Adjusted Value

Here I sit and wait for my insurance adjuster to give me an assessment of damages the company proposes to pay. It's been more than a month since Hurricane Katrina hit and I filed a claim. But my damage assessment is easy.
I had little water damage. The rest is view able and relatively easy to verify. I know I will not receive what it will cost to repair my damages, but so be it. I am a lucky one. My home was not severely damages. It will not have to be gutted or bulldozed. But what about the 350,000 homes that will be crushed to dust by bulldozers?
How does one determine if a home is fixable or a lost cause? That's the job of the adjuster (they are usually building contractors) and city officials who can order a home destroyed if it is "unlivable" or a safety hazard to anyone. Conventional wisdom here is that a house flooded near or to the ceiling for more than a week will have to be torn down. But that isn't always the case. Sometimes homeowners never give up the notion that their house can be saved. So much for those overly optimistic owners. Most of the homes that flooded here were inundated with from 6 to 15 meters of water and mud that slashed around inside for a week to 21 days before draining out. A thick layer of mud covers the floors, and mold is evident from baseboard to ceiling.
The stench of the house requires face masking material to avoid vomiting and too close contact with the mold spores. Even the nails joining wall studs have rusted in the brackish floodwater, compromising the stability of the houses. There her are those that were lifted off their foundations by the raging water...
To determine if the home is to be saved or demolished the inspectors consider the type of construction (wood is a lost cause), the length of time that the structure was submerged and what was in the water (don't ask here. It was toxic, fecal and disgusting). there is no single rule of thumb, but most buildings in New Orleans are older and wooden. Thus, a high mortality rate for them is likely.
Too, some entire neighborhoods and one entire parish (county) St. Bernard, will be leveled, leaving nothing but open ground. Then there is the impediment to demolition- the fact than many older New Orleans homes are historically relevant and on the registry of "do not destroy", legally protected from demolition.
New Orleans was unique and people here do not want it looking like "every other city in the world". So how does one demolish a significant portion of our homes and yet not destroy the character of the architecture? That's the $64,000 question is this dying city that is already on life support and not expected to survive.