12 ms·

I can only assume it will go higher. We need to push FEMA to have a 2 and done rule. After that the property must be returned back to dunes/parks/public spaces.

giantg2 4y ago
Or build it better/stronger. Or make it uninsurable (for storm damage) and ineligible for relief funds (after x number of claims in x number of years).
TylerE 4y ago
Yes, for sure. SC coast is getting hammered right now. Not as much wind at this point obviously, but timing could not have been worse… peak storm surge right at high tide.
kwhitefoot 4y ago
Whenever I see pictures of the aftermath of such events it seems that the damage is mostly to private houses and boats. Commercial properties, shopping malls, and apartment blocks seem much less affected. If this impression truly reflects what happens then surely what is needed is simply stricter and more appropriate building regulations. So, does my impression accord at all with reality? Are apartment blocks, corporate and government buildings really more robust and better sited or is this just a misleading impression caused by the images that are easily available?
tcmart14 4y ago
I don't know if I could get with a blanket 2 and done rule, but I do think there should be some limited liability for the government for certain things. If you google earth into Tampa and look at a lot of the neighborhoods right on the pay, it is ridiculous. Artificial water ways and such. And of course anytime a hurricane comes through, they will easily be destroyed. Dumb planning, yes, it shouldn't be encouraged to rebuild it. But for things like Ports, we need ports. [1] https://earth.google.com/web/@27.81056621,-82.6048196,1.60318001a,8048.90013417d,35y,0h,0t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/@27.81056621,-82.6048196,1.6031... [2] https://earth.google.com/web/@26.58803101,-81.96774613,5.88877799a,16954.72321356d,35y,0h,0t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/@26.58803101,-81.96774613,5.888...
collegeburner 4y ago
no. you cant seize land without compensation, see the constitution. literally just don't insure it any more, or require much stronger buildings (like concrete). oh and quit bailing out insurers.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
SoftTalker 4y ago
Hurricanes are a fact of life in the gulf and southeastern atlantic coasts. There is no area that has not have been hit twice already in the past century. So all this coastline should be dunes and park spaces?
- michael1999 4y ago
  Calgary did this after the 2013 Bow river flood. They bailed out the homeowners. But if they choose to rebuild on those lots, next time they get zero. They are on their own. If catastrophic hurricanes are really going to happen every 10 years, should the federal government be subsidizing the coastal lifestyle and building you a new house each time? Consider: 100B/100M taxpayers = $1000 per person. Can you really say that the average citizen of Wyoming should pony up $100 a year so Floridians can build up against the unsheltered sea instead a few miles inland?
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    > Calgary did this after the 2013 Bow river flood. They bailed out the homeowners. But if they choose to rebuild on those lots, next time they get zero. They are on their own. If you're talking about the town of High River/the Highwood River/the Beachwood estates and Wallaceville, it was about 102 houses out of 250 eligible and a couple hundred more affected. All but 14 lots were explicitly not up for development, at any risk; Beachwood and Wallaceville are being renaturalized as a floodplain and High River's removing infrastructure. The houses that weren't destroyed, demolished, or auctioned off to be moved are still there and uninhabited.[1] Other damaged neighborhoods that were bought out got tossed around between provincial governments for eight years until High River bought them back for redevelopment.[2] There are regulations - the Floodway Development Regulation in particular - against developing floodways, but haven't been promulgated to prevent, or even disincentivize, development.[3][4] (If they had been, parts of Fort McMurray rebuilt after the 2016 wildfires that then flooded in 2020 wouldn't have been rebuilt in the first place.)[5] The province also wouldn't fund buyouts of other flood-risk properties downstream of High River.[6] (Indeed, the High River bailout was OVERfunded, and High River sent money back to the county in January.)[7] [1] https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/beachwood-naturalization-moving-ahead-in-high-river https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/beachwood-naturaliz... [2] https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/province-and-high-river-nearing-deal-for-14-homes-in-the-northwest https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/province-and-high-r... [3] https://www.evabogdan.ca/uploads/8/1/4/0/81403352/bogdan_bennett___yumagulova_accepted_manuscript_with_figures.pdf https://www.evabogdan.ca/uploads/8/1/4/0/81403352/bogdan_ben... [4] https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/5da26123-e3df-45b8-a928-ee65ca3b2e50/view/ca6c43a2-de0e-4bd4-a2f5-f3ce94a1c7bb/Bogdan_Eva_Angelyna_201906_PhD.pdf https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/5da26123-e3df-45b8-a92... [5] https://theconversation.com/fort-mcmurrays-flood-disaster-was-foreseeable-and-preventable-137850 https://theconversation.com/fort-mcmurrays-flood-disaster-wa... [6] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/foothills-county-flooding-houses-1.6021413 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/foothills-county-floo... [7] https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/high-river-excess-flood-funding-to-go-to-foothills-county https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/high-river-excess-f...
cpurdy 4y ago
Yes, 1000x this. It is frustrating to be sending piles of money to these states every year, which they then waste on political stunts like flying legal immigrants to other states, instead of taking care of their citizens, or maybe investing in climate hardening. And then they're completely unprepared for cold weather, hot weather, wet weather, dry weather, ... and say things like "Nobody knew ___ could be so complicated." I really don't mind my tax dollars going to these states, but I don't want my tax dollars to be wasted, or worse yet, spent to hurt people on purpose.
- rory 4y ago
  > flying legal immigrants to other states Can we please not do this flamewar thing? Asylum seekers are technically neither legal nor illegal immigrants yet, but everyone knows this will cause an argument that's completely unrelated to the article.
  - peterangular 4y ago
    I think it's a valid conversation to have in parallel when the people/politicians in these places are pulling expensive political stunts that do nothing but stoke the ever-increasing polarization of our nation... only to turn around and shamelessly ask for aide in such a situation. Sorry, but it's a bad look.
    - rory 4y ago
      > expensive political stunts Yeah wouldn't mind losing this $120B if they had saved that $600k, amirite? FEMA subsidizes all kinds of wealthy people, Florida MAGAs and NYC Davosers alike.
  - btmiller 4y ago
    I think the relevance is that it’s solid evidence that: governments make bad decisions
  - cpurdy 4y ago
    I tried to be very careful about what I said, and how I said it. As with many others here, I pay a great deal of taxes, by any measure. I do not want my contribution (_our_ contributions) to be used to hurt people for the purpose of hurting people. This is not a "flamewar thing". DeSantis chose to hurt people to accrue power to himself. Given the gifts and the fortune that we have inherited, if we cannot speak truth to power, then it would be better had we never been born. Sorry, not sorry?
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
I must say that is a terrible idea. Should parts of CA or other earthquake prone areas be labelled uninhabitable? What about areas where forest fires are routine? Flood prone areas? Tornado prone areas? High UV? Poor air quality? It makes no sense whatsoever to dictate that people cannot live on the coasts due to natural disasters which happen everywhere, all the time. Frankly, being told where to live is more garish than being told what to think and what to say.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  No one is being told where to live. But there is no reason to subsidize property prices in areas by providing federal taxpayer subsidized insurance. Providing taxpayer subsidized insurance allows people to buy properties with a larger mortgage (for which banks require flood insurance), which allows property prices to rise higher than they would have without taxpayer subsidized insurance.
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    "We need to push FEMA to have a 2 and done rule. After that the property must be returned back to dunes/parks/public spaces." My response was to this comment at the top, where it was, explicitly and objectively, supporting a policy that dictates where people should live.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Oh yes, sorry, I forgot that was the comment you were responding to.
    - smachiz 4y ago
      FEMA doesn't decide where you live, but they do provide federally subsidized flood insurance. He's suggesting that we should stop doing that for two total loss events on the same property. Folks have had their houses rebuilt with other people's money really often - and build it in the exact same spot, because the feds will come build it again. Even though it's going to get destroyed, again.
vkou 4y ago
Under that rule, what exactly is your plan for replacing all the life-critical logistics infrastructure across the entire Gulf coast? Just abandon the whole thing as a sacrifice zone? How exactly are you going to do any international shipping? Get goods down the Mississippi? Refine half the gasoline the country uses? People don't live in hurricane zones because it's fun. People live there because that's where the jobs are. Many of them aren't bullshit jobs, and are far more critical to life and limb than yet another dogwalking mobile app.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > People don't live in hurricane zones because it's fun. People absolutely live in Florida for that reason; people flock there for retirement. > Under that rule, what exactly is your plan for replacing all the life-critical logistics infrastructure across the entire Gulf coast? Strict building codes, no more building below sea level as with New Orleans. Even a few miles from the ocean can often be enough to change "my house swam away" into "we had some trees downed".
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
ebiester 4y ago
Same for San Francisco. Two earthquakes and it must be returned back to the swamp. New York got hit bad with Sandy. Thirty years or so and we might level it too. It turns out that with climate change, nothing is going to be safe. And with the pacific shelf, we will always have that as an issue too.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  Hey, in the middle of BF Indiana, I am going to be having a very boring life years after NYC and SF are underwater!
- strangattractor 4y ago
  One of the reasons SF is so expensive is the building codes. After the 89 earthquake somethings were not rebuilt. When the local Government allow homes to be built with lax standards simply because they want them to be cheap I agree they do not deserve to be rebuilt on the tax payers dime. Might also make the Condo safer.
- adventured 4y ago
  That goes for severe blizzards for NYC as well, because I say so. Public funds must no longer be allocated to clearing snow from roads every year just because selfish people decide to live in NYC.
  - eachro 4y ago
    Are those federal funds being used for snow clearage?
    - 1123581321 4y ago
      FEMA spent about two billion on New York from Sandy.
      - vaidhy 4y ago
        Why move the goalpost? Snow clearance does not come from federal money.
phrozenone 4y ago
Would earthquake and flood zones fall under this rule?
beowulfey 4y ago
Yes, this makes such good sense to me. In Europe, rivers are often surrounded by parkland on either side as they flow through cities, such as the Elbe in Dresden. It's gorgeous public space, which benefits everyone, but it also is there for another reason -- the river floods fairly regularly, and so by leaving that as uninhabited park space the floods can happen without causing too much damage.
ClassicOrgin 4y ago
I was looking to move to Fort Myers or Fort Myers Shores with my girlfriend (she’s originally from there), and we looked at five different houses. Based on damage maps/satellite photos/Facebook posts all five of those houses were flooded. But, the problem is only two of them were in any sort of flood zones. The only reason we didn’t buy is because it looked like the market was tanking. I think there is a lot of blaming going on here against homeowners who really didn’t know better. FEMA really needs to update their maps to account for more catastrophic storms like this. It’s also important to keep in mind this storm could have been a lot worse. It was “only” a Category 4.
- jdhn 4y ago
  It was a Cat 5 in all but name. Max winds were measured at 155 MPH, Cat 5 starts at 157 MPH wind speed.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    So a cat 4 is a cat 5 in all but name? And a cat 5 is a cat 6 in all but name?
    - jdhn 4y ago
      Don't be obtuse. This was 2 MPH away from being a "weak" Cat 5.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - random42_ 4y ago
        Or we can say that this was a strong cat 4 instead.
- duped 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure flood zones don't account for hurricane storm surge. That describes regular seasonal flooding risk. If you want a map of areas likely to be damaged by hurricanes in the next 10/20/50 years then it's basically the entire coast of Florida.
nostromo 4y ago
Or hardened against that type of damage. After floods or wildfires or tornadoes or earthquakes, you'll see some buildings are a pile of rubble and others just need brushed off. These locales should be making these requirements a part of their building codes. But I suspect they are addicted to FEMA money and actually prefer having local stimulus in their economies every few years.
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  Definitely. Revise the building codes, and after doing so, if it becomes prohibitively expensive or just not worth building in that area, then we'll know that it's no longer a viable place to build.

giantg2 4y ago

Or build it better/stronger. Or make it uninsurable (for storm damage) and ineligible for relief funds (after x number of claims in x number of years).

TylerE 4y ago

Yes, for sure. SC coast is getting hammered right now. Not as much wind at this point obviously, but timing could not have been worse… peak storm surge right at high tide.

kwhitefoot 4y ago

Whenever I see pictures of the aftermath of such events it seems that the damage is mostly to private houses and boats. Commercial properties, shopping malls, and apartment blocks seem much less affected. If this impression truly reflects what happens then surely what is needed is simply stricter and more appropriate building regulations. So, does my impression accord at all with reality? Are apartment blocks, corporate and government buildings really more robust and better sited or is this just a misleading impression caused by the images that are easily available?

tcmart14 4y ago

I don't know if I could get with a blanket 2 and done rule, but I do think there should be some limited liability for the government for certain things. If you google earth into Tampa and look at a lot of the neighborhoods right on the pay, it is ridiculous. Artificial water ways and such. And of course anytime a hurricane comes through, they will easily be destroyed. Dumb planning, yes, it shouldn't be encouraged to rebuild it. But for things like Ports, we need ports. [1] https://earth.google.com/web/@27.81056621,-82.6048196,1.60318001a,8048.90013417d,35y,0h,0t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/@27.81056621,-82.6048196,1.6031... [2] https://earth.google.com/web/@26.58803101,-81.96774613,5.88877799a,16954.72321356d,35y,0h,0t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/@26.58803101,-81.96774613,5.888...

collegeburner 4y ago

no. you cant seize land without compensation, see the constitution. literally just don't insure it any more, or require much stronger buildings (like concrete). oh and quit bailing out insurers.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

SoftTalker 4y ago

Hurricanes are a fact of life in the gulf and southeastern atlantic coasts. There is no area that has not have been hit twice already in the past century. So all this coastline should be dunes and park spaces?

michael1999 4y ago
Calgary did this after the 2013 Bow river flood. They bailed out the homeowners. But if they choose to rebuild on those lots, next time they get zero. They are on their own. If catastrophic hurricanes are really going to happen every 10 years, should the federal government be subsidizing the coastal lifestyle and building you a new house each time? Consider: 100B/100M taxpayers = $1000 per person. Can you really say that the average citizen of Wyoming should pony up $100 a year so Floridians can build up against the unsheltered sea instead a few miles inland?
- trynewideas 4y ago
  > Calgary did this after the 2013 Bow river flood. They bailed out the homeowners. But if they choose to rebuild on those lots, next time they get zero. They are on their own. If you're talking about the town of High River/the Highwood River/the Beachwood estates and Wallaceville, it was about 102 houses out of 250 eligible and a couple hundred more affected. All but 14 lots were explicitly not up for development, at any risk; Beachwood and Wallaceville are being renaturalized as a floodplain and High River's removing infrastructure. The houses that weren't destroyed, demolished, or auctioned off to be moved are still there and uninhabited.[1] Other damaged neighborhoods that were bought out got tossed around between provincial governments for eight years until High River bought them back for redevelopment.[2] There are regulations - the Floodway Development Regulation in particular - against developing floodways, but haven't been promulgated to prevent, or even disincentivize, development.[3][4] (If they had been, parts of Fort McMurray rebuilt after the 2016 wildfires that then flooded in 2020 wouldn't have been rebuilt in the first place.)[5] The province also wouldn't fund buyouts of other flood-risk properties downstream of High River.[6] (Indeed, the High River bailout was OVERfunded, and High River sent money back to the county in January.)[7] [1] https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/beachwood-naturalization-moving-ahead-in-high-river https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/beachwood-naturaliz... [2] https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/province-and-high-river-nearing-deal-for-14-homes-in-the-northwest https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/province-and-high-r... [3] https://www.evabogdan.ca/uploads/8/1/4/0/81403352/bogdan_bennett___yumagulova_accepted_manuscript_with_figures.pdf https://www.evabogdan.ca/uploads/8/1/4/0/81403352/bogdan_ben... [4] https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/5da26123-e3df-45b8-a928-ee65ca3b2e50/view/ca6c43a2-de0e-4bd4-a2f5-f3ce94a1c7bb/Bogdan_Eva_Angelyna_201906_PhD.pdf https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/5da26123-e3df-45b8-a92... [5] https://theconversation.com/fort-mcmurrays-flood-disaster-was-foreseeable-and-preventable-137850 https://theconversation.com/fort-mcmurrays-flood-disaster-wa... [6] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/foothills-county-flooding-houses-1.6021413 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/foothills-county-floo... [7] https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/high-river-excess-flood-funding-to-go-to-foothills-county https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/high-river-excess-f...

cpurdy 4y ago

Yes, 1000x this. It is frustrating to be sending piles of money to these states every year, which they then waste on political stunts like flying legal immigrants to other states, instead of taking care of their citizens, or maybe investing in climate hardening. And then they're completely unprepared for cold weather, hot weather, wet weather, dry weather, ... and say things like "Nobody knew ___ could be so complicated." I really don't mind my tax dollars going to these states, but I don't want my tax dollars to be wasted, or worse yet, spent to hurt people on purpose.

rory 4y ago
> flying legal immigrants to other states Can we please not do this flamewar thing? Asylum seekers are technically neither legal nor illegal immigrants yet, but everyone knows this will cause an argument that's completely unrelated to the article.
- peterangular 4y ago
  I think it's a valid conversation to have in parallel when the people/politicians in these places are pulling expensive political stunts that do nothing but stoke the ever-increasing polarization of our nation... only to turn around and shamelessly ask for aide in such a situation. Sorry, but it's a bad look.
  - rory 4y ago
    > expensive political stunts Yeah wouldn't mind losing this $120B if they had saved that $600k, amirite? FEMA subsidizes all kinds of wealthy people, Florida MAGAs and NYC Davosers alike.
- btmiller 4y ago
  I think the relevance is that it’s solid evidence that: governments make bad decisions
- cpurdy 4y ago
  I tried to be very careful about what I said, and how I said it. As with many others here, I pay a great deal of taxes, by any measure. I do not want my contribution (_our_ contributions) to be used to hurt people for the purpose of hurting people. This is not a "flamewar thing". DeSantis chose to hurt people to accrue power to himself. Given the gifts and the fortune that we have inherited, if we cannot speak truth to power, then it would be better had we never been born. Sorry, not sorry?

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

I must say that is a terrible idea. Should parts of CA or other earthquake prone areas be labelled uninhabitable? What about areas where forest fires are routine? Flood prone areas? Tornado prone areas? High UV? Poor air quality? It makes no sense whatsoever to dictate that people cannot live on the coasts due to natural disasters which happen everywhere, all the time. Frankly, being told where to live is more garish than being told what to think and what to say.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
No one is being told where to live. But there is no reason to subsidize property prices in areas by providing federal taxpayer subsidized insurance. Providing taxpayer subsidized insurance allows people to buy properties with a larger mortgage (for which banks require flood insurance), which allows property prices to rise higher than they would have without taxpayer subsidized insurance.
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  "We need to push FEMA to have a 2 and done rule. After that the property must be returned back to dunes/parks/public spaces." My response was to this comment at the top, where it was, explicitly and objectively, supporting a policy that dictates where people should live.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Oh yes, sorry, I forgot that was the comment you were responding to.
  - smachiz 4y ago
    FEMA doesn't decide where you live, but they do provide federally subsidized flood insurance. He's suggesting that we should stop doing that for two total loss events on the same property. Folks have had their houses rebuilt with other people's money really often - and build it in the exact same spot, because the feds will come build it again. Even though it's going to get destroyed, again.

vkou 4y ago

Under that rule, what exactly is your plan for replacing all the life-critical logistics infrastructure across the entire Gulf coast? Just abandon the whole thing as a sacrifice zone? How exactly are you going to do any international shipping? Get goods down the Mississippi? Refine half the gasoline the country uses? People don't live in hurricane zones because it's fun. People live there because that's where the jobs are. Many of them aren't bullshit jobs, and are far more critical to life and limb than yet another dogwalking mobile app.

ceejayoz 4y ago
> People don't live in hurricane zones because it's fun. People absolutely live in Florida for that reason; people flock there for retirement. > Under that rule, what exactly is your plan for replacing all the life-critical logistics infrastructure across the entire Gulf coast? Strict building codes, no more building below sea level as with New Orleans. Even a few miles from the ocean can often be enough to change "my house swam away" into "we had some trees downed".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

ebiester 4y ago

Same for San Francisco. Two earthquakes and it must be returned back to the swamp. New York got hit bad with Sandy. Thirty years or so and we might level it too. It turns out that with climate change, nothing is going to be safe. And with the pacific shelf, we will always have that as an issue too.

brianwawok 4y ago
Hey, in the middle of BF Indiana, I am going to be having a very boring life years after NYC and SF are underwater!
strangattractor 4y ago
One of the reasons SF is so expensive is the building codes. After the 89 earthquake somethings were not rebuilt. When the local Government allow homes to be built with lax standards simply because they want them to be cheap I agree they do not deserve to be rebuilt on the tax payers dime. Might also make the Condo safer.
adventured 4y ago
That goes for severe blizzards for NYC as well, because I say so. Public funds must no longer be allocated to clearing snow from roads every year just because selfish people decide to live in NYC.
- eachro 4y ago
  Are those federal funds being used for snow clearage?
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    FEMA spent about two billion on New York from Sandy.
    - vaidhy 4y ago
      Why move the goalpost? Snow clearance does not come from federal money.

phrozenone 4y ago

Would earthquake and flood zones fall under this rule?

beowulfey 4y ago

Yes, this makes such good sense to me. In Europe, rivers are often surrounded by parkland on either side as they flow through cities, such as the Elbe in Dresden. It's gorgeous public space, which benefits everyone, but it also is there for another reason -- the river floods fairly regularly, and so by leaving that as uninhabited park space the floods can happen without causing too much damage.

ClassicOrgin 4y ago

I was looking to move to Fort Myers or Fort Myers Shores with my girlfriend (she’s originally from there), and we looked at five different houses. Based on damage maps/satellite photos/Facebook posts all five of those houses were flooded. But, the problem is only two of them were in any sort of flood zones. The only reason we didn’t buy is because it looked like the market was tanking. I think there is a lot of blaming going on here against homeowners who really didn’t know better. FEMA really needs to update their maps to account for more catastrophic storms like this. It’s also important to keep in mind this storm could have been a lot worse. It was “only” a Category 4.

jdhn 4y ago
It was a Cat 5 in all but name. Max winds were measured at 155 MPH, Cat 5 starts at 157 MPH wind speed.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  So a cat 4 is a cat 5 in all but name? And a cat 5 is a cat 6 in all but name?
  - jdhn 4y ago
    Don't be obtuse. This was 2 MPH away from being a "weak" Cat 5.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - random42_ 4y ago
      Or we can say that this was a strong cat 4 instead.
duped 4y ago
I'm pretty sure flood zones don't account for hurricane storm surge. That describes regular seasonal flooding risk. If you want a map of areas likely to be damaged by hurricanes in the next 10/20/50 years then it's basically the entire coast of Florida.

nostromo 4y ago

Or hardened against that type of damage. After floods or wildfires or tornadoes or earthquakes, you'll see some buildings are a pile of rubble and others just need brushed off. These locales should be making these requirements a part of their building codes. But I suspect they are addicted to FEMA money and actually prefer having local stimulus in their economies every few years.

SantalBlush 4y ago
Definitely. Revise the building codes, and after doing so, if it becomes prohibitively expensive or just not worth building in that area, then we'll know that it's no longer a viable place to build.