Conversations with my roommate

So this morning I noticed that NPR had a story about the guy that brought his Katrina trailer up to Washington to have a meeting with the President. They interviewed him and they asked this question(I'm paraphrasing)"After all of this has happened do you think maybe that living down there just isn't safe?" His response was a lot more polite than mine would've been. Let's face a global fact here that doesn't just involve New Orleans. Throughout history, man has lived where it's dangerous. Nobody asks people in California why they don't move since there are all of those earthquakes and brush fires. Nobody asks the people of Florida why they live on a coastal region that's ravaged by hurricanes yearly. But since the big one hit New Orleans, that seems to be the most common question asked:"Why would you want to live there, it isn't safe." Well it's as safe as anywhere else. Look at Cleveland, we get more violent storms on a regular basis than hurricane Katrina was and I can say that because, well I was in the middle of it. What makes New Orleans different is that systematically, there aren't enough fail safes built into the system. Why not? Because New Orleans is like a bowl. Just a bit inland is where it's below sea level. For the most part, tropical storms and hurricanes don't make it far enough inland to really affect New Orleans in a way that Katrina did. New Orleans is not so much an easy target as it seems. Also, we need to remember that the failures of the levey system were human errors, the storm did not destroy all of those homes, the flood did. After the storm, probably 90% of the people that were there had minimum damage to their homes and no concern to wait for the water to go away. That's why it was so shocking for the people that stayed. They're used to it. They're used to having the water in the streets and not being able to leave the house for a day or so after the storm. But this time, the water didn't just wash away. It didn't ever stop rising because the levey pumps that were broken or left turned off didn't remove the water fast enough to keep pressure from the lake. Sure, there were things destroyed by the storm, and many businesses and homes were destroyed because of it, I'm not saying that the storm was weak by any means. But the MAJORITY of the damage in New Orleans was that flood.
So yesterday I started talking to my roommate who made a good point. Who exactly is planning the reconstruction of New Orleans? Do they have city planners prepared to come up with fail safes for when the pumps aren't on? Is someone doing an audit of the hospitals and emergency shelters to ensure that generators are on the roofs instead of in the basement where a flood causes failure? If they do, I'm surprised. Most of the news I hear from reports and from friends is that individuals are rebuilding their homes and it's up to the people to figure out how high their house now needs to be raised or what openings need to be created so that evacuation through the roof is possible. Hell from the last I heard, people are still pretty much taking care of protecting themselves and policing the area. For the people that live in the 9th ward and New Orleans proper, they're taking charge to keep crime and looting from happening. So here's the problem and the reason why it's taking so long to rebuild. It's not that the people aren't doing enough. It's not that the damage is too extreme. It's the same reason why the evacuation was such a failure, because NOBODY'S IN CHARGE. No one is taking responsibility and fixing the problem. They're just taking it one day at a time and hoping that it'll solve itself somehow. At least that's what I see going on.