Larry Jaques wrote:

On Sat, 08 Jan 2011 11:22:01 -0600, "Pete C."
wrote:

Only 1,500 people died out of 336,000 people, however this was due to
the very localized nature of the incident and the fact that the other
334,500 people were able to evacuate a relatively short distance to
areas where infrastructure was intact. Had this not been the case, the
bulk of those 334,500 other people would not have survived.

I don't think any real collapse of civilization is likely in any of our
lifetimes, however I do think that the Great Global Tidy Bowl Swirl (tm)
is going to continue and overall conditions will continue to
deteriorate. I'm not so much into the "survivalist" thing, but I do
think it is a reasonable goal to become as self reliant and self
sufficient as practical so as to minimize the impact of the continued
decline on yourself and your family.

What amazes me is that the insurance company and gov't both allowed
them to rebuild in the same sinkhole after it dried out. Amazing.
Head-up-their-asses Dumb, too.

Two points to remember:

1. Insurance companies exist to make a profit, not to make anything
safer. The insurance premiums the people rebuilding are paying are
supposed to be proportional to the risk of claims. The insurance
companies will make a profit from those premiums if they have calculated
the risks of future claims properly.

2. The government might be able to buy out and eliminate people living
in some Super Fund spot where the people don't want to live anyway, but
there is/was no way they could get away with eliminating a place like
New Orleans. They would have ended up stuck re-enginering the entire
city for trillions of dollars if they pushed too hard. As it is they
didn't want to pay just to rebuild the levies properly.