Disaster makeover

Mexico just had about the luckiest break from a bad situation. Hurricane Patricia missed heavily populated areas and then broke up in the mountains. That doesn't diminish the pain of those who were in its path, but things could have been much much worse.

Whenever a major disaster strikes the area is never quite the same again. In the United States we are used to thinking that everything just gets rebuilt. It doesn't. Take New Orleans after Katrina. Today you can go into the heart of the French District and see little sign of the disaster. Go out in the old poorer neighborhoods and it's a different story. Many people never came back. A lot of stuff never got rebuilt.

When the heart of a community is ripped out, it can't just be rebuilt. There are a lot of businesses that do fine before disasters that are not economical to rebuild after. A lot of things are built are built up over that time that can't quickly be replaced. There's also the whole community web that's disrupted: churches, community centers, parks and shops. People move on and don't go back to doing things the old way. When the social and economic pillars of a community are shaken they are never put back together the same way.

For some community destruction is just the break they were looking for. Working waterfronts that provide decent blue collar jobs are replaced by condo developments for the well to do. All those poor folks who paid little taxes on humble homes are replaced by high rollers. Money trumps everything. That's great for developers and politicians with open palms. Not so good for people looking for an affordable place to live.

If it's this bad in rich countries, it's much worse in less well off ones.

-Sixbears