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« Oh, The Irony | Main | Ethics Update » September 23, 2005Hey Rita: Hit New Orleans, PleaseA subtext to much of the news coverage of Hurricane Rita is fear that Rita might hit New Orleans, re-flood the city, and heap more misery on that metropolitan area. But ... at the risk of offending a lot of folks from Louisiana ... wouldn't it be better if Rita were to hit the Big Easy instead of somewhere else along the Gulf Coast? If you pray for Rita to miss New Orleans, you are praying for it to hit somewhere other than New Orleans, and that means ... Corpus Christi, or Galveston, or Houston or some other stretch of the heavily populated Texas Gulf Coast. If Rita were to veer north today and make a direct hit on New Orleans, the results would be a smashed city would get a little more destroyed - while Houston, Galveston and other heavily populated areas would receive relatively light damage. New Orleans is already evacuated - Katrina took care of that - and the cost of rebuilding the city would not go up significantly if Rita came through and re-flooded the mostly already destroyed city. Much of the Katrina-flooded areas of New Orleans are going to have to be completely bulldozed and rebuilt anyway - re-flooding it wouldn't increase the cost of doing so, except the cost and extra delay of having to pump out the extra water. Comments
Excellent point Bill. So, if I pray for a relative to be spared from cancer, does God hear that and decide to inflict cancer on someone else instead?? In response to me noting that if Hurricane Rita missed New Orleans, as many people hoped or prayed for, Joe wrote: So, if I pray for a relative to be spared from cancer, does God hear that and decide to inflict cancer on someone else instead? Joe, the comparison isn't apt. Hurricane Rita was going to hit somewhere - New Orleans or somewhere else on the Gulf Coast. On the other hand, if I was going to develop cancer but prayer resulted in God preventing that from happening to me, it does not mean that that cancer is left looking for some place else to strike. A more apt medical analogy would be, if I had to break a finger, I'd prefer it be on the hand that was already broken, rather than on my good hand. Rita was going to strike somewhere, therefore it is completely logical and accurate to say that if New Orleans was spared, some other city or community would have to be hit.
Since it had to go somewhere, I'm glad it went to New Orleans - not because I hate New Orleans or love Houston, but because reflooding already-destroyed houses is a far better impact than flooding intact livable homes. The simple reality is, fewer lives would have been at risk and there would have been less property damage if Rita had struck an already empty and largely destroyed city instead of a more populated and intact city. The day I wrote the post, we only had one major empty/destroyed city on the Gulf Coast in Rita's general path. It was New Orleans. Had Rita struck there instead where it struck, the cost to taxpayers to rebuild the Gulf Coast cities would not have increased as much as it will now that Rita has struck elsewhere. Posted by: Bill at September 27, 2005 9:24 AMHate to point this out again, Bill but you wrote: "If you pray for Rita to miss New Orleans, you are praying for it to hit somewhere other than New Orleans.." The storm dissapated? Tell that to the people of Lake Charles and Beaumont. Tell that to the people of Holly Beach, La., in Cameron Parish, which was completely destroyed. Rita was a Category 3 hurricane when it hit - that's considered a MAJOR hurricane. I understand the sentiment behind praying for Rita to miss New Orleans - it's a desire for New Orleans to be spared more misery. But the practical result of Rita missing New Orleans is Rita hits some place else. My point was a simple one: It would be better, really, for Rita to have struck New Orleans rather than someplace else, as fewer lives would be at risk and the added cost of rebuilding would be marginal. Certainly, it would have been better for Rita to hit New Orleans than Galveston-Houston, both in terms of lives at risk and in terms of taxpayers' cost for relief/recovery/rebuilding. New Orleans was already heavily destroyed, so Rita would have just moved the debris around. If it had hit Galveston-Houston, it would have caused widespread NEW destruction that would greatly increased the cost of rebuilding. You're fixated on a minor rhetorical point within my post. My post wasn't about prayer, it was about which would be the best place for Rita to go - and that answer is, without a doubt, New Orleans. Posted by: Bill Hobbs at September 28, 2005 8:29 AMPost a comment
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