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>> So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt? Why do Floridians keep rebuilding in the wake of endless hurricanes? Why do folks live in Tornado All
by bruce511 2y ago
>> So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt?
Why do Floridians keep rebuilding in the wake of endless hurricanes? Why do folks live in Tornado Alley? Why do Dakotans endure one tragic winter after another? Why did New Orleans build back after yhe flooding?
Man seeks to tame nature - to bend it to our will. Plus we'll take "build now, great views now" over "possible disaster later ".
One could argue that nowhere is completely risk free, but it seems like the homing instinct (Plus the cultural instinct to build out of wood) is strong.
It might be time to consider alternate building methods suitable for the risk of the area.
- derektank 2y agoI would append to these explanations, "moral hazard". Many of the people rebuilding in these areas are being subsidized by the rest of us, particularly people with access to reimbursement from the national flood insurance program.
- bruce511 2y agoSure, the point of insurance is that the many subsidize the few. But I expect there comes a point where insurance companies say "enough is enough". Perhaps federal and state money will start to pay out, but the land gets bought as well.
- baq 2y agoGetting insurance is a making a bet bad stuff happens. The insurer makes a bet it doesn’t happen when it signs an agreement with you. If the bet is obviously negative expected value, it stops being a useful subsidy and it becomes instead throwing good money away.
- WalterBright 2y agoA rule of thumb is you'll pay twice in insurance premiums than you'll get in payouts. Insurance is only worth buying if you cannot afford the cost of the disaster. For example, I don't pay for collision protection on my car. I can afford losing the car. Over time I've saved far more in insurance premiums than the cost replacing the car. The same goes for insurance for appliances, etc.
- adastra22 2y agoCan you afford to replace the other guy's car?
- jmb99 2y agoCollision insurance != liability insurance.
- seanp2k2 2y agoAlso AFAIK collision and total loss is required to get financing and for leases, so you still pay / there is still an opportunity loss in other forms. I lease EVs with the federal tax credit and invest what I’d otherwise spend buying cash. You need to look very closely at the numbers for your own situations but it’s been a “better” deal than buying cash the past few cycles. Sure, you could also just buy a decade-old Honda used, but then you get to drive a used decade-old Honda. It’s like suggesting that camping is cheaper than a hotel or that luxury hotels provide no additional value beyond budget hotels. On the other hand, used Range Rovers depreciate so drastically that you can buy one less than a decade old for under $10k, just make sure to check insurance and maintenance costs and actually have it inspected before buying. The air suspension in particular is why you see so many “dropped” examples for cheap.
- olyjohn 2y agoAverage new car cost is $45,000. Liability minimums in many states are still around $50,000. Even if you're insured, there's a good chance you still won't be able to afford to replace the other guy's car.
- matwood 2y agoYep. One of the ways the rich get richer is when they can self-insure everything and invest what they would have normally paid in premiums.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoThat really isn’t true. The rich buy insurance like anyone else, they are even more aggressive about insurance with things like umbrella policies to protect their wealth. They also hedge a lot, which is just insuring through investing.
- tptacek 2y agoInsurance has an obviously negative expected value for its customers.
- baq 2y agoThe magic trick is it protects you from ruin. EV is negative for this one bet but not for the whole budget.
- tptacek 2y agoRight; there are all kinds of positive-EV bets you should never take. Heads you win $50,000,000; tails I get $500,000 and your house. Insurance isn't so much about expectation as it is about marginal utility.
- jalk 2y agoThe insurance companies did say "enough is enough", which is why the FAIR plans exist - i.e. https://www.cfpnet.com/ https://www.cfpnet.com/
- tptacek 2y agoThat is not in fact the point of insurance.
- godtoldmetodoit 2y agoAgreed on this point, I don't want to be subsidizing insurance or paying for multi millionaires homes to be rebuilt. I truly feel bad for the people who lost their homes, it's awful. But it shouldn't be the tax payer who picks up the tab. If insurance is so prohibitively expensive you can no longer afford to build there, then so be it - you can't afford to live there after all.
- metabagel 2y agoThis strikes me as not understanding the limits of private insurance. There wouldn’t be earthquake insurance across much of California if the state didn’t provide it. Private insurance isn’t generally able to withstand large calamities which result in many thousands of high dollar claims in a short period of time.
- tptacek 2y agoYou can insure against a very expensive event that is very likely to happen; it's simply that the premiums for that insurance will be very, very high. If you're "insured" for a catastrophic event that is likely --- for instance, a home in Pacific Palisades of any sort --- and your premiums look reasonable and bearable, then the odds are you're not insured, you're subsidized.
- metabagel 2y agoThis is a distinction without a difference (no insurance vs. unaffordable insurance).
- michaeljx 2y agoPrivate insurance can and generally withstands large calamities (known as natcat losses) without government intervention via the utilisation of global reinsurance organizations. Especially for earthquake, a properly reinsured insurance can cover a large earthquake loss about once every 15-20years
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- briffle 2y agoMost of them are also being rebuilt with the same inherent problems. If they were rebuilding after a fire or tornado with concrete or ICF homes, with metal roofs with ember screens and tornado straps that would be okay.
- euroderf 2y agoPass a law. Disaster insurance maxes out at 95% compensation. (Same for federal insurance of bank accounts.) Not enough of a worst-case cost to cause a run on the banks (or a collapse in property prices), but enough to get people to start using the brains they were born with.
- nroets 2y agoThe Gulf coast is thousands of miles and hurricanes only destroy a few dozen miles of it each year. So the risk management isn't illogical.
- bruce511 2y agoIt seems like the destruction is not rotating through all miles equally though. It sure seems like the folks in Florida are rebuilding more often than most.
- jjallen 2y agoFlorida is many hundreds if not thousands of miles of coastline. The vast majority of it hasn’t been impacted majorly (defined as more than a tropical storm and evacuation) in many decades. My family has been there since the 50s and has never had major damage to any home. There’s some work and minor damage involved with tropical storms but nothing like a full on flood or total loss of house like these fires. It’s just not true at all to say that most of Florida is regularly majorly impacted.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoExactly, and plenty of other Gulf states obviously are devastatingly impacted all the time, e.g Katrina, Harvey, etc. Not sure what the parent comment you are responding to is talking about.
- tptacek 2y agoThe devastation of a sparsely-inhabited patch of rural coastline isn't an economic or social problem, because ~nobody lives there. But pick any one of those patches and build a metropolis there, and you've recreated the problem we do care about. It's the concentration of risk that's the issue.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoKind of tangential, but take a look at building codes in the major Florida metros. They’re impressive and more prepared for a direct impact than anywhere else in the world. And I’m not just referring to Miami - it’s the one city I’m not very familiar with. Tampa got two storms last year and while damage was substantial and notable, those were the types of storms that simply wipe out Haiti or New Jersey. There is very little substance to my comment other than to share a point of pride for the state. The GP is correct in that if you’re not as familiar with the region it’s easy to forget how massive the state is.
- cle 2y agoI think framing people "staying put" in a solely negative light paints an incomplete picture. I'd bet that the biggest reason people stay put is not anti-social but pro-social--tight community, cultural, and family bonds.
- bruce511 2y agoNo doubt. As I said, the homing instinct is strong. We build in risky areas because we've lived there all our lives. Perhaps we should build different though to mitigate risk. It's not hard to build a fire-proof house. Or one that's flood resistant. Or hurricane proof...
- baq 2y agoConcrete is nice if you don’t want the whole house to burn down, it’s required in some places. Also, some minimum distance between buildings and regulations about what you can plant in the yard. There are folks who’ll say it’s taking away their freedoms and they’re actually right, it’s just we don’t want to pay for an army firefighters for when their respecting their freedoms puts the neighborhood in danger. (I’ve got nothing against firefighters - but if they aren’t needed as much, they can be not firefighters and contribute in a different way.)
- throwup238 2y agoThat's definitely the case in Altadena which is a historically minority neighborhood. The cities south of Altadena like Pasadena and South Pasadena were redlined by real estate agents for decades after desegregation, which forced African Americans and Latinos to settle the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains at that wildland-urban boundary. Lots of people lost homes that have been in their families since the 60s and 70s. Who knows? If not for those policies, Pasadena could have been built denser and Altadena could have been miles of flat natural reserve that acts as a large firebreak where firefighters can easily fight the flames before they threaten thousands of structures, with frequent prescribed burns to keep the fuel load down. That's probably the real kind of conversation we should be having of municipalities easing housing restrictions to build denser and the state buying up large swathes of these wildland adjacent communities to create larger breaks between the hills and the houses.
- bluGill 2y agoIs there any place on earth where the weather isn't potentially dangerious at some time?
- IshKebab 2y agoVery safe in most of Europe. In the UK the only weather that kills people is the cold (pensioners who can't afford heating; I wouldn't say it's exactly natural causes, but it's in the vicinity) and floods, which occasionally kill single digits of people. There are basically no earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wildfire, etc. I would imagine a lot of places are like that.
- adriand 2y agoI live in southern Ontario which is mostly like this too. There is occasional flooding but minor compared to other places, and occasional major snowstorms, but the worst natural disaster I can recall in a half century here was an “ice storm” that caused damage that was quite frankly small potatoes compared to hurricanes and earthquakes. Living next to the Great Lakes also means that regardless of what happens with droughts, we have a supply of fresh water that is virtually limitless. I have to wonder whether the region will start to become more popular with climate refugees. Might Chicago become more of a destination, for example?
- hugs 2y agoI live in Chicago. I grew up in Southern California (Ventura County). Huge wildfire in fall of '93 started in my neighborhood. Then a few months later in '94, got to "ride" the Northridge earthquake. I would love to move back to CA, but haven't because of natural disaster risk. I still have family that lives there, though, and I enjoy going back when I can. The Great Lakes region theoretically is poised to be a /relatively/ safer place in the future as a "climate refuge", all things considered. And the huge amount of fresh water is nice... except... the more I learn about PFAS in the water, the more I realize... no place is perfect. (And if it truly was perfect, I'd probably not be able to afford to live there.) So... I choose snow, cold, and tornado risk over wildfire and earthquakes. Out of all the risks, wildfire risk seems the scariest (okay, maybe second to flooding). Everyone gets to (and has to) choose which risks they're willing to live with.
- rexpop 2y ago> Man seeks to tame nature [citation needed] This is a shockingly archaic outlook espoused by the outmoded likes of the 17th century's Francis Bacon who posited "Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature", asserting that "the secrets of nature betray themselves more readily when tormented by [science] than when left to their own course." To tame, conquer, and torment is an abhorrently perverse attitude to hold towards the cradle of our species. It's not the dominant philosophy of humankind, only the ideology of a backwards niche minority that's had some recent success--not unheard of in nature. ;) More common and contemporary perspectives are based in concepts of interconnectedness, innate affinity, and stewardship rather than ministration.
- Yeul 2y agoI live in a country that literally wouldn't exist if man didn't tame it 24/7. Funny enough it's also the only place in Europe that takes floods seriously.
- Clubber 2y ago>Funny enough it's also the only place in Europe that takes floods seriously. I'm guessing Belgium simply because they broke the dikes during WWI to flood the land with seawater to delay the German advance.
- mainecoder 2y agoI'm guessing the Netherlands.
- marze 2y agoOne would certainly hope that reconstruction would involve houses with concrete exteriors, or masonry. It would be silly to build a bunch of wood houses. Especially for luxury homes, a concrete shell should only add 1% to the overall cost. And technology exists to build hurricane-proof houses. Shouldn't this be mandated, if a "natural disaster" destroys a home, to not replace it with a similarly vulnerable structure?
- giantg2 2y agoCalifornia has a more stringent wildlands fire building code. Not sure if they'd apply it to this area too. I've also heard that some insurances have declined fire coverage or charged very high premiums to homes not meeting their material requirements.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- em-bee 2y agoi have been wondering about this. how well do concrete and other less flammable materials actually help in a fire storm like this? wouldn't much of the house still get damaged enough that you may well have to rebuild anyways? or is the difference enough to keep, say, 50% of the houses in a reusable state as opposed to losing all of them?
- foobarian 2y agoI've been wondering how fire manages to damage a stucco/stone house in the first place, especially in some of the cases where there wasn't much vegetation around. The scale of the fire must be quite immense and counterintuitive to get the outcome seen on news photos/footage.
- WalterBright 2y agoI'm speculating, but it could be the wooden eves, window frames, and wooden doors that allow the fire to get a foothold. If the roof is vented, it may suck in burning embers.
- mancerayder 2y agowhy is that 'instinct' to build out of wood? The instinct is to build wealth, and it's cheaper to build wood than brick. I find Western European construction standards to be higher than American. European homes feel like they're made out of brick and stone, seem better insulated, and American homes feel like they're wood-framed with giant modular pieces of wood (at least here in the northeast).
- nprateem 2y agoThe Great Fire of London put a stop to wooden houses in the UK. Maybe the same will happen in California now. But having seen the pictures from social media of the torrent of embers, maybe a few more homes might have survived but probably not many (unless they concreted their gardens too).
- bcrosby95 2y agoRoofs are the main problem. Usually they get in through an attic vent, or they catch the eaves on fire. They burn from the top down.
- adastra22 2y agoLondon doesn't have earthquakes. Masonry is a death trap.
- cudgy 2y agoExactly. This is the dilemma in LA. Build masonry frame and die in an earthquake. Build wood frame and die in a wildfire. Metal framing with concrete or other nonflammable siding?
- adastra22 2y agoYou can evacuate from a wildfire. Earthquakes catch you by surprise. The choice is die in an earthquake, or just have your possessions destroyed in a fire. It's not your choice though, state regulations prohibit earthquake-unsafe buildings.
- seanp2k2 2y agoLand in the hills above a major city among trees with a view of the ocean in a place with extremely nice weather year-round will always be valuable. They will absolutely rebuild. Get in now if you’ve got the cash to buy land there. It might take a decade for the EPA to clean it up like Lahaina, but they will absolutely 100% rebuild there.
- M95D 2y agoOMG! People build with wood in a fire/tornado/flood area?? Is that even allowed?
- garbagewoman 2y agoMan seeks to tame nature and is getting repeatedly humbled more and more these days, or at least should be
- renewiltord 2y agoOne of the ways I like to tame nature is to get other people to pay for my home by making a government insurance plan that pays to rebuild my home if it breaks. In this way I am like a pioneer, taming Malibu with my $3 m home. Wagies need not apply. This is for men in the arena.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ashoeafoot 2y agoI do not get why there are no new build codes like "every house needs a pontoon cellar that could lift the structure
- silexia 2y agoWe need to stop having government bailouts for natural disasters, that just incentivizes people to keep doing what has been shown not to work.
- xcrunner529 2y agoLike the insurance in Florida and hurricane disaster relief.