How NOT to Rebuild a City (The First in an Unforturnate Series)

Prior to hurricane Katrina, the City of New Orleans had ten or so electrical inspectors. Following the storm the city was down to six, and thousands of structures, all required by city code to get one or more city inspections before electricity could be restored, lay—some literally—before them. Electricity. You remember, electricity: you need it to run stuff, like power tools. And lights, HVAC, refrigerators—you know, stuff like that. Well guess what? There's good news from the Crescent City:

Responding to a torrent of complaints that the city's handful of inspectors could not keep up with the demand for their services, the City Council and Mayor Ray Nagin's administration agreed last month to temporarily suspend the rule that all electrical connections must be checked by an inspector before Entergy can turn on the power. The administration first agreed to exempt trailers from the requirement. Some displaced residents hoping to move into trailers had complained they had to wait weeks for a city inspection after getting a temporary utility pole installed. Then the council passed, and Nagin signed, an ordinance saying that any licensed Louisiana electrician or electrical contractor could "conduct electrical inspections on commercial and residential properties" and certify that the work was done properly, thus eliminating the need for city inspections. The city put an "electrical inspection affidavit" on its Web site that any electrician or contractor could fill out. 

Isn't this a great idea? Too bad they couldn't have figured it out, oh, say, SIX FREAKIN' MONTHS AGO. Not only was the city requiring inspections for water damaged buildings, but they were also requiring them for emergency trailers as well! All over town there are trailers sitting empty in the yards of damaged homes because they can't get electricity hooked up without one of these precious city inspections.

So Lesson Number One in this Unfortunate Series on how not to rebuild a city following a disaster is: Electricity is Prime. It makes everything go. The main difference between cities of today and medieval agrarian communities is electricity.  Without it, power tools don't work. Cash registers don't work. Gas pumps and schools don't work. Without electricity, you can do everything else right and it simply won't matter; what you'll wind up with is what New Orleans has now: a city that's two-thirds dead. And horribly dark.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the fact that it didn't seem to occur to anyone in City Hall that after Katrina, "business as usual" wasn't going to cut it. Even during the best of times, the inspection/certification/licensure process practiced in most cities is an expensive, aggravating and time-consuming experience, it should have been planned for, or at least recognized immediately, that the status quo would be flatly unworkable in the aftermath of "The Big One." Such regulatory regimes depend on an orderly environment with functional institutions, such as banks, suppliers, oh, and ELECTRICITY. And they are only capable of handling the normal demand encountered during a normal day.

Certainly only a city beauracracy could perpetuate such an absurd formality in such a crisis situation, like making a starving man wash his hands before giving him a sandwich. Unfortunately a lot of the damage has already been done. Certainly more people would have returned to the city had there been more to return to.