The phrase “500-year storm” is also very helpful on the question of resilience. Even a devastated community, buckled in suffering, can endure a long period of recovery if it is wealthy and politically stable and needs to rebuild only once a century—perhaps even once every fifty years. But rebuilding for a decade in the wake of spectacular storms that hit once a decade, or once every two decades, is an entirely different matter, even for countries as rich as the United States and regions as well-off as greater Houston. New Orleans is still reeling from Katrina, a dozen years on, with the Lower
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