A Great City must be evacuated. Then it must be rebuilt.

After the people are gone -- all the people -- the logistics of what must happen in New Orleans next are daunting. We're talking about debriding America's gaping wound and rebuilding a kidney on a massive scale:

1. Two levee breaks -- one of which is 300 feet long -- have to be repaired. You ever try to stop water from going where it wants to go?
2. The water inside New Orleans has to be drained, to somewhere. It's filthy, deadly, where is it going to go? It might kill the Gulf, but were else can we put it?
3. The sewer system has to be re-built, because until it is you can't get to
4. Everything has to be hosed down, cleaned, and disinfected.
5. Only then can you begin a true damage assessment, and chances are nearly every wooden building in the city will then have to come down. Where will all that debris go?
6. Only then can we even talk about rebuilding.

It's the biggest civil engineering job ever attempted.

How long will this take? At least six months, more like a year, and that's just for the clean-up. It will take that long to repair-replace the I-10 Causeways anyway. (Pen and ink artwork by Martin C. Benoit.)

How many of New Orleans' people and businesses will take a year out of their lives, living as refugees, then go back with no assurance it won't happen again? Many are going to be permanent refugees. Not just the people, but the businesses.

The Saints have already moved to San Antonio for 2005. Will they have a place to come home to in 2006? How many people will be in the surrounding city by that time? What kind of city will it be?

All those beautiful memories we all have, of the St. Charles streetcars, the French Quarter, the food and the jazz and the history, they're as gone as pre-Earthquake San Francisco or the World Trade Center. But that's the logistics of the heart.

We have to operate through tears. Then, somehow, we have to pay the bill.