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Comment by master_crab | Hacker News Reader

What, do people not remember Katrina? That was the sign to move, and it was 20 years ago.

I remember watching it on CNN from Ireland and it was a bizarre. For about two days before they were saying it's probably going to flood, about every 30 minutes on repeat, so I assumed people would evacuate if necessary. Then it did flood with people still there and something of a mess. Then George Bush was shown on repeat saying it's sad but no one could have foreseen this.

I'm not sure it was a sign to leave the place so much as the levees should have been raised about 2 ft higher to deal with the pretty predictable water levels.

This current thing is also kind of bizarre saing there'll be a sea level rise about 10x reality. Why can't people do maths and realistic estimates and planning? I assume it's some kind of politics that requires the untruths? I'm not American and don't really get the politics and why they can't do sensible calculation on flood defences like the Dutch say.

No, they don't, because only about half of people in Louisiana are old enough to remember it.

The median age of Louisiana is 38. Hurricane Katrina occurred 21 years ago.

Someone who was 7 during Katrina at that time is roughly 28 today.

Using the Census ACS age brackets, about 20-ish% of louisiana's population is under 15, and another 20 is between 15 and 29. Everyone 30 and older adds up to the other 60.

So a hair over 60% are were at least 7.

But that's who lives there now not who lived there then. Between 2005 and 2006 the state population dropped by 6% and most of that displaced population never returned - people coming in from elsewhere weren't there for Katrina. So the fraction who were both living there AND old enough to remember it is considerably smaller than 60%.

So like I said, roughly half.

And most people don't remember anything from before age 5 anyway.

Claiming 9 year olds don't remember Katrina is quite an abuse of the word "roughly". The percentage of Louisiana's population under 25 is 33%, we can agree they don't "remember". Anything else requires considerable stretching with a hand-waving accompaniment. I can do that part just as well as any other internet person. Let's see, how about the fact that what followed Katrina was years of rebuilding? Someone from New Orleans probably saw its aftermath around them for 4-5 years.

Why are you assuming the rapid increase in LA’s population from 2006 to 2010 did not have a significant portion of temporarily displaced people moving back?

because the movement of people displaced by Katrina has been extremely well documented for the last 20 years?

Like, there are entire journals and programs of study devoted to it. I’m not just guessing here.

Oh, then you’re of course aware that many many people did in fact return, and that your earlier estimate of the number of people coming to LA after 2005 that hadn’t lived there before was over-estimated.

According to this study, almost a third of displaced people returned to the same dwelling by some time in 2006. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4048822/

Today, numbers suggest that around 60%, almost two-thirds returned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_after_Hurricane_K...

Exactly, humans famously have no memory until the age of 18

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