Some weeks I have a hard time choosing a topic for this column. There are so many issues and stories to choose from in an average week that it's like choosing a dish from a menu that has lots of good choices. It's hard to pick just one.

And then there are far-from-average weeks like this one. There is really only one story this week, and it's hard to think about, talk about or write about anything other than Hurricane Katrina and its devastating consequences.

The death toll is still very much unknown as I write this, but is thought to be in the hundreds or possibly in the thousands. Mississippi took a direct hit and likely suffered major casualties. Parts of Georgia, Florida and Alabama were hit hard as well.

And then there is New Orleans. At this moment 80 percent of the city is under water and the entire metropolitan area is being evacuated. I've always wanted to see New Orleans but have never gotten around to it. I waited too long. For all practical purposes, the city as we knew it just doesn't exist anymore.

It is likely that Katrina will turn out to be the worst natural disaster the United States has ever faced. One of our major cities, and many smaller ones, have simply been washed away. The casualty count will be unbearable.

And our energy crisis is certain to get worse, maybe a lot worse, because of the damage to our oil production and refinery capabilities in the Gulf of Mexico. The term "national gas crisis" is even being bandied about. I'm not even sure what that means, exactly, but I sure don't like the sound of it.

Not depressing enough for you? Then consider this: hurricane season 2005 is just getting warmed up. It doesn't end until Nov. 30. It is likely that several more major storm systems will strike somewhere on the east coast between now and Thanksgiving. And there's no real reason to be optimistic that things will suddenly calm down next year, or the year after that.

All of which brings up an important question - what do we do about rebuilding these devastated coastal areas, especially New Orleans? It has become increasingly obvious that low-lying areas in the Gulf of Mexico are going to continue to be at great risk of being decimated by a major hurricane, or possibly multiple hurricanes, for the foreseeable future.

I think we have to ask ourselves, as a nation that has already spent itself into a nearly untenable debt situation, whether it makes sense to spend billions of dollars rebuilding cities in an area that has become a magnet for natural disasters.

How many times do we rebuild, and rebuild, and rebuild in these areas only to provide more fodder for the next Katrina? These killer storms aren't once-a-decade events anymore - they are coming in groups, every year.

It may be time to bow to reality and conclude that the Gulf Coast is just not a good place for large groups of people, businesses, and oil refineries to be located anymore. Unless we just enjoy seeing things get knocked over and washed away, we need to come up with a better plan for moving on from this than simply rebuilding what was lost.