On hurricane and sense
Within days of the disaster brought by hurricane Katrina, it became obvious that majority of people who were affected the worst, primarily in New Orleans, were not getting help nearly as fast as they needed to. This in turn initiated salvos of finger-pointing, blame-finding, and other time honored practices valued by both the armchair and real politicians. The votes are finally in: its all governments fault. What a shocker! The only difference is the relative amount of responsibility that people are willing to assign to local, state and federal government.
That is all fine. There would be no point in having a government that is not capable to protect its citizens from major disasters. However, one should then also accept some form of governmental control and restrictions on housing market, especially in disaster prone areas. Government should be able to forbid people from settling and living in particularly dangerous areas. Otherwise, continuous reconstruction aid to those areas will only help fuel unrealistic housing bubbles. It would help a lot of short-term real estate speculators become rich, but it will not make anyone safer or better off in a long run.