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Well, they really didn't "redo the entire bayou system". They considered alternatives and chose the most politically correct one for the parties involved. They

Well, they really didn't "redo the entire bayou system". They considered alternatives and chose the most politically correct one for the parties involved. They knew it wasn't enough for something like Harvey but they didn't think there would be a Harvey( a supposed "500-year event") anytime soon. Black Swan anyone? AndrewKemendo says: "People's aversion to moving, especially after a major disaster, boggles my mind." But where do you go to be safe from disasters? California - earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, torrential rains, rip currents, and even volcanoes Gulf Coast - hurricanes Midwest - tornadoes etc. Slate Magazine set out to find where you could live free of potential disasters. See: "Where To Hide From Mother Nature" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/2005/09/where_to_hide_from_mother_nature.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/200... Their conclusion: "Slate's "America's Best Place to Avoid Death Due to Natural Disaster": the area in and around Storrs, Conn., home to the University of Connecticut..." Read the article to see if you're ready to make the move.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Dayton tops the list for least natural disaster prone. Similar with Southern Maryland. Denver is pretty high on the list and Seattle seems pretty safe too. There are plenty of places to go. For some reason we seem to love to build massive cities on disaster areas. I'm looking at you SF, LA and NYC. But hey fuck it, lets just continue being bad at statistics and assume that because a natural disaster happened recently it won't happen again for a long time (the idea of a "500 year" storm is insane). [1]https://www.cbsnews.com/media/top-10-safest-us-cities-from-natural-disasters/ https://www.cbsnews.com/media/top-10-safest-us-cities-from-n...
- k_sh 9y ago
  Seattle is safe? Aren't they under impending doom from the Cascade fault[1]? [1]http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/us/cascadia-subduction-zone-earthquakes/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/us/cascadia-subduction-zone-ea...
  - a_t48 9y ago
    Along with the giant volcano to the East. :)
    - dflock 9y ago
      If the Yellowstone super volcano erupts, it doesn't really matter where in the northern hemisphere you live - in fact life on _most_ of the earth's surface is going to suck for a few decades after that.
      - a_t48 9y ago
        I meant Mt Rainier.
  - honestoHeminway 9y ago
    Seattle has valve nearby. If anyone ever buys some expensive gem and jams it into exotic machinery.. my bet is on these guys. So very dangerous place to live in..
JshWright 9y ago
> etc. You can't just name three places in a very large country and then say 'etc'. There are plenty of places with much lower risks of natural disasters. That's a big part of the reason my family lives in central New York.
- dsr_ 9y ago
  Big snowstorms every year. Tornadoes many years.
  - JshWright 9y ago
    Tiny tornadoes... nowhere even close to the scale and frequency of midwestern twisters. Snow? A minor inconvenience, at worst. It's a frequent enough occurrence that municipalities are we set up to deal with it. If you don't have snow tires, there will be maybe 24-48 hours per year that you won't want to go driving (with snow tires, that timeframe is an order of magnitude less).
    - dsr_ 9y ago
      The difference between a tiny tornado and a big tornado is immaterial when your house is in the path. There were at least four times in the twenty years that I lived in upstate NY that snowstorms caused power outages and impassable roads at the same time. You can't just name one place as safe from natural disasters and then explain that the two natural disasters that they get there don't count.
      - logfromblammo 9y ago
        Tornado threat may be sufficiently mitigated just by digging a [dry] hole in the ground, and getting into it whenever the sirens go off. If you have enough money, you can bolt a steel box to your foundation and hide in that instead. We can actually build structures that can withstand [the most common] tornadoes, without adding too much to the cost of construction. Basically, monolithic concrete shell structures over inflatable forms are effectively "tornado proof", without additional engineering. The nasty natural disasters in the Midwest are not just blizzards, but freezing rain storms. A coating of ice an inch thick on everything is guaranteed to take down trees and power lines, and make all roads completely impassable. You get up to a week without civilization. For example, if your furnace catches fire, you can call 911, and later find out that the first fire truck they sent out slid off the road into a ditch on the way to your house, and the guys that finally showed up two hours later were the second truck, sent over from the next township (true story). On the Great Plains, it's drought and brushfires. You get to spend a season watching everything turn brown, and then your town burns because some jackoff threw a cigarette butt out of his window on the highway, or because lightning struck the wrong spot. Thanks to modern meteorology, tornadoes are just much less a threat than they used to be. They might pick off a person here or there every season, but when they do, there will always be neighbors around ready to help. They just don't wipe out an entire city, leaving everyone essentially on their own, because they are all (sometimes literally) in exactly the same boat. And that's exactly why I am comfortable living in an area where the major natural disaster threats are tornadoes and flash floods.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

Dayton tops the list for least natural disaster prone. Similar with Southern Maryland. Denver is pretty high on the list and Seattle seems pretty safe too. There are plenty of places to go. For some reason we seem to love to build massive cities on disaster areas. I'm looking at you SF, LA and NYC. But hey fuck it, lets just continue being bad at statistics and assume that because a natural disaster happened recently it won't happen again for a long time (the idea of a "500 year" storm is insane). [1]https://www.cbsnews.com/media/top-10-safest-us-cities-from-natural-disasters/ https://www.cbsnews.com/media/top-10-safest-us-cities-from-n...

k_sh 9y ago
Seattle is safe? Aren't they under impending doom from the Cascade fault[1]? [1]http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/us/cascadia-subduction-zone-earthquakes/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/us/cascadia-subduction-zone-ea...
- a_t48 9y ago
  Along with the giant volcano to the East. :)
  - dflock 9y ago
    If the Yellowstone super volcano erupts, it doesn't really matter where in the northern hemisphere you live - in fact life on _most_ of the earth's surface is going to suck for a few decades after that.
    - a_t48 9y ago
      I meant Mt Rainier.
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  Seattle has valve nearby. If anyone ever buys some expensive gem and jams it into exotic machinery.. my bet is on these guys. So very dangerous place to live in..

JshWright 9y ago

> etc. You can't just name three places in a very large country and then say 'etc'. There are plenty of places with much lower risks of natural disasters. That's a big part of the reason my family lives in central New York.

dsr_ 9y ago
Big snowstorms every year. Tornadoes many years.
- JshWright 9y ago
  Tiny tornadoes... nowhere even close to the scale and frequency of midwestern twisters. Snow? A minor inconvenience, at worst. It's a frequent enough occurrence that municipalities are we set up to deal with it. If you don't have snow tires, there will be maybe 24-48 hours per year that you won't want to go driving (with snow tires, that timeframe is an order of magnitude less).
  - dsr_ 9y ago
    The difference between a tiny tornado and a big tornado is immaterial when your house is in the path. There were at least four times in the twenty years that I lived in upstate NY that snowstorms caused power outages and impassable roads at the same time. You can't just name one place as safe from natural disasters and then explain that the two natural disasters that they get there don't count.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      Tornado threat may be sufficiently mitigated just by digging a [dry] hole in the ground, and getting into it whenever the sirens go off. If you have enough money, you can bolt a steel box to your foundation and hide in that instead. We can actually build structures that can withstand [the most common] tornadoes, without adding too much to the cost of construction. Basically, monolithic concrete shell structures over inflatable forms are effectively "tornado proof", without additional engineering. The nasty natural disasters in the Midwest are not just blizzards, but freezing rain storms. A coating of ice an inch thick on everything is guaranteed to take down trees and power lines, and make all roads completely impassable. You get up to a week without civilization. For example, if your furnace catches fire, you can call 911, and later find out that the first fire truck they sent out slid off the road into a ditch on the way to your house, and the guys that finally showed up two hours later were the second truck, sent over from the next township (true story). On the Great Plains, it's drought and brushfires. You get to spend a season watching everything turn brown, and then your town burns because some jackoff threw a cigarette butt out of his window on the highway, or because lightning struck the wrong spot. Thanks to modern meteorology, tornadoes are just much less a threat than they used to be. They might pick off a person here or there every season, but when they do, there will always be neighbors around ready to help. They just don't wipe out an entire city, leaving everyone essentially on their own, because they are all (sometimes literally) in exactly the same boat. And that's exactly why I am comfortable living in an area where the major natural disaster threats are tornadoes and flash floods.