The problem with New Orleans is that there was so much to rebuild that it all couldn't really be done within a 2-3 year span without crippling any budgets or making taxes stupidly high. The unfortunate thing with Gustav was that it rotated in a different direction (I don't remember if it was clockwise or counter) but that played a role. With Katrina, the pattern caused it to bring water over from the Gulf of Mexico. Naturally, these levees were reinforced and rebuilt first. Problem was, nobody really expected Gustav to rotate the opposite way, which brought water over from Lake Pontchartrain to the north, where the levees hadn't been as securely reinforced due to the lack of foresight.

The truth of the matter was that it was never a great idea to build on top of a swamp in the first place, but regardless, you have to sympathize for those who lost everything. Simple math and physics tell you that a sinking platform (the ground NO is built on) will sink faster with added weight. Plus, it was a swamp, and essentially nature's own line of defense against hurricanes. The tall grass and all that swamp junk help to slow hurricanes down and prevent them from ripping straight into the mainland.

These are the ideas that I'd be thinking of. It's not easy to leave everything behind, even if there's not much physically left. Depending on just how bad the region is, I would either move to somewhere close by but out of harms way, or rebuild with a house designed to withstand whatever the disaster would be. I don't want this thread to become just about New Orleans though, with the exception of the next paragraphs, explaining the building process. I don't want to turn it into anything other than the bare basics, trying to keep it more philosophical than hard fact based.

If your home was destroyed in a natural disaster, would you rebuild in that same location or move on? If you like, you can differentiate between two types, freak occurrences (think the 2004 Indonesian tsunami) and historically common (hurricanes in the Gulf Coast). Take into consideration that this area hit would have been the only place you've ever known, and you family has known.