Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B
bondbuyer.com
bondbuyer.com
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?
No.
Unlike other subsidies there is no greater economic/societal good created from people having their costal homes. And, unlike other disaster situations, hurricanes in that region are an outright guarantee.
Also, this is just going to keep getting worse with climate change.
I agree with Calgary. People are free to live there, but not on my dime.
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-naturaliz...
[2] https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/province-and-high-r...
[3] https://www.evabogdan.ca/uploads/8/1/4/0/81403352/bogdan_ben...
[4] https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/5da26123-e3df-45b8-a92...
[5] https://theconversation.com/fort-mcmurrays-flood-disaster-wa...
[6] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/foothills-county-floo...
[7] https://www.highriveronline.com/articles/high-river-excess-f...
When a person engages in some risky activity but offloads some of the risk onto others, they'll continue doing that activity more than they otherwise would.
Climate change really doesn't have an opinion on this. Here's a paper from the EPA:
"What Climate Change Means for Puerto Rico"
https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/sites/production/files...
As someone who believes climate change is fact, if I had the economic mobility to move my life away from such an area I would. Sorry if this seems harsh, but people much smarter than me agree that these areas are going to be prone to worse and worse conditions in the coming decades.
That’s your decision, which is distinct from whether other Americans should subsidize the economic consequence of your decision.
a) Build the property to withstand all but 1-2 statistically expected hurricanes within that N year period. This is possible, it's just costly.
b) You don't get public funds
c) You get private insurance
d) You don't build
Say goodbye to Pakistan.
I'd love to see the HN crowd that is championing the premise stand up and proclaim all the areas of the globe that people should no longer be allowed to live, huge swaths of which will be in hyper impoverished areas of India, China, Pakistan. They won't dare.
Who's talking about allowing anything? The debate is about whether these people will be subsidised.
Admittedly there's also grinding poverty in parts of Florida so I appreciate the comparison; that's a good hole in my argument.
Should we provide compensation for Floridians to move to safer areas? Yes.
Should we provide compensation for Pakistan for improved flood management? Yes.
Should Pakistanis or Floridians rebuild in the exact same places and the same ways where they've been building? No, unfortunately nobody gets that luxury. That's the horrible thing about climate change - we have very few options and they all have major downsides but we don't get to opt out. Florida's going to experience massive flooding regularly and Pakistan will face the same, and either populations in both areas adapt in some fashion (build for floods or move) or continue to experience mass devastation when the inevitable occurs.
I don't get to dictate where people live any more than I get to dictate where the flood waters go. It's heartbreaking but that's the world we're stuck in.
Much of the housing was built in the 50s. It was definitely low quality, including such issues as bad electrical grounding and about as many cockroaches there are stars above. At least, that's how I felt as a kid, anyways.
But, it was made of concrete and had steel storm doors. The biggest issue for us was flooding (we were at the bottom of a hill) but newer structures tended to be on stilts or have a sacrificial first floor. This was true both on and off base.
Rents off base apparently are pretty cheap by US standards. And this is with a climate akin to that of Hawaii with beaches nearby.
So it's possible to build well and be cheap.
No doubt with N carefully calibrated to depopulate the parts of the country you don't like, but not the part you live in.
The west coast has too many earthquakes, depopulate it!
N is carefully calibrated by actuaries with hard data. Insurance companies stopped offering flood insurance to much of Florida decades ago - they're now covered by a federally subsidized program called the NFIP that has about five million policies. It has been a money pit since 2004 for obvious reasons.
California got plenty of federal funds to rebuild after the Northridge quake and what did the state do? It spent the next four years improving building codes - benefiting the entire country - and plowed the money into seismic retrofits. When >90% of home insurers pulled out, instead of depending on a federal program, the state created the California Earthquake Authority which is almost entirely privately funded within the state. I have no doubt the next big earthquake will require federal assistance but there hasn't been a major incident in nearly thirty years and the state, insurers, and homeowners have done a lot to mitigate future catastrophe.
The same thing is happening now in California with wildfires: many people in rural areas can only get insurance through the California FAIR Plan. The big difference is that the FAIR Plan is funded entirely through premiums and state funds. Very little if any federal funding goes to it because Trump turned it into a hot button issue just a few years ago. That's the one to watch out for, not earthquakes.
Edit: phrasing
If they cannot be safely built upon, sure. Same reason no one builds houses on the edge of Kilauea's active craters. Hurricane-resistant construction is possible, it's just more expensive. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/us/hurricane-michael-flor...
However because it's all we know, it seems that the real absurdity would be the government designating these sites as 'no-build' zones-- or at least FEMA washing their hands of any damage that should happen to these sites.
This should be a wakeup call that many aspects of our current way of life are unsustainable, not that it's just standard operating procedure to rebuild from the ground up every 20 years only for everything to be washed away again.
Sanibel Island has 7,821 housing units at an average density of 454.6 per square mile.
Median sales price of the homes in 2021 was $1.64M, average price was similar.
So a rough approximation of the value of the homes on the island alone is $12Bn. I am not sure how you would translate that into damage costs, but in a scenario of total destruction then $12B would be lost.
I have no real evidence other than visiting Ft Myers and Naples a few times, but I can tell you there is (was) a lot of very valuable property right next to the ocean. I don't doubt that if you look at the total distribution of damages that there is a long tail of less severe damage as you go inland, but the conservative estimates from my napkin math shows that it's likely a significant number (over ten billion) occurred just from properties on the small stretch of coastline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanibel,_Florida https://sanibelrealestateguide.com/average-price-homes/
For example, here is one house for sale on the water in Naples (https://www.trulia.com/p/fl/naples/2331-crayton-rd-naples-fl...). 3 beds, 2 baths, 2k sqft on a little over 0.25 acres. $3.5M
Just 7 miles away is this house (https://www.trulia.com/p/fl/naples/5241-hunter-blvd-naples-f...), 4 beds, 2 baths, 2.25k sqft on 0.25 acres. $625K.
I sincerely doubt the cost to replace the first home is 6x the second. And then there's this one (https://www.trulia.com/p/fl/sebring/2124-gardenview-rd-sebri...), which is about as far from the coast as you can reasonably be in that part of florida, going for a mere $240k, and I doubt it's significantly more or less to replace than either of the previous two.
They should be allowed to live there as long as they want to fund it.
People in the Pacific states and the northeast are going to need to internalize that it isn't OK to use the Sun Belt as a relieve valve for their NIMBY policies, and the federal government might even need to take measures to disincentivize those states from exporting their populations to Gulf Coast swamps.
Yes. That makes sense to me.
What's the downside?
Returning all of the current privately owned beachfront to natural habitat would be absolutely glorious. We can make exceptions for public facilities serving the greater good, like ports.
There is also a difference between "my roof was damaged by high wind" repairs and "my house and everything I own floated away due to storm surge" repairs. I'm not trying to speak for OP, but typically the style of "2 and then done" plans are for the latter style of damage (where the damage is into the low-mid 6 figures), not the former (where damage is low-mid 5 figures).
We've been treating these areas as fit for habitation and we're watching in realtime as they become uninhabitable. While it may have been more tolerable to live in these regions in the last century when global temperatures were lower we're at an inflection point; we're going be forced to concede spaces as too dangerous for regular habitation because storms are only going to increase in severity and frequency.
As a society we have a few options: 1, we continue to rebuild and pay the costs until it becomes completely cost prohibitive; 2, dramatically rethink how we build in the area and construct buildings that can cope with several feet of storm surges; or 3, accept reality and begin the process of resettling people in areas that won't be submerged in 100 years. It's likely that we're going to pursue option 1 for the next 10-30 years because collective change is hard but we ought to start having these conversations well in advance of insurance companies writing off all of Florida as uninsurable.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the benefits of allowing areas to revert to wetlands, but considering that they act as excellent buffers from the storms we're observing as well as carbon sinks, but it's worth stating that retreating from these areas makes more sense on ecological and financial grounds.
Having those coasts be parks with hundreds of miles of low-impact infrastructure like hiking/biking/walking paths, maybe simple low-key restaurants that aren't a big deal to rebuild every decade, etc.
Put all the heavier infrastructure like housing developments a few miles inland. Then everyone can enjoy these idyllic beach lands a little farther from all the buzz of cities. Everyone in the city can still easily go to the coastline-spanning megapark, but now the beach isn't lined with gaudy condos.
Sign me up!
What you’re looking at is anybody potentially within 30ft of sea level where any contiguous <30ft elevation is connected to water. I’ve known people 20 miles inland to be flooded by storm surges because they lived near a river, and the hurricane pushed all the water up the river.
The wind is not as big a concern, but also still does a lot of damage. During one major hurricane I evacuated 150 miles inland and still didn’t have power for a week. One person in the town I evacuated to was killed by a falling tree.
But from some of the pictures I've seen, you do have some neighborhoods where one side is slightly higher than the other side and thus survived much better. Maybe some of those houses shouldn't have been built, and berms strategically placed and other things. One house not being built may under some circumstances prevent multiple other houses from being destroyed down the road. This seems like a low hanging fruit kind of thing if the priorities are there, before getting into beefing up infrastructure and more expensive options.
The amount of damage from hurricanes is trending higher and higher as time goes on, so something has to give and currently it seems federal flood insurance is doing all the giving.
Some of this adaptation is FEMA-subsidized: anyone whose house has been flooded twice in ten years can apply for a $50k grant toward the lift. Federal flood insurance may be doing much of the giving, but around here at least it's happening in a way that improves long term resilience.
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.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-spe...
California received the lowest compared to how much California paid the federal government. Florida is ranked in the middle.
Although, I clicked on the source and data is from 2013 so I wish I had found a more recent source.
https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-...
https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Balance-of-P... Table 12B
I say Florida a lot because I lived there up until recently, I can't speak for other states.
An assertion is that money is fungible, so $12mln spent on a stunt in Texas could have been spent on breakwaters, infill, or to move less stable homes from the immediate coast. (Or to have more building inspection before Surfside's incident)
I get that HN often swings conservative, but I gotta believe if we were in these folk's shoes some of us would be seeking a better life for ourselves through asylum in America.
That said, anyone who doesn't understand the undertone here, that the great majority will be denied asylum, that a great number are claiming asylum in a way that is coached/contrived/embellished, or that they couldn't have stopped and claimed asylum in another nation along the way (such as Mexico) is just completely naive. A great number of poeple here are game the system. That's fine, whatever, fuck borders, I'm on board. But I'm gonna call a spade a spade. A great number are here to play the system, often with lies, and the idea that all these people are 'acting lawfully' is not only factually incorrect I assert you KNOW it is factually incorrect and use it here as propaganda. In fact it is not lawful to lie to federal authorities in your asylum claim, but many are doing it.
These are the things many of us know, but aren't supposed to say out loud in some polite circles.
I applaud their efforts, but I aint no fool.
You're spending the majority of your comment saying "great numbers" of these folks are claiming asylum in bad-faith. You imply "great numbers" of them are here to game/play the system. You call a "great number" of them liars. You imply that they're criminals (not acting lawfully).
> I applaud their efforts
No you don't. You're painting "great numbers" of these people out to be untrustworthy to the point of preemptively calling them criminals.
---
> and the idea that all these people are 'acting lawfully' is not only factually incorrect I assert you KNOW it is factually incorrect and use it here as propaganda
Instead of asserting what I know, maybe provide sources for your argument. I take it as an outright aggression toward me that you posit I am spreading propaganda.
Regardless. I rebut:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117
> We find that undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.
It's common sense that if you're looking to immigrate somewhere that you're not out there looking to break the law. Every study I have come across in regards to this seems to have similar outcomes. They know if they break the law they will likely be deported; and they typically act accordingly because they want to live, work, and raise their families in America.
I take great issue with you claiming I'm spreading propaganda. In good-faith I assure you, I am not.
I understand 'bad-faith' is practically a requirement for many people claiming asylum. I get it.
I readily acknowledge they are generally more law abiding. I only contend that a great number of 'asylum seekers' are gaming the system. I find that perfectly moral, but I aint no fool about what's happening.
>Every study I have come across
The (2/2.5/4x) you cite from the study is undocumented immigrants, not people formally documented as asylum seekers and permitted into the country.
I appreciate you taking issue with my claims. Hopefully this feedback correct your behavior.
What behavior?
They want jobs.
For some reason you keep railing against illegal immigrants instead of actually engaging in productive discussion.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030681-000-the-trut...
“The passport as an instrument of state regulation was born of the French revolution of 1789. At first, ordinary people were issued passes to control internal movement, especially to Paris. But after the king tried to escape, and foreign aristocrats attacked the revolution, the authorities started requiring such papers for exit and entry to the country. The revolution created one of the world’s first “nation-states”, defined by the “national” identity of its people rather than its monarchs’ claims.”
“But as the industrial revolution snowballed in the 19th century, there was pressure to allow free movement of all the factors of production – money, trade *and labour*. Passport requirements were widely relaxed across Europe — in 1872, the British foreign secretary, Earl Granville, even wrote: “all foreigners have the unrestricted right of entrance into and residence in this country”. The situation was similar in North America.”
https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-meas...
“In 1947, the first problem considered at an expert meeting preparing for the UN World Conference on Passports and Frontier Formalities was “the possibility of a return to the regime which existed before 1914 involving as a general rule the abolition of any requirement that travelers should carry passports.””
Under "2 and done", do you restore critical port infrastructure to dunes if they get destroyed by a hurricane twice? Port infrastructure can't exist on its own, it needs a community behind it which needs schools, parks, houses, etc.
This is a problem that the insurance industry will need figure out so they can price risk to the area that's wiped out, the way the home is constructed, etc.
In my mind the debate is how FEMA subsidies will distort the insurance markets. Perhaps they could serve as a "2 and done" re-re-insurance provider?
A great counterpoint to this argument is that an insurance oligopoly might "price gouge" after a big event like Ian, which could kill the community that's needed to support the vital port infrastructure. Ultimately if FEMA subsidies were removed from the picture, shipping costs would increase to price in the risk of hurricanes for the area. Either way we're all paying for it somehow.
And thus California has very-high deductible insurance coverage in areas that are especially susceptible to such disasters, because it IS an inevitable risk that such an event will happen. Florida should do the same, as their "catastrophic disaster" is annual.
Geraldo Rivera did a special on it many years ago. He lost his house. Didn’t cost him a dime. Was planning on rebuilding due to cheap insurance. Which he seemed to find ridiculous.
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.
Sorry, but it's a bad look.
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
My response was to this comment at the top, where it was, explicitly and objectively, supporting a policy that dictates where people should live.
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.
Entire communities, and their economic output, will vanish. A good example are communities whose entire existence is owed to revenue generated by commercial fishing. What do you do with all the fishermen who don't know any other line of work?
Teach them to code?
Long Island, NY is prone to flooding and wind-damage from hurricanes and nor'easters. Areas are routinely destroyed or heavily damaged. Notable years are 1950, 1954, 1960, 1986, and 1999.
Asheville, NC is prone to flooding, land & rock slides, and the occasional earthquake. It is probably one of the state's most natural wonders, and the country-side a lovely place to live.
During periods of heavy rain and tropical events, downtown NYC floods the subways and streets and doing expensive salt water damage.
I know of no place on earth that is without some susceptibility to natural disaster. So where do we draw the line?
Effectively, such a rule would define these and other places as uninhabitable and render them ineligible for both commercial insurance and federal disaster aid. That seems so foolish and counter to our tradition as a nation. Such a rule would see the splintering and end to many long-standing communities.
If the concern is cost, you may want to turn your attention to discretionary federal expenditures.
Surely we can find places to cut bloat, pork, and wasteful spending, particularly in areas that range from nothing to very-little to do with the United States, her citizens, or their needs and emergencies that are a part of living on planet earth.
It is almost like that 75 billion we printed for Zelenskyy could have been used to help Americans.
Lastly, where does it end? How do we define the formula for making these rules, and who gets the define and apply that formula? Best case scenario, if this rule was a thing, you'd be looking at consolidating large parts of American society into more 'manageable' locations and mega cities, which were decreed as somehow having the least amount of risk, and lowest possible expense...
...in a vain attempt at avoiding the risk and expenditures of natural disasters?
...that happen everywhere?
...routinely.
It just seems foolish when you work through it to a practical end.
Stop paying for them to keep rebuilding the house, give them the money to move.
>I know of no place on earth that is without some susceptibility to natural disaster. So where do we draw the line?
OP proposed twice, you objected. I think twice with no time horizon isn't useful. Twice in 50 years seems reasonable for someone who lives in a 100 year flood plain.
But these flood plains are growing with climate change. Storms are getting worse and more frequent. Just continuing to pay to rebuild is not the answer.
It's clearly not explicit or objective. "If you choose to live here you will not receive aid when your house is knocked down in a hurricane" is so clearly not the same as "You can not legally live here".
Are you saying that unmitigated flood prone areas _should_ be habitable? And the cost of that underwritten with public funds?
There are people who have their house rebuilt every ~15 years from hurricanes with public funds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Progr...
>The NFIP is managed and administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) through the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration (FIMA).[1] The program is designed to provide an insurance alternative to disaster assistance to meet the escalating costs of repairing damage to buildings and their contents caused by floods.[2] As of August 2017, the program insured about 5 million homes (down from about 5.5 million homes in April 2010), the majority of which are in Texas and Florida.[3][4] The cost of the insurance program was fully covered by its premiums until the end of 2004, but it has had to steadily borrow funds since, primarily due to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, accumulating $25 billion of debt by August 2017.[3][5] In October 2017, Congress cancelled $16 billion of NFIP debt, making it possible for the program to pay claims. The NFIP owes $20.525 billion to the U.S. as of December 2020.[6]
I think being that you're so ruggedly individualistic, maybe pull yourself up by your bootstraps and pay for your own repairs?
If you're footing the bill for fair market insurance, those places quickly get returned to the environment because it makes no economic sense to build there. Or it does, and the federal government still doesn't have to pay for it.
Major earthquakes happen an order of magnitude less frequently than major storms - but there's merit to reconsidering how much infrastructure we build right next to fault lines. So, possibly?
> What about areas where forest fires are routine?
Without appropriate fire breaks or building construction, possibly - if your house and property isn't constructed to survive a wildfire, then it's _going_ to burn. We can either adapt now or pay much higher costs later.
> Flood prone areas?
Oh jeez, yes, the fact that we build in flood plains is absolutely bonkers.
> Tornado prone areas?
Maybe, but it's a much lower risk than hurricanes. We really need to account for risks during building construction; our current approaches aren't working that well.
> High UV?
High UV is a bummer, not an repeated existential risk to all inhabitants.
> Poor air quality?
Poor air quality is also a bummer but is something we have more control over. Similar to high UV, poor air quality doesn't represent a regular, frequent, unavoidable, catastrophic risk to all of the inhabitants and all property in the vicinity.
> It makes no sense whatsoever to dictate that people cannot live on the coasts due to natural disasters which happen everywhere, all the time.
It makes even less sense to build in areas that are all but guaranteed to be destroyed several times per century. If you can build infrastructure that'll actually last or are willing to accept all liability when the inevitable occurs then by all means, build your house on stilts and cover the cost of reconstruction. But beyond freedom of choice, I don't understand why we think it's okay to assume obvious risk and expect society to provide compensation for a risk that's been known for decades if not centuries.
Does it matter if a place gets a powerful earthquake every 5 years or 20 years?
The entire premise of the suggestion is simply nonsense.
>It makes even less sense to build in areas that are all but guaranteed to be destroyed several times per century.
More people are killed in high crime areas than in storm prone areas, and they are killed daily.
Do we tell people they can't live there, either?
If you don't take any risk then you are not really living.
Free market insurance actuaries.
>Does it matter if a place gets a powerful earthquake every 5 years or 20 years?
Yes, of course.
>The entire premise of the suggestion is simply nonsense.
No, just needs more science and economics math on what makes sense and are reasonable lines to draw.
> More people are killed in high crime areas than in storm prone areas, and they are killed daily.
Do you have stats that back this up on a per capita basis?
> Do we tell people they can't live there, either?
If you can ascertain that the above is true per capita and that the federal government is footing the bill through social security survivorship benefits, maybe. The objection is not that people can't live and where they want - it's that they expect someone else to subsidize it.
Life insurance takes into account where you live. In non-FEMA flood insurance areas, flood insurance is significantly more expensive.
>If you don't take any risk then you are not really living.
The issue is they aren't taking risks - they're socializing their risks onto people who don't live in flood zones.
If they were actually taking the risk of having to rebuild, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
March 26, 1872. Lone Pine
April 18, 1906. San Francisco
June 29, 1925. Santa Barbara
March 10, 1933. Long Beach
July 21, 1952. Kern County/Tehachapi
March 22, 1957. San Francisco and Daly City
March 27, 1964. Crescent City
Feb. 9, 1971 San Fernando
Oct. 1, 1987 Whittier
Oct. 18, 1989 Loma Prieta
April 25, 1992 Petrolia
June 28, 1992 Landers
Jan. 17, 1994 Northridge
Dec. 22, 2003 San Simeon
Aug. 24, 2014 Napa
It seems that large parts of California are subject to ground shaking that is destructive occurring two or more times per decade with some variability.
Is it really time to take away their insurance and disaster aid?
1906 San Francisco
1911 San Francisco
1913 San Francisco
1922 San Francisco
1928 San Francisco
... then you 're in the neighborhood of what parts of Florida have been getting.
It's not that the whole state keeps getting hit by hurricanes. It's that individual locations have been hit multiple times in a decade. So no, California is not comparable.
A lot of federal disaster aid is just Californian's own money being used to help them when needed. This is true for other states like NY.
Lastly, California does indeed offer a very high deductible form of earthquake insurance, and it isn't federally subsidized like FEMA is.
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.
Public funds must no longer be allocated to clearing snow from roads every year just because selfish people decide to live in NYC.
All this money is a straight up handout to allow some specific people to keep getting a high value lifestyle on someone else's dime.
This is in addition to hurricane funds, the most recent of which was just last year in 2021.
And while FL has received significantly more FEMA funds than NY[2] (6.8B vs 405M), NY likewise receives significantly more than say their neighbor VT (56M) or far away MT (a mere 11M). Is all the money spent in NY likewise a "straight up handout to allow some specific people to keep getting a high value lifestyle on someone else's dime"?
[1]: https://www.fema.gov/locations/new%20york#declared-disasters [2]: https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-preparednes...
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.
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.
In NYC, after Sandy, a new map with vastly expanded zones was published. Within a day or two, it was replaced with one with significantly reduced zones. I don't know that this was in response to political pressure...
Anyone who is keeping up on climate change research and anyone with any sense knows it's just not wise to invest in property on the Florida coast unless you do so knowing that at anytime your home could be washed away.
You have to be willfully ignorant to think it's a good idea to move to those areas.
I can see why you would want to move closer to family, but did you really not believe that the Fort Myers area could be destroyed at anytime from a major hurricane? Do you really think that sea level rise (which is more about its impact on storm surges) coupled with increasingly more powerful hurricanes is not a problem in the near term? Are you unaware that GHGs in the atmosphere are accelerating, there is no evidence that warming will stop soon, and plenty to suggest that things will increasingly get worse in the near term?
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.
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?
[1] https://earth.google.com/web/@27.81056621,-82.6048196,1.6031... [2] https://earth.google.com/web/@26.58803101,-81.96774613,5.888...
As a point of comparison, however, up here in northern Illinois, you can get 2-3x the replacement coverage from a name-brand national insurance company for that price. And we do have tornado risk.
Which is to say that your insurance is expensive, but I wouldn't call it a barrier to living there. Much like property taxes - if you saw my bill, you'd probably fall out of your chair. Turns out the total cost is high everywhere. ;)
It still doesn't save your home if you build at 5ft above sea level and a hurricane brings 15ft of storm surge.
Running a functioning insurance?
If you want to pay rates which allow them to rebuild your home for you every ten years (annual rate = your home's cost / 10), I'm sure they'd be more than happy to do it and collect their small profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Progr...
>As of August 2017, the program insured about 5 million homes (down from about 5.5 million homes in April 2010), the majority of which are in Texas and Florida.[3][4] The cost of the insurance program was fully covered by its premiums until the end of 2004, but it has had to steadily borrow funds since, primarily due to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, accumulating $25 billion of debt by August 2017.[3][5] In October 2017, Congress cancelled $16 billion of NFIP debt, making it possible for the program to pay claims. The NFIP owes $20.525 billion to the U.S. as of December 2020.[6]
If I built a house that could not manage a foot of snow on it's roof in Maine without collapsing, and every year it collapsed got a big check from the feds to rebuild the exact same structure in the exact same place, surely someone would be willing to tell me I'm being stupid?
It's literally Einstein's definition of "insanity"
Texas and Florida might need changes, but losses from Sandy aren’t the reason.
That definition of insanity was not invented by Einstein, nor did he ever say it.
Not sure about the US but in Australia flood insurance has skyrocketed nationwide after the last few years of extreme flood events, even people living on the top of hills pay more for general policies.
According to McKinsey non-hurricane/weather events will skyrocket from ~20-40/year to almost 250/year causing constant water damage. Let alone from hurricanes like Ian or Irma.
This is a problem for golf courses, lawn care, and agriculture: not humans—at least not anytime in the foreseeable future.
Economic loss means anything not transacting is counted.
Disney, Universal, Sea World closed for a few days? "economic loss"
Joes house on the beach: "damage"
I don't have access to the article, but I imagine half of this amount is just the first category, since Florida is a tourism state.
That being said the government should stop covering beach front property, either get private insurance at a fair price or don't build at all.
Locals complain about it because it's expensive, and because the resulting coastal house on concrete stilts isn't aesthetically pleasing. But it's the only rational thing to do in 2022 if you want sustainable coastal development.
In Florida, where things are more "laissez faire", things may be bit different.
This likely is making for a good deal of misaligned incentives, where public disaster relief expenses could be much less if building codes were raised in these areas, but such change is likely to be slow in coming and we should expect the status quo to continue for some time.
With that sort of model they might as well build permanent cement pads sith disposable houses constructed on top
So $2500/person isn't a terribly useful number when some people will be done after 5 minutes and $5 of repairs, and others need to rebuild or move.
“Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything. This has been the case since 1933. The notes have no value for themselves, but for what they will buy. In another sense, because they are legal tender, Federal Reserve notes are "backed" by all the goods and services in the economy.”
This would put it as either the third or fourth costliest hurricane in the US (first table is inflation adjusted). Not sure that's cheap.
Individuals who didn’t support those attacks and want to work together, sure. The state as an aggregate entity? Absolutely not.
https://www.tampabay.com/content/new-reps-ron-desantis-ted-y...
Everyone kept asking me when I was going to buy a house and telling me how much money I was going to make on the appreciation and it was all so preposterous, like a bitcoin moon fantasy. In all likelihood, within my lifetime my part of Florida will return to the sea from whence it came. I have always seen the floodwaters because they have always been there. Now everyone else can see them too.
Build better, plan better, or leave.