Comparing Floods

I recently received an email from an acquaintance comparing the Iowa flooding to Katrina. It was a bigoted and racist rant that had been lifted from some right-wing, whack-job blogger who essentially proclaimed that the hardworking and self-reliant (read white) Iowans were coping with the flooding far better than the lazy, whining, and handout-seeking, (read black) New Orleans residents (looters) did under similar circumstances. This thinly veiled racist drivel and others like it that aren't hard to find on the internet or on conservative shows like Rush Limbaugh.

This crap gets my blood boiling, so living the indolent lifestyle that I'm lucky enough to live, I did some quick research.

Hurricane Katrina flooded 80% of New Orleans, killing close to 2,000. 705 people are still listed as missing. For people who stayed through the hurricane, there was no place to go. Roads were under water, bridges had collapsed, and armed police prevented New Orleanians from crossing the Crescent City Bridge to Gretna. No wonder they ended up at the Superdome and Convention Center. Throughout the Gulf Coast, 3,000,000 people were without electricity, and 1,000,000 were displaced at least temporarily. 500,000 lost their jobs. Even today, the population of New Orleans is about 275,000, compared to the pre-Katrina population of about 475,000. Estimates of direct physical damage are around $80 billion. The total cost, including economic costs and the costs of redesigning and rebuilding the levee system could easily be triple that.

Most of the flooding in the Midwest is in small cities and towns. Cedar Rapids, with a population of around 250,000 is the biggest city affected. The last I heard, they still had power, drinkable water, and functioning hospitals. The floods in Iowa are still ongoing, and definitive estimates of total damage are hard to find. The best guesses assess damage in the neighborhood of $2-3 billion, including about a billion in agricultural losses. Around 36,000 people are homeless, and so far a total of three people have died as a result of the floods.


THERE IS NO COMPARISON.

And besides, there's nothing worth looting in Iowa.