Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

Lately, the stories of Hurricane Katrina, its distruction and the clean-up, have been all over the news. Now, Hurricane Rita is bearing down on the Gulfcoast again, but this time between New Orleans and Galveston, Texas. Katrina virtually destroyed New Orleans and caused gas prices all over the US to rise almost a dollar a gallon. Now, similar destruction is feared (expected) as a result of Rita. This destruction is obviously horrible for the people directly affected by the storms. It has caused me to wonder about the intelligence of building major cities, such as New Orleans, so close to the Gulf coast. Hurricanes are not exactly uncommon in these areas. It has really been a question of when, not if, something like this would happen to New Orleans. National Geographic ran a story about the potential destruction of New Orleans due to a hurricane over a year ago. I haven't read the story, but I heard about it on NPR. Apparently the story was very accurate in predicting the type and magnitude of damage.

I don't know much about the history of New Orleans, but I'd imagine one of the major reasons it is such a large city and so close to the Gulf is because it's a major port. There is probably a lot of traffic to New Orleans from the Gulf, including oil barges from the offshore oil fields. But couldn't a large portion of the city be moved slightly north to a not so hurricane prone area? As Katrina and the Asian Tsumani, have made perfectly clear, nature is very powerful, and there is little we can do to stop its desruction. Not heavily developing the areas prone to destruction is really the only solution.