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Post-Katrina Rebuilders Hug Ground, Trust Levees
Leonard McKeel, left, and Edward Dorsey repair the roof of a house in New Orleans's Ninth Ward. Many residents are rebuilding their homes where they sat before Hurricane Katrina.
(By Ricky Carioti -- The Washington Post)
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"You can't assume the levees might break, because everything in the city would have to be built on stilts," he said.
But some disaster experts said that in the great rush to reassemble their houses and lives, homeowners may be perilously ignoring what Katrina taught.
"After a disaster, people want to get back to normalcy as quickly as possible -- even if it flies in the face of what outsiders would consider rational," said David Simpson, director of the Center for Hazards Research and Policy Development at the University of Louisville.
Many homeowners, however, said they have little choice: Raising their houses would cost too much. Estimates for elevating a house start at $20,000 and some exceed $100,000. FEMA offers as much as $30,000 toward such projects, but many homeowners said that amount would cover only a fraction of their costs.
"It's not that we don't want to raise our home -- it's that we can't afford to," said Mary Balthazar, 70. Her slab house in New Orleans East was flooded with about nine feet of water, but she and her husband were appealing a city inspector's decision that would force them to elevate it.
"If we had to raise it, we might as well tear it down," she said. "They need to fix the levees."
Even those who have extra money for rebuilding are spending it on more room, not more height.
Nicole Webre, 27, and her fiance are gutting their Lakeview house. And even though it took in eight feet of water, they are not elevating it. They are building an addition.
"If the levees hadn't failed, we wouldn't even be discussing this," she said. "Once they're rebuilt, I'm not concerned they'll break again."
Lt. Col. Murray Starkel of the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans, one of the leaders of the effort to rebuild the levees, urged caution, however.
Asked about homeowners who dismiss the possibility that another hurricane will overcome the city's flood defenses, Starkel noted that his house is seven feet above sea level -- relatively high for New Orleans.
"Each person has their own risk-tolerance level," Starkel said. "Will this be the safest place to live once the levees are rebuilt? I can't say that. I don't know what nature has in store for us."
