in article V68Te.312340$_o.140563@attbi_s71, Jay Honeck at
wrote on 9/5/05 8:34 PM:

You know, the irony of all this is what set me off about your attitude to
begin with--mostly memories of the '93 Mississippi floods (including Iowa
City) and all the nonsense that was said at that time--"What do these
people
expect? They live in a flood plain, for heaven's sake!"

Remember those people, Jay? All those smug jackasses who wondered how
anyone
could live next to a river that was absolutely, positively 100% guaranteed
to flood? I wonder how many of them were from New Orleans?

I didn't live in Iowa in '93, but the floods since then have convinced the
Feds to FINALLY make it illegal (or, at least, financially impossible) for
people to rebuild homes along the Mississippi. And they will NOT be
rebuilt with tax money when the inevitable floods hit again.

Anyone who now builds their home next to one of the world's great rivers had
better be WAY up on a bluff overlooking the river, or independently wealthy.

Which is as it should be.

Okay, so all of that was done AFTER the floods. The point I was making was
that it was as wrong to blame the victims then (many of whom were no doubt
living in family homes going back generations) as it is to blame them now.

New Orleans survived for roughly three centuries. Yeah, maybe its eventual
destruction was inevitable, but frankly, the same could be said of just
about any city, if your timeframe is large enough.