Katrina's Awful Wake

OpinionJournal - Featured Article

All man's cunning can't defeat the fury of nature.

Thursday, September 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Eighty percent of New Orleans is under water, and large parts of Mississippi lie in ruins. Hundreds, maybe thousands, are dead; thousands more are still at risk for their lives. In the weeks and months ahead, there will be time to draw the appropriate policy lessons from America's worst natural catastrophe in decades. Right now, the lesson chiefly worth noting is also the most obvious: All the cunning of man cannot defeat the greatest fury of nature. In Katrina's awful wake, we are called on to be humble, compassionate and helpful.

Unfortunately, what we seem to be getting is an excess of recrimination. Jürgen Trittin, Germany's environment minister, wasted no time explaining that Katrina was caused by global warming, which in turn was a function of America's supposedly gluttonous energy habits. Louisiana Representative Bobby Jindal, a Republican who lost his home in the flood, got the TV coverage he knew he would by faulting the Bush Administration for not previously investing more in coastal restoration.

Other critics have scored the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for building too many levees to protect against Mississippi River flooding, thereby apparently killing marshes that might have absorbed some of the overflow from Lake Pontchartrain.

Yet the facts are these. Global warming cannot credibly account for Katrina's power: The Gulf Coast has been hit by powerful hurricanes from time immemorial; in 1900, 8,000 people perished in a category 4 storm in Galveston, Texas. The energy bill just signed by President Bush contains half a billion dollars in coastal restoration funds for Louisiana alone. The Army Corps' much-maligned levees keep New Orleans safe from spring flooding, and its planned $700 million, 72-mile Morganza-to-the-Gulf of Mexico levee might have held Katrina at bay, were it not still at least a decade from completion.

None of this is to say that things might not have been done otherwise, much less that they should continue as before. Following Holland's catastrophic 1953 flood in which 1,800 people perished and 100,000 were left homeless, the country embarked on a crash program to build new dams and flood barriers--known as the Delta Works--that took more than a decade to complete. That's a European success story we can actually learn from as we consider how best to protect our own Bayou netherlands.

In the near term, the needs are clear. The Navy has dispatched ships to provide support, just as it did following December's tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Reports of gangs of armed looters clearing out stores justify the decision to impose martial law. Some 10,000 people are now headed to the Houston Astrodome for refuge; Texas Governor Rick Perry should move quickly to ensure they do not become tent-city refugees.

The Bush Administration would also be well-advised to remove all federal impediments to a speedy reconstruction effort. One such impediment is the Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the government to pay prevailing local wages in federal construction projects. The act effectively excludes non-union workers and contractors from reconstruction projects while adding billions in costs.

Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon both suspended Davis-Bacon during previous emergencies, as did the current President's father in the wake of Hurricane Andrew. The government could also offer incentives and bonuses to contractors who complete projects on or ahead of schedule, as former California Governor Pete Wilson did following the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Yet for all this, the floodwaters will recede on their own timetable, not ours, and no amount of reconstruction will replace all that has been lost. In the future, we may wonder how it is that a city like New Orleans, below sea level, surrounded by water on three sides, could have tempted fate for as long as it did. The answer to that question doesn't much matter right now--except to say, perhaps, that it was this combination of elements that helped create a city we love, and that it is with love that we will save and restore this city.