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One house already on fire. That whole neighborhood seems pretty screwed.
by kreeben 3y ago
One house already on fire. That whole neighborhood seems pretty screwed.
- rightbyte 3y agoAt least that edge of it. Imagine owning the house over the road where the lava is heading right now, watching the disaster in slow motion. I guess the lava flow could stop right in front of it? Edit: Nevermind ...
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoIceland has socialised National Catastrophe Insurance. The premiums are very low but if your house is lava'd or avalanched you get a reasonable payout. Of course it's better if that doesn't happen, but if it does there's solid support for the victims.
- bitcharmer 3y agoThis would never happen in the USA. Pure communism
- roywiggins 3y agoThe American equivalent is probably the national flood insurance program.
- FireBeyond 3y agoThe annoying thing about that is that it lets people repeatedly keep building in exactly the same spot. Not without an inconvenience, but it's almost like "every time it floods enough you get a home upgrade".
- everybodyknows 3y agoPeople can afford beachfront houses often have friends in high places.
- Fatnino 3y agoThat insurance not cheap.
- justin66 3y agoBut it is subsidized by one’s fellow taxpayers.
- Fatnino 3y agoOnly sort of. People who live in flood zones are subsidizing all the other people in the flood zones much more than say a homeowner in Colorado.
- justin66 3y agoI don't live in a flood zone. How do I opt out of subsidizing any of these people's flood insurance at all?
- Fatnino 3y agoYou pay taxes, the people in flood zone pay taxes. The same. Then on top of that, flood zone residents have to pay extra for the flood insurance.
- justin66 3y agoYou don't understand what "subsidized" means, do you? Their flood insurance costs less than it otherwise would because those of us without flood insurance are helping to pay for their flood insurance. It's fine if you think that's the way things should work, but there's no value in pretending it's not happening.
- johndunne 3y agoHopefully, everyone is safe. But what of the homes? I'm interested to know what generally occurs, in terms of insurance, when homes and property are destroyed by lava flow? Is there insurance coverage for such events? Are the homeowners covered to rebuild/buy new homes elsewhere?
- laveur 3y agoYeah they evacuated the entire town from what I heard. So there is no danger to any lives. I'm pretty sure the city has accepted that as long as no one dies, that everything else can burn.
- layer8 3y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38991051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38991051.
- sixothree 3y agoThis may be a dumb question but near me is a cement factory that (incidentally) makes stackable concrete blocks the size of a car. They stack them multiple stories high and multiple blocks deep, at least while being stored at the factory. What about lava makes it so we can’t redirect the flow around neighborhoods with these things?
- kabouseng 3y agoLava is molten rock. Concrete blocks are rock.
- ygra 3y agoAlso from the blog: > Benedikt Halldórsson of the Met Office says houses are not designed to withstand lava flow. > »... You can expect the walls to give way from the load, and the heat in the lava is such that it burns everything in its path.« Apart from the heat, since it's molten rock it also has considerable mass, and the lava flow continues pushing from behind.
- jon_richards 3y agoOne weird realization I had is that lava is over three times as dense as water, so if you tired to “swim” in it, you’d basically just sit on top.
- dylan604 3y agoThat's not what happened to Gollum
- ceejayoz 3y ago“Sit” might not be the right verb here.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoit is less about density and more about viscosity, which depends on the type and temperature. I had an opportunity to interact with lava during a Hawaii eruption, and people could run/walk across red hot and flowing lava, but it would start melting the bottom of your shoes. This lava was definitely on the colder end of the spectrum, with a consistency like bread dough. On the the other end of the specturm, there are very hot low viscosity lavas similar in consistency to soup. If you tried to step on that, it would be like falling into a pool.