Friday, September 02, 2005
Katrina round-up: More disasters, warnings from Ivan, political exploitation and economic and strategic considerations
About 4:35 a.m. Friday, a series of massive explosions along the riverfront a few miles south of the French Quarter jolted residents awake. The cause of the blasts or the extent of any possible damage was not immediately known.
An initial explosion sent flames of red and orange shooting into the pre-dawn sky. A series of smaller blasts followed and then acrid, black smoke that could be seen even in the dark. The vibrations were felt all the way downtown.
The explosions appeared to originate close to the east bank of the Mississippi River, near a residential area and rail tracks.
Meanwhile, the bad guys are preventing rescues:
Ragtag armies of the desperate and hungry begged for help, corpses rotted along flooded sidewalks and bands of armed thugs thwarted fitful rescue efforts as Americans watched the Big Easy dissolve before their eyes.
The whole thing is so horrible it reminds me of a John Carpenter movie. Indeed, it is so bad that one wonders whether even Hollywood could have come up with a disaster this gruesome.
A year ago, when Ivan swept through, experts in such things contemplated this very disaster scenario (minus the bad guys). Even knowing about the possibility that the levees might be breached, could anything actually have been done to hedge against this well-publicized and understood risk? Probably not much. If anybody prominant had declared that New Orleans was an inherently dangerous place to be during hurricaine season, would anybody have listened? Unlikely.
That has not stopped the anti-Bush left (domestic and foreign, with a few Muslims thrown in, as usual) from finding yet another reason to bash our President in this catastrophe. Arthur Chrenkoff has a detailed catalogue of oh-so-constructive attempts to establish a causal link from one or another Bush administration bureaucratic decision to the catastrophe in New Orleans. Not surprisingly, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the high-stepped drum major leading this moonbat parade. [UPDATE: Also not surprisingly, Paul Krugman also blames Bush.]
Finally, Stratfor's George Friedman has some cogent and chilling thoughts($) about the potential economic consequences of Katrina, building on his work earlier in the week. Friedman makes the most compelling argument I have seen against the idea that it would be folly to rebuild New Orleans below sea level. He thinks that the American economy depends on it:
The American political system was founded in Philadelphia, but the American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the Alleghenies to the Rockies....
But it was not the extraordinary land nor the farmers and ranchers who alone set the process in motion. Rather, it was geography -- the extraordinary system of rivers that flowed through the Midwest and allowed them to ship their surplus to the rest of the world. All of the rivers flowed into one -- the Mississippi -- and the Mississippi flowed to the ports in and around one city: New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the barges from upstream were unloaded and their cargos stored, sold and reloaded on ocean-going vessels. Until last Sunday, New Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American economy.
For that reason, the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 was a key moment in American history. Even though the battle occurred after the War of 1812 was over, had the British taken New Orleans, we suspect they wouldn't have given it back. Without New Orleans, the entire Louisiana Purchase would have been valueless to the United States...
During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered...
Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed....
The Ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, POSL is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A larger proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 57 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on...
The problem is that there are no good shipping alternatives. River transport is cheap, and most of the commodities we are discussing have low value-to-weight ratios. The U.S. transport system was built on the assumption that these commodities would travel to and from New Orleans by barge, where they would be loaded on ships or offloaded. Apart from port capacity elsewhere in the United States, there aren't enough trucks or rail cars to handle the long-distance hauling of these enormous quantities -- assuming for the moment that the economics could be managed, which they can't be.
The focus in the media has been on the oil industry in Louisiana and Mississippi. This is not a trivial question, but in a certain sense, it is dwarfed by the shipping issue... If the river itself became unnavigable or if the ports are no longer functioning, however, the impact to the wider economy would be significantly more severe. In a sense, there is more flexibility in oil than in the physical transport of these other commodities....
There is clearly good news as information comes in. By all accounts, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which services supertankers in the Gulf, is intact... The news on the river is also far better than would have been expected on Sunday. The river has not changed its course. No major levees containing the river have burst. The Mississippi apparently has not silted up to such an extent that massive dredging would be required to render it navigable. Even the port facilities, although apparently damaged in many places and destroyed in few, are still there. The river, as transport corridor, has not been lost.
What has been lost is the city of New Orleans and many of the residential suburban areas around it. The population has fled, leaving behind a relatively small number of people in desperate straits... But it is not the population that is trapped in New Orleans that is of geopolitical significance: It is the population that has left and has nowhere to return to.
The oil fields, pipelines and ports required a skilled workforce in order to operate. That workforce requires homes. They require stores to buy food and other supplies. Hospitals and doctors. Schools for their children. In other words, in order to operate the facilities critical to the United States, you need a workforce to do it -- and that workforce is gone. Unlike in other disasters, that workforce cannot return to the region because they have no place to live. New Orleans is gone, and the metropolitan area surrounding New Orleans is either gone or so badly damaged that it will not be inhabitable for a long time.
It is possible to jury-rig around this problem for a short time. But the fact is that those who have left the area have gone to live with relatives and friends. Those who had the ability to leave also had networks of relationships and resources to manage their exile. But those resources are not infinite -- and as it becomes apparent that these people will not be returning to New Orleans any time soon, they will be enrolling their children in new schools, finding new jobs, finding new accommodations. If they have any insurance money coming, they will collect it. If they have none, then -- whatever emotional connections they may have to their home -- their economic connection to it has been severed. In a very short time, these people will be making decisions that will start to reshape population and workforce patterns in the region....
The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about the facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city's population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States...
New Orleans is where it is for a reason: The United States needs a city right there.
New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to. (bold emphasis added)
Friedman does not make one final point, though, which has troubled me all week: If New Orleans is the ideal military target for an enemy of the United States and if its levee system makes it so invulnerable (as has now been revealed to the world), how can we protect it against an attack from al Qaeda? Friedman is perhaps correct: The United States needs New Orleans, perhaps more than most other cities with an NFL team. But how will we defend it now that every lunatic in the world understands its vulnerability?
As I have said before, if you have a spare $99 (which you may not, given gasoline prices), you can do a lot worse than a subscription to Stratfor.
7 Comments:
By 
Dan Kauffman, at
Fri Sep 02, 07:31:00 AM:
"That has not stopped the anti-Bush left (domestic and foreign, with a few Muslims thrown in, as usual) from finding yet another reason to bash our President in this catastrophe"
It does not matter what Bush does or does not do, they can always find SOMETHING to foam at the mouth about specially if they ignore their own past actions.
Bobby Kennedy Jr wrote a little tome on Huffington all but blaming Bush for global warming and Katrina
as did some German Environmental Minister.
Course neither of them had a word to say about the Vote in the US Sentate before Al Gore went to Tokyo.
Nothing about the fact that the Clinton Administrarion never bothered to send the Treaty to the Seante for ratification because they had ALREADY voted 95 to 0 NOT to.
Some familiar names voted to reject that Treaty.
Names like
Kennedy, Kerry, Durbin, Boxer. Carol Mosley=Brown. Daschle. YOU get the picture.
Wonder if Bobby Boy had a talk with his Uncle Teddy after he wrote that article?
http://www.angelfire.com/ky/kentuckydan/CommitteesofCorrespondence/index.blog?entry_id=1076365
By 
, at
Fri Sep 02, 12:53:00 PM:
We protect it by spending the money to raise street level by a minimum of 15 feet.
By Cardinalpark, at
Fri Sep 02, 01:30:00 PM:
No reason to get Malthusian about the catastrophe in New Orleans. Never underestimate the adaptive capabilities of Americans and the enormous motivating power of economic incentive. Friedman is correct that the lower end of the Mississippi River is critical. It is precisely this economic importance that will bring an unprecedented revival to the city over the next 5 years. Charleston, a city which certainly does not rival New Orleans, was brilliantly restored after Hugo's utter devastation.
So too will New Orleans return, better than ever.
By , at
Fri Sep 02, 06:00:00 PM:
Hurricane Katrina has been a tragic disaster for the people of New Orleans and for the rest of the region. We wish for quick relief for those who are suffering.
Mr. Freidman of Stratfor believes New Orleans is economically and strategically necessary. Strictly speaking, this is correct, but exaggerated. The Census Bureau counts the population of the greater New Orleans metro area at 1.3 million. The Port of New Orleans claims that its activities support 107,000 jobs in the region, supporting, at the top end through families, perhaps 400,000 people (a guess).
We have all witnessed how geographically vulnerable New Orleans is. It has (had) probably expanded beyond a safe limit. If you accept that the port alone requires (or draws) 400,000 to function sustainably, what about the remaining 900,000 that live there? Are they there for the purpose of tourism? The universities? At what risk?
People in the U.S. have the freedom to live where they want and to take the risks that they want, as long as they don't harm others or put them at risk. The personal decisions of thousand will thus decide what will become of the "new" New Orleans. However, the U.S. federal government, acting in the name of its citizens and using their tax receipts, will, through the moral hazard of its insurance decisions, induce more people back into a economically and physically risky place, more than would choose to go without that federal support.
Westhawk
By Papa Ray, at
Fri Sep 02, 11:44:00 PM:
I wrote somewhere earlier in the week that we should be able to do at least as good as the Japanese and do it better.
They built one of the largest international airports in the world out in the middle of a lake.
IN FIVE YEARS.
Maybe we should just call them and contract it out to them to build a storm proof port complete with a small city for the workers.
Anyway...
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
By , at
Sat Sep 03, 12:57:00 AM:
I think the bulk of the damage and most fatalities are in the New Orleans downtown area, population about 450,000. The outlying metro area was not as badly affected as far as I can tell.
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