NationStates Jolt Archive

I will start by saying that I am NOT critisizing the modern French person. Personally, I think not wanting to have any McDonalds in your country is a very smart thing.

I AM however critisizing the French Colonists. Specificly those who decided to make a city UNDER WATER LEVEL! I mean, what were they thinking? "Look! The level of that lake is way up there, the level of the river is up there, we're down here, how great of a location is this for a city!"
Did they not think that it MIGHT flood? And how did they get the water out when it did? If I'm not mistaken, this was before steam engines had been invented, and it was DEFINATELY before gas engines or elecrical engines, so it wasn't like they had an effective pumping system.

By the way, for those who haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about New Orleans.

And another group of people I will critisize while I'm here are the people who CHOSE to stay in their houses below water level during the CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE. Not the people who couldn't leave, but the people who decided to IGNORE the MANDETORY evacuation order.

And now, thanks to this WONDERFUL city placement, the entire city will flood, forcing millions of people out of their homes, and killing probably thousands.

That's been bugging me too. How the hell did a coastal city end up below water level?

Eh, you have to remember, normally, people do not think in the long term...

I AM however critisizing the French Colonists. Specificly those who decided to make a city UNDER WATER LEVEL! I mean, what were they thinking?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the French set up a small trading settlement on high ground above the flood plain, it was you zany Americanos that decided it would be a really neat idea to keep expanding it across the low-lands.

Typical behavior.... blame the French!

Anyway, you act as if building a city under water level is so OBVIOUSLY a bad idea, yet you didn't mention it until now when there was a hurricane the city couldn't handle. You didn't even mention it when there were previous hurricanes, as far as I can see. Why? Because you, too - like the French, and later the Americans and everyone else - didn't think it was all that obviously a bad idea.

I mean it worked up til just now, didn't it?

And it will when they rebuild...

Typical behavior.... blame the French!

Anyway, you act as if building a city under water level is so OBVIOUSLY a bad idea, yet you didn't mention it until now when there was a hurricane the city couldn't handle. You didn't even mention it when there were previous hurricanes, as far as I can see. Why? Because you, too - like the French, and later the Americans and everyone else - didn't think it was all that obviously a bad idea.

I mean it worked up til just now, didn't it?

And it will when they rebuild...
I seriously doubt that they'll rebuild. I might be wrong, but I think it's probably cheaper to let it go and build a city somewhere safer.

well, settlements expand and people develop the area. thats like saying why did someone live in a place where they knew an earthquake would hit...

i agree with santa barbara. ne blâmez pas les Français.

Because you, too - like the French, and later the Americans and everyone else - didn't think it was all that obviously a bad idea.


Hey, to be fair Memphis Minnie warned us all in 1929 with her song When The Levee Breaks, but went ignored, as did Led Zeppelin when they repeated her meterological/geographical statement in their 1971 version.

I seriously doubt that they'll rebuild. I might be wrong, but I think it's probably cheaper to let it go and build a city somewhere safer.

Cities aren't built for any reason except people needing a place to live, and a coincidence of economic and social forces, "rivers" if you will of trade and people. LA was in a good spot... it'll get rebuilt, though of course people will be more concerned about hurricane defenses. Really, I don't see how anyone could prevent it from being rebuilt, unless they manage to keep the water in forever, and probably guard the place from squatters and block any juicy government/big business development projects...

The fault doesn't only lie with the French, it also lies with the Americans who turned it into a major southern city.

It wasn't the French, it was us. The US drained a lot of the wetlands around the area and changed the mouth of the Mississippi. From what I am told, orginally the Mississippi would flood reguarly (like the Nile) and dump a load of sediment around the wetlands and keep the place above sea level. When the Mississippi became the main water route into the interior of the nation, the mouth was blocked from a delta to just a straight shoot in an effort to keep it open for shipping. All that soil then shot straight into the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Stream helpfully kept taking the soil away from New Orleans, in effect, it was digging underneath it and raising the seabed around it, lowing it under the sealevel.

Also, ironically, those wetlands also help calm and absorb the fury of a hurricane, acting as a sponge to take all the excess water, with them destroyed...

The US had a plan to restore some of the wetlands around the area in an effort to protect the city in a case like this, but many people were unahppy as this left less land to be developed and a chance that gas and oil areas would be placed off limits. Warnings what could happen went unheaded till...

Humanity all over I'm afraid.

As I understand it, it isn't the original French New Orleans that is below sea level but the expanded, American New Orleans.

Seattle was built below sea level as well. Fixing that is a pretty amazing story.

See? If you think hard enough you can blame everything on the French!!

But yes, builiding a city below sea level was possibly one of the stupidist things ever done.


:mp5: :sniper: :mp5:
The Armed Republic Of Cruel Tyrany

Ask the Dutch why anyone would build a city under sea level, that is a city without a pressurized air dome.

As far as New Orleans is concerned, this has happened before and I am sure the world will continue to spin just fine.

If you want to get on a Frenchman’s case for something, get on their case for The Ivory Coast and Boycott their Chocolate.

Don't forget that New Orleans was the most economically important city up until the Civil War. It was the premier port at the mouth of the Mississippi, and was the equivalent of a hub for one of the world's main conduits for goods. Before railroads, and even at the same time, the river was still the best way to ship heavy goods in large quantities. The commericial potential was staggering.

Also, there wern't anywhere near as many people and fewer severe hurricanes (or so it seems), so that wasn't considered, especially with such massive wealth to be gained.

Here we go, I KNEW National Geographic had a story on this a few years back.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/?fs=www7.nationalgeographic.com

The scary thing is reading the opening paragraphs:

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

This was in 2004, but it reads like today's paper. :(

See? If you think hard enough you can blame everything on the French!!

But yes, builiding a city below sea level was possibly one of the stupidist things ever done.


:mp5: :sniper: :mp5:
The Armed Republic Of Cruel Tyrany
I believe most of the original city, the french quarter, is still above water. As has been pointed out before, it's the newer stuff that is under water.

I'm a little fuzzy on my history regarding New Orleans, but did the Spanish orginally settle the city? I know the possessed the city for time. I'm just not sure who orginally had it. Before someone comments the name of city means it's obviously French, they could've renamed it, like the English did with New Amsterdam.

I will start by saying that I am NOT critisizing the modern French person. Personally, I think not wanting to have any McDonalds in your country is a very smart thing.

I AM however critisizing the French Colonists. Specificly those who decided to make a city UNDER WATER LEVEL! I mean, what were they thinking? "Look! The level of that lake is way up there, the level of the river is up there, we're down here, how great of a location is this for a city!"
Did they not think that it MIGHT flood? And how did they get the water out when it did? If I'm not mistaken, this was before steam engines had been invented, and it was DEFINATELY before gas engines or elecrical engines, so it wasn't like they had an effective pumping system.

By the way, for those who haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about New Orleans.

And another group of people I will critisize while I'm here are the people who CHOSE to stay in their houses below water level during the CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE. Not the people who couldn't leave, but the people who decided to IGNORE the MANDETORY evacuation order.

And now, thanks to this WONDERFUL city placement, the entire city will flood, forcing millions of people out of their homes, and killing probably thousands.

Ya. The dumbasses couldn't even manage to get a city to go for 300 years, over 200 of those years outside of their control, without modern engineering techniques, without suffering a major environmental disaster. How could they not have prepared for the global warming that would take place after industrialization began in their absence which would lead to increased strength in hurricaines, a weather phenomenon that they had no experience with. Such myopia. Damn French. And they founded much of Canada too, so we should blame Canada.

Here we go, I KNEW National Geographic had a story on this a few years back.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/?fs=www7.nationalgeographic.com

The scary thing is reading the opening paragraphs:



This was in 2004, but it reads like today's paper. :(

Them liberal intellectuals trying to make the Republican politicians look bad by pointing out their failure a year before it happens. It's pessimism like that that leads to hurricaines flooding out cities.

I will start by saying that I am NOT critisizing the modern French person. Personally, I think not wanting to have any McDonalds in your country is a very smart thing.

I AM however critisizing the French Colonists. Specificly those who decided to make a city UNDER WATER LEVEL! I mean, what were they thinking? "Look! The level of that lake is way up there, the level of the river is up there, we're down here, how great of a location is this for a city!"
Did they not think that it MIGHT flood? And how did they get the water out when it did? If I'm not mistaken, this was before steam engines had been invented, and it was DEFINATELY before gas engines or elecrical engines, so it wasn't like they had an effective pumping system.

By the way, for those who haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about New Orleans.

And another group of people I will critisize while I'm here are the people who CHOSE to stay in their houses below water level during the CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE. Not the people who couldn't leave, but the people who decided to IGNORE the MANDETORY evacuation order.

And now, thanks to this WONDERFUL city placement, the entire city will flood, forcing millions of people out of their homes, and killing probably thousands.

Keep on bashing the French, even in this tragedy you manage to spread republican extreme right propaganda regarding the French liberties and democracy that you hate, you're pathetic.

If you want to get on a Frenchman’s case for something, get on their case for The Ivory Coast and Boycott their Chocolate.
Why chocolate? France is better known for its' wines and cheeses. Now, Belgium - they make chocolate good enough to boycott.

Typical behavior.... blame the French!

Anyway, you act as if building a city under water level is so OBVIOUSLY a bad idea, yet you didn't mention it until now when there was a hurricane the city couldn't handle. You didn't even mention it when there were previous hurricanes, as far as I can see. Why? Because you, too - like the French, and later the Americans and everyone else - didn't think it was all that obviously a bad idea.

I mean it worked up til just now, didn't it?

And it will when they rebuild...


I hope everything is taken into account when they rebuild-like-is it feasable to build up the city so its not ALL completely below sea/river/lake level? Can they improve the levees?
They have to make some serious improvements. A storm like this may not happen again for another 40 yrs- or it could happen in three weeks.

Hey, to be fair Memphis Minnie warned us all in 1929 with her song When The Levee Breaks, but went ignored, as did Led Zeppelin when they repeated her meterological/geographical statement in their 1971 version.
Don't forget Creedence either.

"I hear a hurricanes a'blowin', I fear the end is comin' soon, I feel the river's overflowin', I hear the voice of rage and ruin"

I hope everything is taken into account when they rebuild-like-is it feasable to build up the city so its not ALL completely below sea/river/lake level? Can they improve the levees?
They have to make some serious improvements. A storm like this may not happen again for another 40 yrs- or it could happen in three weeks.

It will happen when God wants it to.

One thing though, if NO rebuilds, I predict sales of driveway houseboats will skyrocket...if NO is actually rebuilt. All the looting will undoubtedly drive out many businesses.

When hurricane Fran flooded parts of NC the government bought the deserted land and forbade any more development there. It was good for health and safety but I wish they'd demolished the empty houses. Now there are these creepy ghost towns left over.

Not sure if the same will happen with NO. Trust me though decades from now there will still be entire neighborhoods down there of abandoned houses. This is a permanent tragedy.

Don't forget that New Orleans was the most economically important city up until the Civil War. It was the premier port at the mouth of the Mississippi, and was the equivalent of a hub for one of the world's main conduits for goods. Before railroads, and even at the same time, the river was still the best way to ship heavy goods in large quantities. The commericial potential was staggering.

Also, there wern't anywhere near as many people and fewer severe hurricanes (or so it seems), so that wasn't considered, especially with such massive wealth to be gained.


There were hurricanes, there just were fewer ways to measure the precise wind speed and fewer survivors to talk about them.

Why chocolate? France is better known for its' wines and cheeses. Now, Belgium - they make chocolate good enough to boycott.


The Ivory Coast is a major Chocolate Producer. The Ivorian Government was propped up by the French for some time, the French buy their Chocolate and ship it through Belgium for Processing, profiting every step of the way.

Now, the Ivorians imported many workers from their North, Arab Moslems. Those Moslems decided to take over and establish an Islamic State where The Ivory Coast used to be. Well this set off a civil war and for some time, French “Peacekeepers” primarily protected those Islamists, mostly foreigners, from government policing, or policing of any kind. Basically, the French decided they could get a better deal out of the Rebels, than from the Ivorians.

When a few French Legionnaires were killed in an Ivorian Air strike against terrorists, the French Retaliated by destroying the entire Ivorian Air Force, on the Ground at their air base, an action which crippled the Ivorian Government’s ability to defend itself against the Islamists and triggered massive Anti-French riots nation wide, which triggered a more full blown French occupation.

So, France is not only occupying Ivory Coast, but helping Arabs to take over yet another African State, something that is truly painful for Africa.

So I will suggest boycotting all Chocolate from the French pipeline, until they leave The Ivory Coast. This includes both French and Belgian Chocolate. I would avoid French cheese and wine anyway. They use a lot of bad things in making their wines and feed to many animal byproducts to their animals making their cheese, undesirable to me.

Keep on bashing the French, even in this tragedy you manage to spread republican extreme right propaganda regarding the French liberties and democracy that you hate, you're pathetic.


There is nothing Democratic or Liberal about banning religious hats. A side note, no one hears about it because it is not getting anyone’s head cut off, but they also banned our hats.

Wow. Where does one build and settle to avoid all the natural disasters? Japan would be deserted. All of Southeast Asia would be deserted. California would be deserted. Brilliant. You have just deserted three of the world's most important economic centres!

We are bound to live where there are natural disasters. The key is to prepare for them and live with them, not avoid them.

Wow. Where does one build and settle to avoid all the natural disasters? Japan would be deserted. All of Southeast Asia would be deserted. California would be deserted. Brilliant. You have just deserted three of the world's most important economic centres!

We are bound to live where there are natural disasters. The key is to prepare for them and live with them, not avoid them.


Absolutely, though a design to deal with one kind of disaster, often inherits weaknesses towards others. Japan built many buildings with heavy roofs, with the intention of surviving storms with strong winds, but these proved disastrous to earthquakes. What is strong for dealing with earthquakes however, flexible lightweight construction, is weak to those original storms.

Modern materials and reactive systems can go a long way towards all purpose disaster survivability, but there will always be something left to blindside you. When that happens, you can only respond as best you can, adapt as seems reasonable and move on.

I AM however critisizing the French Colonists. Specificly those who decided to make a city UNDER WATER LEVEL! I mean, what were they thinking? "Look! The level of that lake is way up there, the level of the river is up there, we're down here, how great of a location is this for a city!"
Did they not think that it MIGHT flood? And how did they get the water out when it did? If I'm not mistaken, this was before steam engines had been invented, and it was DEFINATELY before gas engines or elecrical engines, so it wasn't like they had an effective pumping system.

Most of your questions have been answered by now, except for the "how". Massive land reclaiming projects have been done before the steamengine was invented by using windmills.
Not that the french did that, as they were smart enough to start N O above sealevel :p

Well, after looking through this thread, I have found a lot of you completely disreguarded the statemnt I said at the very beginning. I AM NOT CRITISIZING YOU! I THINK MODERN FRENCH PEOPLE ARE PERFECTLY FINE!

But, after a little extra research, I found I was going on false information. I admit it. I was wrong. The French colony of New Orleans was likely to flood. This is a fact. You CAN NOT deny that. In fact, most cities situated on major rivers are likely to flood, unless a dam is built. But in Most cities, water will want to leave the city. Whereas in most of New Orleans, it just stays there. But the French Quarter is built upon a hill, so it won't flood as severely. If I'm not mistaken, in a dry season, if the lake levies were to break, the French Quarter would stay mostly dry.

But on another note, I think it might be time for them to start looking at the Mississippi River Levies, to make sure they won't break when the water this storm has been dumping upstream starts comeing back down. The lake is lower than the river, so the water will just keep flowing straight through.

So, yes, if you like, you can blame most of this flooding on the Americans. I suppose therre was no way the French could predict that their colony would grow into a city that was below sea level, and then have a category 5 hurricane blast into it, indirectly causing a failure of every method of protection that the city had.

Actually, come to think of it, we made plenty of protections against this. We had levies, pumps, weather predictions, computer designed worst-case-scenarios, and systems of spreading notices to tell people to get out. What we didn't suspect, was that we would have these fail.
The pumps died, the levies broke, and nobody paid attention to the weather notices or mandetory evacuation notices. On a scale of one to five, how stupid do you have to be to stay right in the path of a category five hurricane. I would say five!

EDIT:

Wow. Where does one build and settle to avoid all the natural disasters? Japan would be deserted. All of Southeast Asia would be deserted. California would be deserted. Brilliant. You have just deserted three of the world's most important economic centres!

We are bound to live where there are natural disasters. The key is to prepare for them and live with them, not avoid them.

Well, that is true. But, If you can find a place with only one kind, you can prepare for it without being unprepared for the rest. For example, the Northeast only realy has a slight problem with flooding, solved by building on high ground and adequate drainage. Its main problem is with snowstorms, solved by having efficient plowing services, and having most people know that it gets cold here, make sure you can heat your house.
No matter where you are, though, you should know what types of things can happen, and what you need to survive it if it does. If you live somewhere hurricane-prone, get a big insurance policy and keep a separate bank account with enough money in it to get you out on a plane or bus if nececcary. If you can't afford to put enough for that in all at once, put in as much as you can until there is enough in there. thanks to compounding intrest, you wont need to touch it until there is a disaster.
IT AIN'T THAT HARD!

There are many cities where you dont have major natural disasters. In Sydney for example, there are no threats from Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Cyclones, Volcanoes or whatever. The worst we can ever suffer is from drought (which we are currently going through) and it is not something that sneaks up on you, but can be planned for, avoided and wont catch anyone out unawares, and the occassional bad thunderstorm might cause some hail damage or knock some trees down, but certainly nothing on this sadly devastating scale.

The fault doesn't only lie with the French, it also lies with the Americans who turned it into a major southern city.

Actually, the blame is on the Americans who moved out into the lowlands. However, if we blame the French, we must also blame the Spanish before them.

I believe most of the original city, the french quarter, is still above water. As has been pointed out before, it's the newer stuff that is under water.


Well there is knee deep flooding. Colonist didn't really observe geographical threats back then. I'm sure they will move the city back or raise it above sea level when they go to rebuild the affected areas.

Hey, to be fair Memphis Minnie warned us all in 1929 with her song When The Levee Breaks, but went ignored, as did Led Zeppelin when they repeated her meterological/geographical statement in their 1971 version.Don't forget Creedence either.

"I hear a hurricanes a'blowin', I fear the end is comin' soon, I feel the river's overflowin', I hear the voice of rage and ruin"
Not to mention The Tragically Hip

"New Orleans is sinking and I don't wanna swim"

What we didn't suspect, was that we would have these fail.
Not true at all. Plenty of people predicted this would happen (in another thread someone even linked National Geographic article with an uncanny correct prediction about this weeks events) taking into account things like:
-The river delta was basically reformed from a delta with floodlands (each flood would deposit new soil to compensate for older soil sinking and settling) into a couple of straight, walled in river exist. The lack of new deposits ment the NO area was getting more and more below sealevel.
-All along the river floodlands that could store temporary excess water are "reclaimed" for cultivation. Yes, you are right, a vast quantity of water is barreling down the river and might well prove the next head ache.
-the state of maintenance of the levies. In stead of raising them to compensate for the sinking land they protect money was diverted to things like the war in Iraq.

The hurricane itself isn't man made, but (even aside the question of wether or not global warming has an impact on hurricane strengths) a large amount of the damage could have been prevented. So in a way, the damage *is* man-made.

If I stand in the rain without an umbrella I'll get wet. Is that my fault or the rain's? If NO is flooded because of faulty levies and too much river works is that Katrina's fault or men-made?

I guess the NO area will need its very own delta-works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works

There are many cities where you dont have major natural disasters. In Sydney for example,
As in Sydney, Australia? Isn't that where you have funnelweb spiders? Isn't australia as a whole "gifted" with more deadly snakes, spiders and other "creepy" stuff then any other continent? :D

Yup.

+1

Stop spamming.

If you want to start a relevant debate on why the French colonized New Orleans, feel free, but include good some sort of debate to it, rather than generalizing the French colonists as 'stupid'.