~ Tim's ~ Nameless ~ Blog ~

Wetlands for hurricane protection might make cents

2008-07-23T19:23:00.000-05:00

A study published in the June 2008 journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences attempts to calculate the economic value of wetlands as hurricane and storm surge defense features. I first heard of the study online and was fortunate to find the full text of the journal article here.

It is first important to note what this paper is NOT. It is not an engineering analysis; it is an exercise in econometrics. It does not propose any new design methods, nor does it test any of the natural mechanisms by which wetlands can provide storm protection for human populated areas. Early on the authors acknowledge this fact and note that the best empirical studies they find place the storm surge reduction benefit of wetlands at about 3 inches per mile. Regular readers of this blog will likely recognize that factoid.

What the researchers have done is gathered a ream of existing hurricane data, applied some simplifying assumptions to fill data gaps, and crunched the numbers through a series of statistical tests. The result, the authors can claim with some credibility, is that the value of wetlands as hurricane storm barriers can be expressed in dollars.

This is not a new problem. Economists have struggled to quantify the monetary value of natural features for decades. The vexing part of the problem is how to properly and fully equate wild lands and habitats in economic units of dollars used to store and trade wealth in human commerce.

Take any forest, for example. What is it worth? Is it simply the market value of its trees cut down and shipped to the mill plus the going rate for its developed acreage? We know this is not the right answer because forests have ecological value as carbon storage centers and aesthetic value as places humans enjoy seeing in person and in pictures.

Government agencies have for this reason studiously avoided placing economic value on wild lands. If forced to complete in the market of capitalist values, naturally occurring features will almost always lose out to commercial development. Environmental scientists instead have been using other more nature-based measures such as the Wetland Value Assessment and assigning "Habitat Units" in lieu of pure dollars to compare alternative land uses.

The authors of the Royal Swedish study set out to define the relationship between raw acreage of natural features as storm defense systems and the avoided damage from those same storms. First, they obtained a data set of hurricanes that struck the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts since 1980. This data included storm path, intensity and estimates of damage. They found a wealth of scientific and economic data in the Emergency Events Database (www.emdat.be) created and maintained by the World Health Organization, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, and the Belgian Government.

Next, they needed to calculate the total possible damage of strike locations. By comparing the experienced damage with the theoretical maximum possible damage, the researchers aimed to quantify the value of avoided damage. And this is where the econometric gymnastics kicks in. The authors took statistical data on US and individual state gross domestic product (GDP) and assigned a GDP value to a map of coastal America on a grid resolution of 1 kilometer square. Because GDP data is not readily available in this resolution, they interpolated and assigned GDP value by looking at satellite photographs taken at night. Areas brightly lit were given higher GDP values than dim or dark areas of the country.

Armed with this data, the authors ran the numbers and found some statistically significant relationships. Their primary discovery was that damage in areas near wetlands was reduced proportionally with the quantity of wetlands. Everyone has long acknowledged this fact, but here was proof--expressed in dollars.

The researches went further and attempted to calculate the average annual benefit of wetlands as storm protection. Their conclusion: wetlands save America from billions in storm damage year in and year out.

But let's not get too far ahead here. I have some serious misgivings about the methods employed and with the way the results were tabulated and presented. I will elaborate on some of them here.

1. It is interesting to note that the methods employed here failed to provide satisfactory results in several key instances. For instance, researchers had to limit their analysis to only the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts because of the scarcity of data. They admit to wishing they could apply their skills to the thousands of known disastrous tsunamis, monsoons and other coastal storm events, but found insufficient data to do so. The resulting data set includes just 34 hurricanes out of the nearly 270 major storms to strike the US during the selected period.

2. The researchers initially set out quantify the storm barrier benefits of forested wetlands, too, but found the statistical correlation not significant enough to support their hypothesis. Several widely published papers have touted the benefits of mangrove and cypress swamps in knocking down storm effects. The authors of this study could not validate that claim, and it makes me wonder why they proceeded with their work in spite of that glaring problem.

3. The use of GDP as a measure of potential storm damage leaves much to be desired. GDP is an expression of economic productivity; it says nothing about the present value of homes, businesses and other infrastructure that fall victim to nature's fury. Likewise, the Emergency Events Database records the total estimated damage wrought by storms. This would include wind and rain damages, but it is primarily the storm surge damage that is thought to be muted by wetlands.

4. To convert their calculation of avoided damage into an annually recurring value, the authors developed hurricane return frequencies using a data set with a period of just 25 years. This is hardly a large enough sample to extrapolate reliable return frequencies.

5. The authors conclude their paper with an editorial on the virtues of wetlands far beyond the apparent correlation to protection of human economic activity. They opine how coastal wetlands are "maintained by nature" and that such features are "far more cost-effective than constructed levees." But there is absolutely nothing in this article to support these conclusions. Indeed, the authors themselves note that Hurricane Katrina alone destroyed some 50,000 acres of wetlands.

These are just a few of the shortcomings of the study.

It is also important to note that the study tells us nothing about how and where to build wetlands as part of a storm defense system. The study considers gross acreage in the path of hurricanes assumed to be 100-km wide; nowhere does the study enlighten us as to how we would go about designing a wetlands plan.

I was disappointed that the researchers included the rather colloquial analogy that wetlands function as "horizontal levees." In fact, all physical features exist in three dimensions: earthen levees and wetlands both have length, width and height. The difference is the primary storm defense benefit of levees lies in their height, while the frictional resistance of wetlands is manifest in their area--length and width. But to equate the two, as if to suggest one could substitute some acreage of wetlands for some or all of a levee is ludicrous--if not dangerous.

It is noted that as I was preparing this blog entry, The Times-Picayune ran a story on the study that seized upon the expression "horizontal levees" as if it were a valid scientific result of this study. It is not.

I think the study represents a remarkable effort to quantify the hurricane defense benefits of wetlands in dollars--not an easy task--even if the results seem exaggerated to my eye. As an engineer, I find little in the study to help me understand and design these vital systems. But perhaps the study gives our society the justification and incentive to take wetland preservation and construction seriously as a bonafide contributor in our overall strategy to protect coastal developments. In the end, much research remains to be done before this general appreciation of wetlands can become a plan of action with predictable results.

Fundraiser for the Ashley Morris Memorial

2008-07-19T23:44:00.001-05:00

A space oddity?

2008-07-11T12:51:00.002-05:00

It was 29 years ago today that America's first space station, Skylab, came falling down to Earth. Some people at the office were talking about it and I recalled that it was quite a newsworthy event.

Pat O'Brien's even created a potent cocktail to commemorate the event. They called it the "Skylab Fallout."

But I was surprised to find I was the only person in the group who had ever heard of it.

Surely other people recall getting knocked dizzy in the French Quarter by a Skylab Fallout!

Exposed weaknesses

2008-07-09T23:02:00.003-05:00

At the Rising Tide 2 conference, writer and panelist Joshua Clark commented that Hurricane Katrina exposed many weaknesses in our lives. I wrote it down back when I first heard it last August, and I've been thinking about it here and there since.

The idea stuck with me.

As an engineer, I recognize how minor flaws can become major problems under certain conditions. A hairline crack in concrete can let in moisture. That moisture can cause rust in reinforcing steel, which in turn exerts pressures that will further crack the encasing concrete.

Weaknesses can go undetected for weeks, months, years, and then... a bridge falls, or a tower crane buckles, or a floodwall bends and bows to failure.

Engineers also understand that loads transfer from one part of a structure to another. If one connection of a truss fails, it might not result in an immediate collapse. The load will be transferred to another connection, much the same way a current of electricity will seek the shortest path to ground, or water the swiftest path to the ocean. This load transfer is automatic and instantaneous.

If the new connection can't hold the load, it too will fail and send the load to the next connection. Sometimes this transfer/failure/transfer cycle happens quickly--resulting in a successive collapse. Sometimes, it goes undetected for a while.

I've been thinking about the load of Hurricane Katrina on us, our lives, our community, and our support system. When something fails to hold up, do the others race in to help? And if the load and stress of this disaster and the rebuilding process pile on, will we stay strong, or will we suffer sudden or rapid successive collapse in our lives?

You could say we've already seen this happen at the District Attorney's office. Inefficiencies, blunders and scandals accumulated and brought down Eddie Jordan's office and career. It started out small, but grew over many months until the ability of the public to stomach the news had been completely diminished. It was a textbook illustration of the expression, "The straw that broke the camel's back."

I also think we see this happening with housing. With so many displaced from their homes, demand for rentals and rental rates are up dramatically. Amazingly the federal government and the city decided this was the time to tear down most public housing projects. The stress of housing has transferred from one market to the next, so that we can truly say there is a housing crisis in New Orleans.

Families feel the strain, too. The recent death of NOLA blogger Ashley Morris shows us how the burdens of life are distributed. The stress and strain was quickly transferred--shared--throughout the Morris family's circle of friends. Several NOLA blogger stepped in mightily to help them bear the load.

And the Morris family survives.

So I think I'd like to add a thought to Joshua Clark's observation. Katrina exposed weaknesses, yes, but she also revealed our strengths.

And not just as a matter of contrast. Just because one floodwall fell over and the one next to it did not is no reason to think that remaining floodwall is somehow representative of an ideal design; it just means it was at least a tiny bit better than the one that fell.

No, I'm thinking that New Orleans is a city of many strengths--strengths that were there all along, but we overlooked them or forgot them in the day-to-day journey of life.

Sense of community, love of neighborhood and civic pride are some examples. Would we say that these have sprung full-grown from our wounded city? Or isn't it more likely we had these things all along? I think it took several feet of flood water to push these powerful sentiments to the surface. And to this day if anybody says a cross word to us about being "stupid to live below sea level" you can bet they'll get both barrels of love right back.

Like travelers on a yellow brick road, we've been through hell and high water just to find out that what we were searching for we had all along.

I know we'll never forget that awful August three years ago, when unforgiving nature exposed and exploited all our weaknesses.

But I also hope we'll remember our discovered strengths, and that it's because of those strengths that we're still here.

"Those tiles will be replaced"

2008-07-01T22:56:00.003-05:00

That's what Entergy V.P. Rusty Burroughs said. His letter of apologies and promises was printed in the newspaper.

And so two months later, NOLA Blogger Oyster goes back to check and finds...

ENTERGY HAS DONE NOTHING.

Back on track

2008-06-27T22:40:00.001-05:00

I don't know who had the idea or made it happen, but they deserve praise.

This week the streetcars returned to Carrollton Avenue. For the first time since Hurricane Katrina tried to drown New Orleans, you can ride a streetcar from Claiborne Avenue to Canal Street via the world famous St. Charles Avenue streetcar line.

And somebody had the wisdom and forethought to put up these signs.

Automobiles cross paths with the streetcars at each of dozens of cross streets cutting across the neutral ground. After an absence just shy of three years, automobile drivers have likely fallen out of the habit of looking out for the streetcars. Hopefully these signs will remind drivers to be on the lookout.

This is positive and proactive and I like it.

Compare this to the stoplight camera scheme.

In the past few months the City of New Orleans and its neighbor in Metairie both installed cameras at intersections to catch drivers crossing through red lights. The goal, government officials said, is to improve public safety. Additional revenue brought by fines, government officials said, is just coincidental to the plan.

But what are the rules about crossing under a yellow light? Is anyone really sure? Ask any two drivers about traffic light rules and you'll get three different answers about what is legal and illegal when it comes to yellow and red lights. Where is the effort to educate the driving public of what is safe and unsafe? Where is the public education on the correct rules for traffic lights?

Apparently, nobody thought it necessary to provide information. They just put up cameras and started mailing invoices. The plan, it seems, is that once a driver is forced to write a check, he'll learn.

This is why I was so pleased with the "Back on Track" signs. They inform and educate in order to promote safety, and that is the way it should be.

Cats at home

2008-06-09T20:10:00.000-05:00

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were tough on a lot of people, but they were also tough on our animals. You could say that for our pets Callie and Smudge, it was a complete cat-astrophe!

(Okay, okay, a very bad pun. Last one, I promise.)

Callie and Smudge are our two remaining cats. Prior to the storm we had four cats and took every one of them with us when we fled town in the middle of the night almost three years ago. Packed into cat carriers, stacked on the back seat next to our Precious Daughter, I think it's safe to say they were pretty traumatized in those first days.

They did not watch the round-the-clock news coverage of the storm, the wall failures, the flooding, the failed relief effort, the bodies abandoned around the city, the desperate cries of help from the Superdome and convention center. They could not comprehend the enormous force of nature bearing down upon the city nor the necessity of driving away in the middle of the night. It must have scared the heck out of them.

If even a slender parallel can be drawn between the experience of our cats with the suffering of our neighbors here, it would be in the uncertainty. After the flood, thousands of displaced citizens were herded onto busses with no indication of where they were going or what awaited them once they got there: I imagine this is what our cats experienced, too.

We evacuated with four cats, but we gave two away. In those first few days when we realized we could not go home--we had no home to go to--we were very fortunate to have several options as we were invited to stay with close relatives. But we knew having so many pets would be a burden on our hosts. We knew that the coming months of moving from place to place would be difficult on our older cats. A difficult decision, but we put two of our cats up for adoption in Dallas. They're still there.

Our journey with the two remaining cats took us from Texas to Virginia and back to New Orleans where we've lived in two temporary homes until we finally settled in our new house just in the last few weeks.

I've blogged about my furry friends before, as at each stop in our journey they've had to learn, adjust and adapt to their new surroundings. They seem to have handled it well. How can I tell? They eat and sleep and seem to be in every way the same cats we've had for these several years.

Here at the new house, it's not just a new place. It's filled with all new furniture and beds and bedding. I had thought it would take them a while to adjust since almost everything here is new and strange. Well, there's US, but you know what I mean.

And as expected, they did slink cautiously around for the first day and hid under the bed for most of the next two days. But it wasn't long before they were lounging on our new king-sized bed as if they had been born into such privilege.

Callie, with her exquisite long and puffy coat of calico-spotted fur, looks especially content when she rolls halfway on her back and stretches her paws out over her head. It's tempting to want to rub her soft white belly when she does this, but anyone who approaches is quickly rebuffed with a warning glare of her golden eyes.

Smudge, always the more passive of the two, prefers to curl her thin body up in a tight spiral when she's taking a power nap. She's a short-hair Siamese, and her favorite sleeping pose is to coil her brown tail around her mostly white body and put a paw over her closely-set blue eyes.

Seeing them this way on the bed or enjoying the cool hardwood floors, I know they're comfortable. I know that they've accepted (yet again) the place their keepers have carried them to. I know they feel at home and they're happy to be here.

And I can tell you that it makes me feel cat-egorically happy, too.

(Oops! Just couldn't stop myself.)

Storm driven

2008-06-04T17:33:00.001-05:00

Massachusetts gets it:

New rules requiring sturdier construction of coastal homes may help protect against wind damage - but at a cost

Texas does not:

Texas building codes lag behind Gulf neighbors

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Eternal vigilance

2008-06-03T20:31:00.001-05:00

We were all talking about the high water on the Mississippi River a few weeks ago. Since then, the river stage at New Orleans rose to 17.0, Bonnet Carre Spillway was opened, millions of gallons of water were shunted into Lake Pontchartrain, the river stage finally began to fall, and Bonnet Carre Spillway was closed.

In sum, an exciting and rare event.

But that's not why we paid so much attention. A few weeks ago, nobody was expressing awe at the rarity of the event.

We were worried.

We worried that the Mississippi River levees might not hold, or that the spillway diversion might not be enough, or that if the river ever got loose... Well, let's just say Hurricane Katrina and every other catastrophe in the nearly 300-year history of this city would have been knocked one notch down the list of worst disasters.

But I think all this worrying is good. When we worry, we pay attention. When we worry, we acknowledge the importance of maintaining a strong system of protections, and we encourage thinking about consequences and contingencies.

There's the old expression, "When we fail to plan, we plan to fail."

But even more relevant is this expression from the time of the American Revolution: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

"Vigilance" as in keeping watch over the state and federal agencies who design, build and maintain the levees, walls and gates. "Vigilance" as in keeping apace with changing technology and scientific understanding of the threats. "Vigilance" as in maintaining the urgency and critical life-safety purpose of the protections.

"Eternal" as in always and forever. When the last load of clay is dumped and spread and compacted on that final levee, the job will still not be done. Maintenance must be ongoing and uninterrupted. Designs must be checked periodically to assure effectiveness under changing coastal conditions. The work must go on.

We all have our parts in this effort. Government will establish standards and enforce rules, and citizens must support and in fact encourage the prosecution of work.

And we who live behind these walls and levees know that if we stop paying attention, all kinds of bad things will happen.

Not "can happen" but "will happen."

If we are not vigilant, money for the required work will get diverted elsewhere. If we are not vigilant, the goal of effective, resilient flood protection will become the goal of bringing in a marginal project on schedule and under budget. If we are not vigilant, the carefully calculated decisions of safety-oriented engineers will be replaced with the whims of policy wonks and accountants, political appointees and the NIMBY neighborhood associations.

Am I preaching to the choir here?

Let's hope so. Let's hope that just shy of three years since that horrible event we're still laser focused on what really counts to this water-tested community. Let's hope we can keep that focus for 30 years or 60 years or 90 years and more, because that's what it will take.

We're eternally vulnerable, so we've got to be eternally vigilant.

Yes, all of the above

2008-05-29T06:12:00.002-05:00

Where is the optimism I had two years ago? In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I was sorry for myself, but not sad. When I saw the carcass of what was once our home--dank, molded and smelling like a garbage truck--I was filled with sadness, but not remorse.

I don't know if that makes sense to anyone except me, but it's how I used to feel.

And somehow, I was defiant. I was determined. I was optimistic. I started writing this blog to express those sentiments to myself, my family and friends, and the world.

Now that we have a new house and we officially sold our vacant property to the Road Home, I feel very different.

I feel tired, and beaten, and a bit depressed about it.

Am I tired because this has been going on for so damn long? Is it because our particular "Road Home" has been a winding, uphill trek of more than two and half years? Is it the long hours I've been working, saddled with the "time off" spent working on the "new" house?

Am I beaten because I originally envisioned a new house on our property in Vista Park, rising high above the ground to escape future floods and strapped down at every stud to resist powerful winds? Is it because I had to take down that sign we had out front for the past year, the one that proudly proclaimed, "We're rebuilding"?

Am I depressed because I see the slow, painful progress of my once beautiful neighborhood, and I know that I am doing nothing to help? Am I shook up by my neighbors who have not elevated their homes but merely nailed up new sheetrock, as if the basic flood protection here, still under construction, was in fact bulletproof and finished? Does it bother me that national newspapers print smug and insulting stories of our struggle to recover from a disaster of biblical proportions, while local media uncritically print and broadcast the unsubstantiated allegations of angry and irrational critics?

Yes, all of the above.

I tell myself things will get better. I tell myself my life will be easier in a few weeks once we've fully unpacked and settled into our new home, leaving behind forever the tiny lifestyle of a FEMA travel trailer. I tell myself that buying a house and investing in New Orleans is a positive act of helping with the recovery.

I tell myself that the unreasoned scorn of strangers outside of Louisiana is not important, that their anger is theirs own alone. I tell myself that New Orleans was created by outcasts, misfits and adventurers, and that the only proper way to rebuild it will be with the help of outcasts, misfits and adventurers.

And I make it a rule never to lie to myself.

More than two years after the water went down, I still have a house full of love, appreciation and support. I still live in one of the great cities of the world. I still have a lot to look forward to.

Oh, there's that optimism!

Vagaries of government decisionmakers and whims of developers

2008-05-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

"One guy is building 12 feet in the air because he's freaked out. The next guy is building at eight feet because that's the new flood regs. The next guy is building at four feet because he's grandfathered in [to the pre-Katrina code requirements], and the next guy is building right on the beach because he knew somebody at city hall and was able to get away with it."

Except for the beach part, you could almost imagine this is about Louisiana.

But it's not: it's coastal Mississippi.

Read the full story from The Christian Science Monitor.

The essential luxury

2008-05-17T08:07:00.002-05:00

Here is what I like about our new home: Hot water.

Oh sure, there are hardwood floors, a king size bed and the breeze-swept balcony with a view of the New Orleans skyline. My Darling Wife loves the high ceilings and fans and our Precious Daughter is enjoying her red and black room with full-length mirrors on the closet doors.

But for me, the greatest improvement in quality of life is the new bathroom.

Let me explain.

Here's how my mornings used to go: My alarm would go off. I would turn on the hot water heater. I would reset my alarm for 15 minutes. I would go back to bed. My alarm would go off again. I would get ready to shower. I would stoop slightly and step into the tub. I would remain bent because if I stood straight my head would hit the ceiling of the trailer. I would shower and shave as quickly as possible, because the trailer hot water tank only held about 6 gallons and it usually lasted about 15 minutes.

That's how it was for about 22 months in the FEMA Travel Trailer.

Here's how my morning goes now: My alarm goes off. I get ready to shower. I stand up and no stooping or bending is required. I stand under the strong spray of hot water for as long as I please. I emerge happy.

If clean water is one of the hallmarks of a civilized living, hot water is one of its essential luxuries.

Oh, I could probably wax poetic about the essential nature of water versus the sensuous pleasure of a hot shower, or even the paradoxical relationship we have with water since it was, after all, a water event that plunged us all into this long journey of misery in the first place.

But I'll let that alone for now.

I suppose at one time or another we've all been deprived of the luxury of a hot shower. Whether camping or during a power or gas outage, we probably had to deal with the inconvenience of little or no hot water for a day or two.

Well that's nothing. Try it for 22 consecutive months.

And then you'll know why my favorite part of the new house is all wet.

Unambiguously home

2008-05-01T23:50:00.001-05:00

There is a line that runs through all our lives here. It marks the place where everything changed.

It is first and foremost the water line. Thirty-two months ago, every house, pole, tree, car and street sign in the flooded parts of New Orleans bore the line. We've washed that ugly stain from most of our homes now, but the line remains. I can still see the line in my own neighborhood--the line that separates what survives from what dies.

Everyone knows that to survive, you must stay above the water line. That water line was the subject of a song by Paul Soniat. He sings about how a lot of lives "fell below the water line" in 2005. A lot of relationships, jobs and schools fell below the water line and did not reemerge.

The City of New Orleans is ignoring the water line. At City Hall, the only line they notice is the imaginary line drawn on the flood insurance maps. All they seem to care about is the Base Flood Elevation, that magical line that will allow you to get a building permit, and the best flood insurance rate, and the peace of mind we all crave. Or not.

There are other lines.

There is the line on the calendar that separates our lives in time. It is a line that separates the lives of the people of New Orleans into pre-K and post-K. It starkly separates our lives between how we lived before August 29, 2005, and after. In far too many cases, it starkly separates life and survivors from the dead.

And surviving the hurricane and flood was not an end; it was the beginning of the survivor saga. Fellow blogger Karen Gadbois wrote to me, "Funny how this storm has turned us all into other things." She sees how people have changed where they live, where they work, where they go to school. She knows people who are doing things they never dreamed and never planned to do. But they crossed the line in time and they changed.

For instance, we all know a lot more about flood maps and how to navigate insurance claims than we did before. I always thought I was up to speed on insurance, but you never really know until something happens. You never really know what lurks in the fine print until you get a form letter from the insurance company that matter-of-factly describes what is covered and for how much.

And having traversed that timeline in 2005, we all know more about tropical weather forecasting than ever before. During the past two anxious hurricane seasons, everyone here was keenly aware of every puff of rainy weather in the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic.

Another NOLA blogger, Mark Folse said, "I don't think anyone without AMS certification knew anything about Invests, etc. until after K. Now we're all looking at computer model tracks and wondering about the reliability of this model over that, thinking about sea surface temp, wind shear, etc."

When we crossed that line, we all became armchair meteorologists, studying the maps and reading the reports and checking the computer modeling. I haven't heard of any fantasy forecasting leagues starting up yet, but surely one cannot be far from forming.

And then there is the line for help. Lines of people at the Road Home closing center. Lines of citizens at City Hall trying to get permits, or to talk sense to their Assessors. Lines at the hardware stores.

Now my family is approaching yet another line, a line that will officially denote our passage from Post-K to Post-Post-K. We bought a new house and we're moving in this weekend. For the first time since Katrina filled our city with despair, we will have a roof over our heads that we can call our own. We will sleep in beds that belong to us and us alone. We will change our voter registration and discard stationary with our "old" address on it.

We fled the city and our home in August 2005, seeking shelter with family in Texas and Virginia, brief stays in friends' undamaged houses in Harahan and uptown New Orleans, a few months in an expensive apartment in the Sliver by the River, and almost 22 months in a FEMA Travel Trailer.

We bounced around quite a bit, but only now are we landing safely in a place we can unambiguously call, "home."

My family for the past almost three years has been somewhat controlled by a broken line on the highway, a line on a map, a line on the calendar, a line to get help, a line of credit to replace what was lost, and of course, the water line.

Most of these stories are recorded in the lines on our faces. I'm hoping that by this time next week, the dominant line on my face will be a smile.

The Sounds of New Orleans

2008-04-27T23:09:00.002-05:00

We spent the day working at the new house, painting and getting ready for furniture and the final “move-in.” D-Day is Saturday, May 3.

Our new house is just a few blocks from The Fair Grounds, host of the annual Jazz Fest. We had the windows and doors open, but we heard nothing more than a few booms and thumps carried on the wind. Nothing you could identify as anything other than just remnants of music.

Fortunately we had the radio, and WWOZ was broadcasting select acts from the Blues Tent. That’s how I was able to hear Delbert McClinton late in the afternoon. Had I been able to get the Jazz Fest today, I would have been in the Blues Tent for that set.

At one point, my Darling Wife asked that we turn the radio off. “What will we listen to?” asked the Precious Daughter, who was a great help and did her best to keep her budding teen angst at bay. “The Sounds of Silence,” I said.

“We’ll listen to the birds, the cars, the people on the street,” she said earnestly. “We’ll listen to the world around us.”

That struck me and the Precious Daughter as a radical idea, but we gave it a try for a while.

Two interesting observations from this experiment: because of Jazz Fest, there were two small planes circling The Fair Grounds. They were trailing advertising banners and they buzzed over our house at regular intervals. I hadn’t noticed that when the radio was on.

The second thing I noticed was the frequent wail of sirens. We’re near Esplanade and right off Broad, two busy streets that carry a lot of traffic. We experienced the same thing a few years ago when we lived for a year on Esplanade near City Park.

Sirens. Day and night. Believe it or not, you get used to it.

After a long day, we cleaned up and headed back to the trailer. There was a hard rain again this afternoon and the many vacant lots in Vista Park were no doubt saturated. The sun had set and the street lights shined off the wet pavement.

As we walked from car to the FEMA Travel Trailer, my wife noted the echoing noise that filled the street. “Listen to those happy frogs,” she said.

A chorus of amphibian singers filled the night. There was a steady “Chirp, chirp, chirp” being carried by a countless collection of frogs, punctuated by the longer “Ree-bee, ree-bee” and the warbling bass section.

These are the sounds of New Orleans today: frogs, sirens, Jazz Fest.

And these sounds remind me again of the diversity of life in the Crescent City: a soundtrack with room for everybody and everything, a soundtrack worth listening to.

Ashley put street name tiles in the news

2008-04-25T07:18:00.005-05:00

A letter from Entergy assures us that New Orleans' distinctive street name tiles will be replaced by the utility company as it proceeds with routine work in our historic neighborhoods. They blame the whole unfortunate episode on "a subcontractor's crew."

And while they claim to have uncovered and dealt with the issue on their own, they mention columnist Chris Rose who wrote briefly about it in The Times-Picayune two weeks ago.

I have no reason to doubt their story, but do take exception that they credit Mr. Rose for calling attention to the matter without any credit to the man who first kicked over this ant pile: Ashley Morris.

Yes, Ashley Morris, the same "pain in the ass" neighbor of Mr. Rose who the columnist realized too late was a true friend of New Orleans.

There's a big difference between people who talk and people who do. It is my observation that the "complainer" gene is rampant in the species, and people like Mr. Rose are an excellent example. By definition, reporters show up after the fact and scribble notes about what happened. Columnists like Mr. Rose complain about why something happened or did not happen largely for entertainment value.

But the credit for making something--anything--happen rarely if ever goes to the journalists. It is the "citizen soldiers" who carry the battle to the enemy. People who show up at City Council meetings and speak up. People who write letters and campaign for good causes. People who alert their neighbors and agitate for change when things go awry.

People like Ashley and the exceptional crew of NOLA Bloggers.

Mr. Rose would marginalize these doers. To him, folks like Ashley are mere "voices in the wilderness, raging at the machine." Although he wrote these words as praise of Ashley, there is clearly a belittling tone to writing that someone spends his time "tilting at windmills."

Well Mr. Rose's column and the letter from Entergy appear to dispel that myth.

Street name tiles are in the news because Ashley made them news.

We interred Ashley's remains several weeks ago, but don't think that means he's finished.

As agile and responsive as the world in which we live

2008-04-18T06:58:00.000-05:00

In early 2006, the US House of Representatives weighed in with their assessment of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Their report, "Failure of Initiative," came out too early to be able to discuss the engineering specifics but was nevertheless a thoughtful look at the big picture issues.

The major take-away for me was this statement:

"Officials at all levels seemed to be waiting for the disaster that fit their plans, rather than planning and building scalable capacities to meet whatever Mother Nature threw at them. We again encountered the risk-averse culture that pervades big government, and again recognized the need for organizations as agile and responsive as the 21st century world in which we live."

(From the Report by the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, http://katrina.house.gov/)

Two big ideas there.

First, since when does Nature play by our rules? She does not, so anyone who plans for a specific scenario and ignores all other scenarios is planning a catastrophe.

And second, you don't avoid risk by ignoring it. You can pretend that there is no risk, but all you're doing is pretending.

When I read the report about two years ago, I immediately copied down that quote and kept it close. I like to remind myself of those two big ideas from time to time, and I hope it helps keep my guard up.

But then recently I gained a new insight. This statement, written to chastise government agencies and functionaries, has much broader application. Could not almost the same be said of many rank-and-file citizens?

Because surely, if we rebuild our houses at exactly the so-called 100-year flood elevation and not one inch higher, if we refuse to even consider raising our homes and simply repair them where they are, regardless of the reality that there recently was 6 or 8 or 10 feet of water in them, are we not guilty of the same poor habits the congressional report excoriates?

And if we rebuild New Orleans and the surrounding communities in exactly the same way, refusing even to consider doing anything differently, rejecting all attempts at improvement, and fail to take advantage of this opportunity to change things, what will be said about the citizens of New Orleans if (when) the city floods again?

We may very well find ourselves accused of "Failure of Initiative."

River rising

2008-04-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

Everybody's talking about the rising Mississippi River and the levees that keep it in check. And I'm not just talking about in the coffee shops and beauty parlors of New Orleans; my office is intense with activity.

It's called a flood fight, and with good reason.

When the water gets this high, even though reliably forecast to peak several feet lower than the tops of the levees, the weeks of water pressure and velocity on the levees will take their toll. As in any battle, troops will be deployed and defenses will need to be reinforced as the fight goes on. In 1973, I understand there were two locations where the main levee was showing signs of considerable stress, so a backup levee was constructed to keep the river at bay.

This is normal procedure. Cause for concern--yes. Cause for panic--no.

This is considerably different than a hurricane event. For one, the river is a well defined problem. We have mountains of historical data and a thorough understanding of how its waters flow. Hurricanes, to the contrary, are still very unpredictable. The National Weather Service has made huge strides in tropical cyclone prediction in recent decades, but it remains a game of odds. We don't have such gaps of knowledge when facing our foe in the Mississippi River. We know what's coming and when with great accuracy.

When a hurricane comes, all we can do is run away or hide behind levees. Again, a flood fight is different in that we can do much more. We have tools at our disposal--spillways that we can use to reduce pressure on our levees and divert the peak flows of the river.

Another difference is in how we conduct the fight. During the height of a hurricane it is simply not possible to closely monitor flood defenses or to attempt repairs. Even pump operators must take refuge in armored "safe houses" when the wind is at its worst. But the Mississippi River provides no such obstacle. Throughout the flood fight, inspectors will drive the levees and look for even the smallest indication of trouble. And when trouble occurs, crews will be able to respond quickly.

We can take solace in the knowledge that the river has not flooded the city since then: the levees have worked every time.

However, we must not let any of this lead us to be complacent. Just as we should never forget the hard lessons of 2005, we must always remember the suffering of 1927.

There's a reason it's called a flood fight. And the fight is on.

Remember Ashley Morris

2008-04-08T01:30:00.005-05:00

"Ashley Morris, PhD, passed away on April 2nd, 2008. Ashley was a father, a husband, a teacher, a scientist, a musician, and above all, a New Orleanian. He was a fiery spirit who inspired and energized anyone whose life he touched. Ashley left behind a wife and three small children and expenses are mounting. Please remember Ashley and help his family by making a donation through the PayPal link below."

Ashley Morris Fund

Keep Me in Your Heart

2008-04-08T01:00:00.001-05:00

Greg Peters over at Suspect Device gives us this tribute to Dr. Ashley Morris. It features photos of his family and friends and the music of Warren Zevon.

Ashley Morris

2008-04-03T13:23:00.005-06:00

Died yesterday.

It's hard to believe someone who lived and loved with such ferocity could suddenly be... gone.

The NOLA Bloggers are still in shock, but so too are they mobilizing to help Ashley's wife and three children. Talk of fundraising and memorials that will carry his passions forward are in high gear.

Ashley was both large and larger than life. As passionate and enraged as he often was on his blog, in person he was one of the most considerate and affable people you could possibly know.

Some quick stories to remember:

When we had what was left of our house demolished, I blogged about losing my albums. My music collection was mostly 70's and 80's rock and punk, and I lamented that many were either too rare or too local to ever replace. Ashley immediately rushed in to help. He offered to give me his collection of old LPs and a turntable that he said he no longer used. Ashley noted that we shared a similar appreciation for early punk rock. Tempting as it was, I had to turn him down because there was no room in a FEMA travel trailer for such a gift. Undeterred, he later offered to give me a TV.

When the Saints returned to the Superdome, Ashley was right there. His blogs about that experience were so powerful, so completely heartfelt for something as trivial as a football game--yet Ashley was able to make the connection between a mere game and the soul of this struggling city, a city down physically and emotionally. His words poured out of his blog like fine wine, each phrase so delicious to savor. Out of the blue one day, Ashley invited me to be his guest at the next Saints game. This time I took him up on his generosity and we enjoyed a smashing Saints victory.

Ashley later had a large fleur de lis inked into his arm. When I saw him at Rising Tide II last year, I immediately asked to see the tattoo. Ashley's grin grew as wide as his biceps as he yanked up his sleeve. Nobody ever loved such a dysfunctional, backward, messed-up place as New Orleans as much as Ashley did.

Nobody.

Keeping count

2008-04-02T12:15:00.000-06:00

FEMA trailers as of today:

18,176 in Louisiana.

6,360 just in New Orleans.

Ruminations of debris

2008-03-31T21:25:00.000-06:00

I'm still picking up trash.

--and for you wags who grew up "cruising" the discos of the late 70's, that's not what I'm talking about.

What I mean is, I'm still picking up plastic bags and various paper wrappers along the streets of Vista Park, the tree-shaded neighborhood of New Orleans flooded by the London Avenue Canal breach in 2005.

When I first saw my house several weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the street, sidewalk, driveway and lawn were covered with about one-half inch of dirt, the dark sediment left by flood water that rushed in and left slowly. And there was all sorts of trash about as well. Things that floated or were washed from who-knows-where to end up on my quiet street.

Odd things, like a pink Care Bear doll and a DVD of the movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." Curious, I picked up the silver disk, washed it off and kept it. I still have it and it works just fine.

Other things, like plastic wrapping from military MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) and plastic water bottles were obviously post-storm debris. In those early days I had no trash can so I just made a pile of the trash I found and trash I generated--as if putting trash in a specific pile amounted to a hill of beans back then.

Months later when the family returned and we settled into the FEMA Travel Trailer, trash along our once-idyllic street filled the gutters like leaves in autumn. All around us, houses were being gutted, unceremoniously disemboweled and the entrails piled along the right-of-way. All manner of refuse found its way up and down the street. Old magazines, bottles of nail polish, cancelled checks, flattened boxes that used to hold macaroni dinners…

For months, the activity was non-stop, as was the litter. Bobcats with solid-rubber tires rumbled to and fro like large, slow sugar ants, scooping trash and rumbling off to find more. Demolition crews took their turn, too, taking out six houses in the immediate area of our government-issued temporary home.

The one constant was the trash. At some point I decided that the Bobcats and demo crews were only going to pick up most of the trash. Large debris was not a problem; furniture and 2x4's all got scooped up and carried away. But the small stuff, whether paper or glass or plastic, seemed to escape the claw of the backhoe and the bucket of the Bobcat. Small stuff that could blow down the street, or be carried by rainwater toward the catch basin, evaded capture and congregated in the gutters of the neighborhood. And so I began to make trash sweeps of the street.

Right away I noticed a disturbing trend. A lot of the trash I was picking up was of the drink bottle and fast-food variety. This is trash not left over from somebody's destroyed dwelling, but trash brought in and dropped by the workers themselves. Lots of water bottles and coke cans. Lots of Burger King wrappers and Styrofoam plates.

It struck me as completely contrary. Grateful as I was for the government-funded clean-up crews, the volunteer house gutting teams, and the contract workers rebuilding the houses, it made me angry that they would consider my neighborhood suitable for dumping their trash. I fantasized about seeing such a person one day, catching him or her in the act of tossing an empty plastic water bottle to the side of the road. I imagined the confrontation, the righteous ire of my admonitions, the stumbling regret of the accused…

But it only happened in my head as I zigzagged up and down the street picking up trash.

After many months, the trash seems to be under control. Perhaps it's because the daily traffic of workers in the neighborhood has abated somewhat since late last year. Or perhaps it is because the street looks cleaner to the casual observer, which inspires him or her to not act as if our neighborhood is just a giant dump.

Whichever, I am grateful. I am still picking up trash, but it is mostly paper and plastic wrapping from someone's new appliances that was probably pulled from a proper trash pile by the wind. Most of the trash I gather now is not the remains of Vista Park's past, but its effort to forge a future.

Not there

2008-03-24T18:59:00.000-06:00

We like to think we can control time. We schedule everything down to the minute, with alarm clocks and watches and cell phones that prompt us with beeps to move on to the next task. We pride ourselves with being able to calculate the precise moment when the apparent path of the sun crosses over the equator and signals that time of year we designate as Spring.

And when it suits us, we change time, going forward and backward an hour as the mood strikes us. We call this Daylight Savings Time, as if we can bank the extra hour and as if we can control time.

We control nothing.

Time rampages forward as it damn well pleases. As if we could build a wall or an embankment to stop or slow, or funnel time to a place we'd find more useful or pleasing. But time is unstoppable, unchangeable.

We recently set our clocks forward in this annual ritual. On the Friday prior, I had left the FEMA Travel Trailer in dawn's early light. But on Monday, I emerged from our boxy abode to the darkness of my still recovering neighborhood. All around me was illuminated by the yellow glow of the trailer porch light. A little beyond was visible under the glare of street lights.

Now that my house is gone, and the houses that used to stand on either side of my house, and several other houses through the immediate area, I can see much more of Vista Park than I could see before the flooding. Which is to say, I can see farther because there is much less to see in this part of New Orleans.

The house is gone, but a little strip of walkway remains. The nice folks who installed the Emergency Housing Unit here made sure to line up the trailer steps with the walkway, so it almost looks like it belongs there. But this concrete walk goes about 12 feet, and then ends. At nothing.

Sometimes I look down as I walk this path. I look down and imagine that Katrina never happened, that the floodwalls are still standing, that our blond brick house is still there. I focus on the concrete walk and shut out the recent images of my city, instead pretending that the past was present, allowing my mind to trip momentarily into the images of what used to be.

But inevitably, I reach the end of that walkway, and the house is not there, the daydream bursts and the reality of the situation floods back in. I look up, and I look around at the empty lots, at the mix of repaired and empty houses around me.

Yes, we made the dawn come later and delayed nightfall, but who are we really fooling?
Time rushes forward and sweeps us along with it. We control nothing.

The sooner we figure that out, the better.

Winter trees

2008-02-20T21:35:00.002-06:00

I have not posted much about the neighborhood lately. And that's because I'm leaving.

I had such grand plans. I was going to build the model home on my street. I was going to build tall and strong on our vacant lot. I was going to lead the way and build the house of the future New Orleans.

But now, for the many reasons explained in prior posts, I am leaving. I'm selling to the Road Home and hitting the road for the relative high ground of Esplanade Ridge.

And I feel like I'm selling out.

Am I happy about the new house? Yes. Am I excited? Yes.

But these happy emotions are tempered by the feeling that I'm abandoning my neighbors and my neighborhood.

Our street ends in a cul-de-sac, around which a half-dozen or so houses are arranged. They always were a solid community of their own down there, always reliable for their pumpkin-carving parties in the fall, New Year's Eve parties in the winter, and the occasional neighborhood gathering all the rest of the year.

Almost every one of those families is back. They fixed up their slab-on-grade houses and moved right back in as fast as they could. I think most of them were back before 2007 arrived. And they're back at it--hosting parties and making the kind of neighborhood noises that we used to take for granted in Vista Park.

On New Year’s Eve just a couple of months ago, I took my Precious Daughter down to the cul-de-sac about a half-an-hour before midnight so that she could see the mass expenditure of money in sparks and explosions. They put on quite a show, and for a few moments there you could almost imagine that everything was back to normal, that everything was okay, or that Katrina and the 6 feet of flood water that drowned every house and building in this neighborhood had never happened.

Almost.

But the reality is that we are living with one eye closed. We see the good, the grand, the potential of this cluster of houses and all the joy it brings these families. And we refuse to see the bad, the catastrophic, the reality that these houses have a better than 26% chance of flooding again before most of them can pay off their SBA disaster assistance loans. That's a 1-in-4 chance or more of rising water returning.

My neighbors may or may not want to acknowledge this, but they must certainly know it's possible. It is as if they wink at fate and the weather and the promise of a world-class hurricane protection system that will not be complete until several years from now. They see only what they want to see.

In a way that's probably better. Because if they really acknowledged the risk, they might not be able to sleep at night. They might not be able to laugh and enjoy their fireworks on a cold December night not even a half mile from one of the major canal breaches that decimated this city.

I found it hard to talk to my neighbors that night, carrying the knowledge that we were on our way out. We had already made plans to leave and sell to the Road Home--and that decision placed an infinitely high and wide wall between us. We no longer had the things in common that bonded us together. They were staying; I was leaving. They had rebuilt in place; I was moving to higher ground. They staked their money and lives to their pre-flood houses; I had knocked down what was left of our house and was selling out ASAP.

No longer friends across the fence, we were more like two ships passing in the night.

The cold of December has long since passed, and January, too. The trees of Vista Park are still dormant, although only a few are bare. But as they have for millennia, those winter trees will bloom again. We plan not to be here to see them, but they will grow lush and green again in the thick New Orleans heat of spring and summer. And for as long as they can--as long as nature allows them--Vista Park and the many other neighborhoods of New Orleans will blossom into the fullness of life.

It's just that I won't be there. I know my neighbors will probably not understand our decision to sell and leave any more than I can understand their reasoning to stay and repair. I wish them well.

Dear Senator Obama,

2008-02-07T21:40:00.000-06:00

I was not able to attend your rally today at Tulane University in New Orleans, but I did read your scripted remarks online.

I want to thank you for taking a strong stand in support of building significantly improved hurricane protections around the New Orleans area. I particularly appreciate your use of the words, "Never again." This is truly a level of commitment that no one in Washington--with the exception of the Louisiana delegation--has dared articulate. Again, thanks.

I would also like to ask a favor of you. It is a simple thing I am asking, but I hope you will recognize how vitally important this is to citizens in Louisiana--and many more citizens across America--who live with the risk of flooding daily.

In your speech, you refer to the current objective to provide protection from a "100-year storm."

Senator, I must tell you there is no such thing as a "100-year storm."

The terminology "100-year flood" or "100-year storm" may be popular in the common vernacular, but it is patently misleading. What we are really talking about is the flood or storm that has a 1 percent chance of occurring or being exceeded in any given year. It is a theoretical weather event that is used to benchmark the risk of flooding.

Such careless terminology encourages the belief that such storms are rare and only occur once in a lifetime or less. Unfortunately this is not the case.

That 1 percent chance only applies to one year. Once we experience a "bad" year, there is no assurance whatsoever that we will have 99 "good" years. We could, in fact, see two consecutive "100-year" hurricanes occur in back-to-back years.

We need only recall the hyper-activity of tropical cyclones in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 to recognize that large back-to-back storms are not some distant probability. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma all reached Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale in just a single hurricane season.

In fact, statistics reveal how common that "100-year" event can be. There is a 26% chance that a 1% storm or flood will occur within 30 years. And there's a better than 50% chance that a person will experience the 1% flood within a normal lifetime.

Once in 100 years? Not by a long shot.

And so the favor I ask of you is that you take care to use the correct terminology when talking about hurricane and flood protection. Could you say, "1 percent per year chance of exceedence," or, "1 in 100 chance per year of being exceeded." In my work as a Civil Engineer, we often call it the "1% storm" for short.

Because Americans are looking to you for leadership, it is imperative that your proposals regarding hurricane protection be as accurate and precise as possible. The risk we face from flooding and hurricanes is real and must not be carelessly dismissed or misrepresented. That's the mistake we made before.

I hope I will again hear that you say, "Never again" when talking about hurricane protection. That's the kind of commitment to protecting Americans that can really make a difference and improve the quality of life for all.

Respectfully,

Tim
http://www.timsnamelessblog.blogspot.com/

(This letter was suggested by Maitri.)