Baton Rouge - It's the new New Orleans!

Baton Rouge is now Louisiana's largest city.

Seventy miles west of New Orleans, the state capital of Baton Rouge and its surrounding parish received its own storm surge overnight: a huge wave of displaced people, dragging their anger, misery and desperation along with them.

In a day, this city has become the largest in Louisiana, and grim local officials here predicted it would double in size, to about 800,000, permanently. "The Baton Rouge we live in and grew up in is no longer," said city councilman Mike Walker. "These people are here to stay, perhaps forever."

As a resident of Baton Rouge, I can assure you that we are already feeling the growing pains. It could be a difficult adolescence.

There are lines at the gas station, empty shelves at the grocery store and not nearly enough permanent housing right now to absorb these new Baton Rougeans. I'm glad I already own a house. I'm afraid the market is about to get much pricier than it has been.

The gas lines and store shelves will sort themselves out. The housing situation will be a boon for some and a burden for others. Apartment rents are about to skyrocket.

How will day-to-day life be affected? There will be some claustrophobia, initially. However, there are already plenty of residential developments in various stages of completion in the suburbs and exurbs of Baton Rouge. The NOLA Refugees will be happy no doubt to move into the new houses that still smell of sawdust and paint. But, there will be a need for more of them.

Jobs? Who knows. The June unemployment rate in Baton Rouge was 5 percent. There is no way of knowing how many professional, skilled and unskilled workers the jobs market can absorb.

There are concerns about what the city's mayor describes as "New Orleans thugs" exporting the Crescent City's crime rate to the capitol city. There were reports just today of refugee riots in downtown Baton Rouge. Those reports were false.

From the Baton Rouge Business Report:

SWAT teams assembled downtown today, apparently in response to rumors of rioting in or around the River Center, which is serving as a refugee shelter. But David Morgan of the Sheriff's Department said there had been no riot. Observation of Government Street and River Road by Business Report staff writers found no evidence of rioting past or present. Everything looked sedate, if uncomfortably warm. Morgan said there had been a few small incidents, but that was to be expected with 5,000 frustrated, uprooted people all in one place. The Sheriff did evacuate the Municipal Building through next Tuesday, and even providing armed escorts back to employees' cars. Morgan described all of it as "a precaution." The Sheriff's office remains open, but the courthouse is now closed until next week.

People took the rumors very seriously. I hope that Baton Rougeans do not react to the NOLA refugees as unwelcome newcomers. A lot of this, however, will depend on how well or poorly government officials manage the transition.

First, they will have to acknowledge that it is, in fact, a transition, a metamorphosis from one state of being to another. Many of these folks will not be going home. The New York Times reports today that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has ordered the city abandoned.

He called for a "total evacuation," adding: "We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months."

It is important to understand that we are not talking only about refugees who have been physically displaced by the flooding. There certainly will be economic refugees whose livelihoods, if not their lives, were in New Orleans. The city has an enormous metro area of people who choose to live outside New Orleans proper but commute to jobs in the incorporated zone. Or, rather, they did. There are no jobs in New Orleans anymore.

New Orleans will be rebuilt, God willing, but it will never be what it was.

So, Baton Rouge will absorb the displaced. So will Alexandria, Shreveport and Monroe in the central and northern parts of the state. So will the places to which they fled in Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and points beyond.