How High?...from the Washington Post

For Those Rebuilding in New Orleans, How High?

By Peter WhoriskeyWashington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 31, 2006; A03

NEW ORLEANS -- Be careful walking out the front door of Al Petrie's new home. It's a long way down.
Fourteen steps above the sidewalk, about 10 feet over the street, the front stoop is perched high like a lookout post within a fortress of brick.
The home is built far enough up, Petrie says proudly, that "when the next Katrina comes, I'll be dry."
What if a more powerful hurricane strikes?

Petrie squints and frowns. "I just can't imagine it getting much worse than Katrina," he says.

As residents struggle to rebuild some of the tens of thousands of ravaged properties here, few questions unnerve people more than how safe their homes will be in the next catastrophic flood. And the key to that is how high above the ground their homes will stand.
Some, like Petrie, are lifting their dwellings far above surroundings. Others are betting that Katrina was so rare that nothing that bad will come their way again, and they're building just as they were before the storm. But in a city daunted by profound uncertainties about the future, the issue of home elevations arouses these often-unspoken fears like no other.
For flood insurance purposes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has recommended that people rebuild to the elevation requirements in effect before the storm, or three feet above ground level, whichever is higher. But officials acknowledge those levels won't ensure safety -- they certainly didn't in Katrina, when many homes took on 10 feet or more of water.
Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers, which is repairing the city's levees and flood walls, isn't guaranteeing protection when a hurricane of Category 3 strength or higher strikes.
"It's a risk each individual must decide whether or not to live with," according to a Corps statement. "History has proven time and again that Mother Nature will throw something bigger at these protection systems than what was built so people should recognize that that threat always exists."
The financial viability of the federal flood insurance program, which took a staggering $22 billion hit in Katrina, may one day depend on whether homeowners take steps now to reduce the risks.
Many people are simply rebuilding their homes without elevating. It costs too much money, they say, and they're willing to bet that another disaster won't come along for another 40 years, the length of time between Katrina and New Orleans's previous devastating storm.
Others are putting their faith in the new dictates of the federal flood program, or relying on their own estimations of the risk.
"The last big storm was Betsy in 1965," said Cynthia Horne, 47, who is rebuilding her home in New Orleans East but not elevating it because of the cost. "I guess it's a gamble we're taking. If it takes another 40 or 50 years for the next one, I don't think we'll be here. I trust in God."
But to a handful of people at least, neither the existing requirements nor the new federal recommendations make sense because they ignore Katrina's punishing lessons.
The most meaningful safety benchmark, in their view, is the waterlines left on houses when Katrina's floodwaters receded.
Both Petrie and Jim Pate, the executive director of the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, have decided to go beyond the elevation recommendations from FEMA and raise their homes high enough that the first floors will be above Katrina's floodwaters.
"You'd have to have almost a tsunami-type wave for the flooding to be worse than Katrina," Pate said.
The federal rules required Pate to elevate Habitat homes in the Upper Ninth Ward a little over three feet above the ground, he said. He's raising them more than five feet.
Likewise, the federal rules require Petrie to raise his home only about 3 1/2 feet over the ground, he said. But he's raising it about six feet beyond that.
"This should be our model," he says, waving at his new home.
He invites a visitor to compare the waterline on the house next door -- reaching nearly to the top of the front door -- with the height of his stoop. His stoop is about a foot higher.
A home built to the current federal recommendations in his Lakeview neighborhood "would have been under six feet of water in Katrina," he said.
Although lax in comparison, however, the FEMA guidelines are not without their logic.
The guidelines are meant to prevent the flooding of a property in the event of a "100-year storm," or a storm so severe it has only a 1 percent annual chance of happening.
Exactly what the "100-year storm" amounts to for any given location is a scientific question that is complicated enough because accurate storm records can be difficult to come by. But then scientists are asked to estimate what kind of river-level rises and storm surge the imagined storm will generate, and ultimately, how high floodwaters will rise in city streets.
FEMA believes that the required building elevations in place in New Orleans before the storm do not require drastic revisions. But the agency's faith assumes that the levees will hold in a 100-year storm.
The Corps of Engineers is engaged in a $5.7 billion project that they say will bring area levees up to that strength by 2010.
"Katrina was larger than a 100-year storm," said Dan Hitchings, who is leading the Corps repair efforts. And "Katrina was not the largest storm this area could experience."
Of residents' efforts to elevate homes higher than FEMA requirements, Hitchings said, "They are preparing for a storm larger than Katrina, which would be an extremely rare event."
Many in New Orleans are no longer willing to trust in official assurances. They say it's time to heed the example of historic New Orleans, when people built on the higher ground and elevated their homes -- sometimes many feet.
"Our grandparents knew better than to live flat on the ground, but the levees gave people a false sense of security," Petrie, 53, said. "We trusted them before, and look where that got us."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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