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Comment by nroets | Hacker News Reader

The 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.

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It 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.

Florida 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.

The 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.

Kind 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.

Exactly, 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.

Florida is a huge place. Hurricanes are enormous but the part that does serious damage is pretty small. Most Floridians have been through a hurricane. Few have had to rebuild after one. A major hurricane that hits the state is going to destroy some houses but not a particularly large fraction of all the houses in the state.

Similarly, tornado alley seems tremendously destructive, but the breadth of the destruction is small. The average interval between house-destroying tornadoes at any given point is hundreds if not thousands of years

> The average interval between house-destroying tornadoes

When I was little and lived in Kansas, tornadoes came through the town. We huddled down in the basement. Found out later that the tornado literally lifted up and hopped over the house. A giant tree next to the driveway fell down parallel to the house and a few feet away.

A fair chunk of the town was flattened.

A tornado of nearly any strength hitting a settlement is just utter devastation for anything above ground level. Glad yall had a place to go and for the Kokura luck to have your home spared.

Any interested HNers should beware the tornado documentary YouTube rabbit hole ;)

I didn't realize at the time how lucky we were.

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