Re: "Disaster Tourism" gaining in popularity...

Magyar wrote:
"Craig Holl" <craigholl2002@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:eBJpf.11962$Dk.7424@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Mike Tantillo wrote:

In the case of something like Hurricane
Katrina, people have said that one cannot truely appreciate the power
of the storm and the horror it has caused until they have seen it
with their own eyes. Hopefully tourists will see the destruction and
press for changes to avoid such disasters in the future, be it
keeping the tops on mountains or properly maintaining hurricane
levees.
... or to make sure that cities aren't built in places that are virtually assured of mass destruction every few generations...

<sigh>
Here we go again.
Let evacuate the Gulf coast, California, Oregon, Washington (state), Hawaii (the island), Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Bangledesh, Pakistan, and Northern Italy.
I think that covers all areas prone to tropical cyclones, earthquakes, and Volcanos.
Next, we'll start evacuating inland regions that are prone to blizzards because people living there think they know how to deal with the cold and snow.

The risk of living in New Orleans, however, is far higher than that of, say, New Madrid, Missouri (earthquake) or St. Louis, Missouri (flooding) or Northridge, California (earthquake), etc. You have a city (New Orleans) that is underwater, supported by an artifical dike and levee system that has only exaggerated the problems over the past 50 years by washing out marsh and wetlands throughout the entire state (and upstream in other states and downstream towards the Gulf); oil companies that have carved freshwater paths through the marshes, leading to saltwater intrusions that have killed off vegetation and trees (thus loss of habitat); and so forth.

New Orleans is unique in that most of the destruction pre-Katrina helped exaggerate the problems that happened post-Katrina. (The levees failed after the hurricane had struck.)

--
Sherman Cahal
Author of American Byways | http://www.americanbyways.com
Author of Abandoned | http://www.abandonedonline.com

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