Elephant In Exile

The Not So Big Easy Edition:

Alas, amongst all the disaster news this week, one of the concepts I still can't fully grasp is that the Big Easy, as we knew it, is no more and perhaps never will be. It's still too early to tell if it will reemerge as a small, sleeker version of itself, or if it will become with world's largest Superfund site. Perhaps it will be both. But the city that served as the background of my favorite novel: A Confederacy of Dunces, is gone for now.

The way of Babylon?

THE question is awful, but will not go away. How much damage can a big American city suffer without going the way of Babylon? Or, for that matter, of Galveston, a boom town that never recovered from a hurricane in 1900?

Gulf Coast-area residents face toxic sludge concerns

When Hurricane Katrina's 13-foot storm surge crashed through the houses and businesses of this town on the Gulf Coast, it also rushed through a plant where DuPont stored dioxins and other hazardous materials. Now that the floodwaters have receded, local residents, deciding whether to rebuild, worry about what happened to those chemicals.

Will New Orleans Recover?

It would be uplifting to write today of how the brave people of New Orleans will come together and help each other after Hurricane Katrina—and of course many are doing just that. Volunteers are navigating their boats around downed power lines and burbling gas mains to rescue fellow citizens still hanging onto rooftops in the water. Even as floodwaters still engulf the city, evacuees eagerly seek to return and rebuild their storied city—though they may not be able to do so for months.

Firms ponder future of New Orleans

Rising near Interstate 10 within sight of the Superdome, the tower of the New Orleans Times-Picayune is a landmark in a community served by the newspaper since 1837.
Now that building stands vacant, with the 270 editorial employees who normally work there scattered throughout Baton Rouge.