world", cannot relocate people from a flood plane? The answer is painfully clear, they don't matter, apparently.
2
If you relocated New Orleans, it wouldn't be New Orleans. It would be another boring, nondescript American city. New Orleans is unique, and I guaranty you no one there would willingly abandon their city. And are we going to relocate San Francisco and LA because of the extreme earthquake risk (which has the potential to be more devastating than a hurricane)? Midwestern and Plains cities because of tornadoes? Southwest and Mountain cities because of wildfires (which are increasing because of climate change)? And you're in Florida, hurricane and sea level rise central. How hypocritical.
1
It's always interesting to me that articles on Katrina rarely if ever mention the enormous damage to property, lives and businesses caused by Katrina's storm surge along the Mississippi & Alabama Gulf Coast.
7
The true disaster is how we choose to treat each other. The fact that we only come together in a disaster otherwise blaming each other like grade school children shows how diseased our society is.
2
NYTimes and Andy H: Please compare what happens when the Dutch go in to rebuild their Caribbean island to what the US does. All we read/ see now is how US citizens are faring. What happens to the Dutch, the British? Thanks in advance.
13
I understand that the French have already out distanced the Brits in their island relief program .
1
PM May is already getting blamed for not taking action as soon as France and the Netherlands. The UK sent soldiers, but no food or water except what the soldiers brought for their own use.
Unfortunately the 100,000 Afro Americans that New Orleans lost were the ones it could least afford to lose. They were for the most part the middle to upper middle class professionals who had the where with all to successfully relocate. The mostly unskilled, ill educated not having the resources to leave stayed and simply added to the drain on recovery resources; in dire contrast to those that left. This unfortunate, yet almost unavoidable circumstance significantly hampered recovery. Options to the poor in any crisis will always be very limited
3
Insanity is making the same mistakes over and over. Given the climate change we are facing - weather from natural or man made causes, it does not matter - our policies for rebuilding after floods and hurricanes need to be reexamine. It looks like billions of dollars are about to be spent to rebuild in places that will be even more likely to flood or be damaged in the future. Shouldn't we at least consider moving structures to safer ground? Shouldn't we be looking at making more stringent zoning and building standards?
And somehow I think all those southern Republican, who hate the federal government and taxes, will somehow choke down their distaste and accept checks from federal government funded by the same federal taxes they are itching to cut for businesses and wealthy individuals! (Even when they opposed aid to the Northeast after Sandy!) Simultaneously, Trump appointed officials are gutting reasonable regulations to consider sea levels and flooding history created by the Obama administration because "over regulation" is too damaging to our economy. But, I gather, spending billions to rebuild houses and businesses that have been flooded repeatedly is good business, as long as other people's money is funding it!
So let's take a look at the bad results of financing business and middle class stupidity in rebuilding! Why save all the reforms for policies that just effect the poor?
2
You really think Texas and Florida will build back MORE equal than before the hurricane?
Wishful Thinking. That's the name of the bridge I'm selling.
6
Home values and the racial demographics are still strongly connected. Whites will get more compensation for their homes than others, because their homes and neighborhoods are valued more. It is called institutionalized white supremacy. Those who make the rules....
2
The author raises questions the answers to which will quickly involve many basic ways in which we've organized our collective lives. How and where do we find decent work and affordable shelter? How do we get from here to there? How do we apportion, subsidize, regulate, and prepare for the risks of financial fraud, natural disaster, weather, accident, mistake, climate change, and pollution?
One of Eisenhower's famous sayings was that if you have a problem you can't solve, make the problem bigger. But in this case there doesn't seem to be a natural place to stop enlarging the problem.
Let's keep the author's perspective in mind as we rebuild and pay for the rebuilding. Let's take the broad view and the long view. But there are too many items on this particular menu to digest in one meal.
If you decide the answer is actually pretty simple, just subsidize risk everywhere but the Gulf Coast, then you'll still need to figure out (1) how people in the center of the country are going to get along without the Gulf Coast ports; and (2) either how to get along without the oil, gas, and petrochemicals or where you're going to relocate that industry.
3
Having lived in New Orleans and worked for the Corps there, I know something of the place and levee politics. The article rightly discusses the inequities of rebuilding and like most major cities these days, how the rebuilding made it even more unaffordable for the very people who make the city work. But the bigger lesson has been pointed out by other commentators, how will we rebuild in Florida and Texas that is more resistant to flooding and damage. Until we recognize global warming and its impacts on future storms, however we rebuild is meaningless, because it too will be washed away.
14
That's rich. First get rid of the criminals and undesirables, and watch how much better the city runs.
The disaster following Katrina was Democrats making all the decisions in Louisiana afterward. The state next door with GOP leadership got right back where it needed to be.
Rebuilding New Orleans with federal tax money is always going to be a waste because of the water table and the storms, but it is a pure vote-buy for Democrats in D.C.
NOLA is like the last Olympics site. Here' some fencing, we'll close it off and just remember all the good times and the stories it gave us.
2
I live in Houston and I volunteered here after Katrina.
The disaster after Katrina was the GOP administration in Washington, DC. Enough said.
And the water table and storms in New Orleans are the same as in Houston and the rest of the Gulf coast. You don't know what you are talking about.
"Heck of a job, Browny". Indeed.
10
There was no Ninth Ward in the GOP state. Indecision on whether or not to rebuild was a big factor there.
4
Which state next door? The one that ranks 49th on most quality of life surveys or the one that consistently spends its legislative time on abortion politics rather than urban planning or transportation?
TX has a lot to answer for in allowing dangerous chemicals to pollute air and water in flood zones which eventually drain into the international waters of the Gulf of Mexico creating a huge dead zone. Oh, I guess that was one of those "local" issues the TX legislature allowed towns of 1500 or so to decide because the research was too complex for the state legislature to work on.
3
Thanks for a timely and very revealing piece of journalism. I had read an earlier book (from Naomi Wolf?) a few years back that alleged racist policies to prevent the return of the poor after the hurricane, but it was, at that point, a bit premature, speculative, and alarmist. Now, from this recent perspective, that earlier work appears sadly on target. I look forward to the book, but I look forward more to your book's influence on policy.
6
Im all for rebuilding and treating the poor fairly. Many coastal homes and business should not be rebuilt on the same ground. With rising sea waters cities should look at a large scale plan to move these people to safer ground.
FL Governor Rick Scott has not listened to the warnings for the past decade to try and prepare for this event. Houston has very little regulations on chemical and big oil businesses and now they have a toxic stew there. States that follow regulations and put considerable effort into keeping their state clean dont want to keep throwing money at the poorly planned states.
The biggest polluters should pay for the clean up. There are so many superfund sites in Houston. Lets name them and call them out.
51
It's so easy to be an expert from a distance.
The petrochemical industries along the Houston Ship Channel are vastly cleaner than they were 40 - 50 years ago. Case in point, it's common to see porpoises in upper Galveston Bay now, closer to the industrial district than the Gulf. 30 - 40 years ago they rarely ventured above Bolivar Roads, just off the Gulf.
The air pollution is also greatly diminished, emergency emissions while shutting down for Harvey excepted.
Please avoid commenting on "toxic stews" you know nothing about!
4
Your observations might be true about conditions today, but the writer was referencing the current super-fund sites that are a legacy of the poor stewardship of the petrochemical industry around the city of Houston. Unfortunately, any carcinogenic compounds and other contaminants that were in the ground at the super-fund sites have now been spread out by flood waters along with sewer waste. The term toxic stew is an apt description.
5
Arent the Texans upset with the chemical companies that have polluted their land and waters. They get a free pass from you because its cleaner then 50 years ago? These big corporations paid out millions to hide that they were polluting instead of spending it on cleaning up.
3
I assume you're referring to the mistake of spending millions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild a city that's below sea level?
28
Just curious...would you propose we just close New Orleans down? It would cost millions of more taxpayer dollars to move an entire city and its businesses.
I am all for massive changes in our flood insurance program. I do not agree with taxpayers rebuilding the same houses time and again. But it is not as simple as calling it a mistake to rebuild New Orleans.
5
And how did NH fare after Hurricane Irene? Should your home be abandoned? Was it a mistake to rebuild there? Natural disasters can happen anywhere. There aren't enough "safe" places to live to hold even one tenth of our population. Simplistic answers like "abandon New Orleans" are no answers at all. Those are people, fellow citizens, who live there. They deserve something more than "Too bad, so sad".
1
Lets be serious, RJ has in all probability never been out of the state of New Hampshire. Houston, New Orleans, Florida are places he has just read about. Add to that the fact that he is not the "sharpest knife in the drawer" and he starts to make sense---------maybe!
Thank you for sharing the details of the true tragedy of hurricane Katrina. Maya Angelou said that when you know better you do better. I truly hope that she's right and we do better this time. Please tell us what we can do to ensure that our politicians don't repeat past mistakes.
5
Thank you for your cautionary tale of the destruction twice over of the great City of New Orleans. Heartfelt and beautifully expressed, a prayer, a plea for s more just world.
22