Learning Lessons

Does New Orleans need to learn lessons from places that suffered from flooding, earthquakes, or other natural disasters like Kobe, Japan or Mexico City, Mexico, or Grand Forks, ND? Absolutely. Yet those lessons can't be learned in a vacuum, nor can they be learned without cleaning up the political scene.

Oh, and calls for quick rebuilding may be counter intuitive:

New Orleanians may find it curious to discover that one of Sasayama's first and most aggressive steps in rebuilding Kobe was to impose a moratorium on rebuilding anything at all. The goal was simple: to prevent Kobe from following in the footsteps of post-World War II Tokyo and winding up with endless miles of shantytowns cobbled together by homeowners guided only by urgent need, limited resources and no central planning, a prospect that hangs over the ongoing dialogue over New Orleans' future.

Sophisticated members of the Kobe intelligentsia, Hayashi among them, understood what Sasayama was up to and took heart in his tough stance as an early sign that Kobe was going to come back and come back better. But the grassroots political repercussions were toxic.

The government was accused of exploiting the disaster to ram through a redesign of Kobe that otherwise would have been politically impossible. Planners were dubbed kajibadorobo by critics, using a Japanese term that translates more or less as "thieves at the scene of a fire."

The vice mayor was undone by the intense hostility, which also took the form of lawsuits to stop City Hall. He committed suicide on the first anniversary of the quake. Sasayama rode out the firestorm and two years later was rewarded for the recovery's slowly emerging promise with an overwhelming re-election margin.

Mayor Nagin, are you listening? Your whiplash tendencies to say one thing, and reverse course does nothing to lay the groundwork for rebuilding.

Then, there's the issue of flood control. Does the US have to look overseas to Europe for ideas? Possibly, but concurrent with that approach must be a housecleaning of all the corrupt, inept and lackluster administrators of the levee system.

Creating a comprehensive model for flood control and a levee system that is fully integrated will take time and money, but it has to be done in conjunction with a realization that some areas may need to be condemned for flood control projects.

The establishment of a program to deal with thousands of properties that may need to be purchased, condemned, and banks and homeowners reimbursed for the properties will have to be established. Banks and homeowners will not get 100% of the value for the properties, but it will eliminate the burden on homeowners carrying mortgages on homes thorougly damaged and destroyed. Banks will be able to settle mortgages without resorting to foreclosures. That hastens the ability of localities to rebuild since clear title to properties will be ascertained and made available to developers and people who want to come back to New Orleans.

All the while, the spectre of delayed elections hangs over Louisiana and New Orleans. How is it even remotely possible that Mardi Gras can be held over eight days, and that elections could be delayed for up to eight months.

Resident Betty Gaynor said the city's priorities seemed misplaced, because officials put together a schedule for Carnival but could not restore power to her apartment at the Lafitte public housing complex, where she lived for 40 years.

"How can we be having Mardi Gras and we aren't even there?" Gaynor said, adding that it was a shame to have such a celebration in the wake of so many lives lost and so much uncertainty.

New York City was engaged in primary elections on 9/11/2001, when the terrorist attacks forced the election to be postponed, but it was quickly rearranged and held shortly thereafter. Regular elections are at the heart of the democractic system. Delaying these elections any longer than absolutely necessary smacks of political opportunism in order for those who already wield political power in the state (and who failed their constituents before, during and after landfall of Katrina).

UPDATE:
Posted to the following site: Jo's Cafe

Also the following sites are blogging the release of Gov. Blanco's office emails: Ranting Profs, Don Singleton, and The Next Hurrah who buys only the parts that damn the federal government's response, but ignore the huge avalanche of evidence showing the complete and utter failure of the state and local government to respond to the crisis or even prepare for the disaster. With 100,000 pages of data released, the WaPo quickly focused on the documents that rehabilitate the state's response and suggest a failure of the feds. Go figure. No amount of rehabilitation can paper over the utter uselessness of Blanco and Nagin. Nothing.

UPDATE:
Pierre LeGrande of The Pink Flamingo Bar and Grill offers not only thoughtful commentary on the rebuilding 'efforts' thus far, but has a photo collection from around the region one month after the hurricane hit. It's definitely worth the click through.

UPDATE:
AJ Strata also has thoughts about the state response. However poor the state response was, FEMA still appears to have issues, as documented by problems when residents began streaming back into the Ninth Ward. At the same time, more emails show that the Governor's office was swamped with offers of assistance:

The offers of buses were coming in so fast and furious, after TV news coverage showed thousands of people stranded in the Superdome and Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, that Blanco aides devised a list of questions to evaluate the legitimacy of the offers. Among them were how many people the buses could hold, where they were located -- presumably that would have eliminated the offer of hundreds of buses from a Colorado official -- and whether assistance would be available for people who were sick or had other special needs.

To reduce safety concerns, given media reports of violence in downtown New Orleans, state officials answering phones and e-mails were instructed to assure potential bus donors that two local law enforcement agents would be assigned to each bus.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; hurricane rita; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour; hurricane rita; hurricane wilma.