Tossing Mullet

Wolf! Wolf !! Wolf?

In the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav, there are quite a few lessons to be learned. By way of background I need to clarify that I was pretty much “born and raised” in New Orleans so any commentary needs to be understood as being from that background. I suspect that most of the 1 million+ that evacuated from the city are nothing but grateful for the successful process of communication and mobilization – and the only partially flawed long range prognostication for the storm.

The state of the storm as of Saturday night before it hit was indeed ominous. Everything put the storm into the Gulf some time Sunday and a broad cone of uncertainty captured most of the northern Gulf of Mexico with New Orleans in the “eye of the tiger.” With Mobile just east and squarely in the most dangerous right quadrant, all of us took several deep breaths and started praying that a modern version of the “Northern Aggression” would move south, drive the storm toward Mexico and hopefully take out some the people-smugglers camped at the Arizona border. This would not only address the illegal immigration issue, but provide much-needed water to an arid area.

Qualified meteorologists, emergency management experts, a variety of media commentators and a parade of elected officials spoke to the ever-present WWL-AM radio out of New Orleans. All proclaimed Gustav to be the “big one” that Katrina really wasn’t because she turned east at the last minute and punished Mississippi for legalizing gaming.

All of the institutions that failed the city in 2005 seemed to have learned the ultimate lesson because preparations, anticipation, and concern all seemed to be poised for appropriate and reasonable reaction. Mayor Ray Nagin described Gustav as being over twice the “footprint” of Katrina and that even got my attention! It turned out to be an accurate picture of the cloud cover, but an inaccurate forecast of real storm impact. New Orleans evacuees certainly should forgive him for his “over-the-top,” impassioned plea for people to evacuate – this time, and every time given the city’s geography!

I am less certain about the reaction from the thousands of coastal Alabama residents and holiday visitors that suffered through a largely unnecessary “mandatory” evacuation defined by the artificial boundary of Interstate 10. The situation was even worse during Katrina when both entire coastal counties were ordered evacuated! There was some discussion of the “shelter-in-place” policy in the aftermath of that event, and even “vertical evacuation” where flooding was the main concern.

The concept of the mandatory evacuation is rooted in common sense and the cliché “better safe than sorry.” Katrina proved the wisdom of the cliché while uncovering the terrible flaws in our emergency management system at all levels. But it would seem that there should also be some consideration of alternatives to going to bed early in an effort to become “healthy, wealthy and wise,” assuming that to be our highest goal!

Unfortunately the mandatory evacuation command also has roots in the fact that it reduces government responsibility and transfers it to us. Nothing really wrong with that as long as we collectively understand that and eventually examine and debate alternatives to blindly following each other up the interstate, bumper-to-bumper for hours, risking road rage at every step. The cost of these massive lemming-like migrations is huge in terms of energy expenditure, individual costs, social implications and larger economic issues.

There have been some attempts to establish the comparative costs of these exercises versus the cost of the damage had the evacuation not been ordered. The devil is in the details and it is likely that an evacuation of New Orleans may always be justified because it is below sea level while wholesale evacuation of Mobile County could only be economically justified in the face of a storm of biblical proportions.

It is interesting to speculate as to how much the Labor Day vacationers trapped headed north on I-65 on Labor Day Sunday would have donated to firemen with empty boots to equip the concrete condo they just left with a generator and three days of fuel and food. Many of these condominiums are now properly constructed and elevated, making vertical evacuation quite feasible in the face of a category 3 or higher storm – much less a tropical storm. There’s little doubt that coastal county residents in the line would embrace a subsidy that would help them install a generator at home. For those above the floodplain, I’d suggest that the political slogan, “A chicken in every pot” become “An R/V in every yard.” I know I consider our little camper/van with a generator, A/C and a toilet to be my personal security blanket.

As coastal engineers have pointed out, it is quite possible to design both residences and infrastructure that can survive extreme weather. We could minimize wholesale evacuation if we elevate wind-resistant structures and provide for short-term power, water and sewer on local and regional scales. This concept speaks to energy efficiency, good house and neighborhood design including regional and onsite water and waste capacity (makes my well and septic tank look pretty good). If this were the case it could make sense to limit evacuation orders to truly flood-prone and vulnerable communities lacking the features listed above.

The true dilemma surrounding this utopian approach is the unavoidable and inconvenient truth that it is becoming increasingly expensive to live near the water. And the fundamental question is whether the government should in any way encourage human occupation of high-risk areas. If the government doesn’t provide “subsidies” then only the relatively wealthy will be able to afford coastal living. The less wealthy are increasingly unable to afford even coastal visiting because the beaches and coastal waterways are being taken up by increasingly expensive properties. A developer of a so-called mixed-use complex on the Intracoastal waterway was recently quoted as saying, “Obviously, the more the better on the water way.” Great! – more people and stuff in harm’s way.

I suppose future management of the coastal populations may actually be somewhat less complicated and cheaper when we don’t have to care for the traditional population that can no longer afford to live there. The government message will simply be “A Category 3 hurricane has a 55 percent probability of striking somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico – get your rich asses out of the way.”

George Crozier is Lagniappe columnist. Contact him at george@lagniappemobile.com.

Archives