Saw an article yesterday interviewing a couple who says they’ll now have to rebuild their beachfront house for the third time, and that their second rebuild wasn’t even finished when Helene sent their house surfing down the street. That their insurance won’t cover it.
I’m flabbergasted that anyone would even consider rebuilding there. You’re lucky to even have insurance – most insurance companies have been fleeing the state.
Here’s a radical idea: don’t rebuild there. This is only going to get worse.
I was just driving around the beaches of Pinellas County (Tampa Bay area) today. Entire neighborhoods are destroyed. Beach front condos, restaurants and stores, also destroyed. In many areas, anything ground level got flooded/wrecked by storm surge. I saw several boats in places there are not supposed to be boats.
If Tampa Bay takes a direct hit right now it’s going to be really fuckin bad for a lot of people.
What’s also scary is that right now everyone has been piling up debris, ruined appliances and all manor of belongings outside for disposal. Piles ten feet high along every street. All this shit is about to be flying around in hurricane force winds and storm surge. Is a recipe for disaster.
I built it all the same! Just to show em!
It sank into the swamp…
So, I built a second one! That sank into the swamp…
So I built a third one! That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp!
But the fourth one stayed up!
Same mentality…
Huston is one of the most populated cities in the US and it’s built on a swamp. Everyone acts super surprised when it floods semi-annually, like it’s some kind of tragedy as opposed to basic physics.
Next thing you know Arizona will start complaining that they’ve run out of water. I mean, yes? You’re in the desert. Your choices were to fix the climate, move, or die. Instead you’ve built a gigantic parking lot of a city.
There should be no aid whatsoever for natural disasters that strike predictably on a regular basis. Human beings aren’t dumb animals. We can communicate. Also Florida, Louisiana, and Texas literally voted for global warming. They got what they voted for so what is the issue?
Actions have consequences. We failed to act for a century. That’s how long we’ve known with absolute certainty that the climate was fucked. We put people on the moon, and we went to war with Iraq, but heaven forbid people stop eating meat, driving their precious cars, or taking pleasure cruises. Zero. Pity.
There are probably some cases where it’s true it was irresponsible to build somewhere. For most people though, they may have been born there; they may have had to move there for work. Denying pity to people who have suffered a tragedy without ever knowing their circumstances is heartless. The world you want to live in would step over you in a minute the moment you fucked up.
people who have suffered a tragedy
Global warming is not a tragedy. It’s a highly predictable FAFO moment. We decided, as a civilization, to do this to ourselves. It’s not an anomaly. We voted for it. People were asked “do you want hurricanes to wash away your houses?” and they said, “yes, please!”
Of course, that’s not true for children and animals, and I have so much sadness for them. But the adults? No. I watched them choose this.
Global warming is a tragedy. The greatest tragedy of our time.
My point is our culture needs more empathy. Outrage and anger, there’s enough of that. Empathy, even for those who made a mistake.
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… no I want you to have empathy for people who just lost their homes. It’s OK though. I have no problem letting you go off in your hate filled tizzy. I know nothing I do or say can get through to you. We will see you on the otherside, though. When the, “it could never happen to me” turns into “why doesn’t anyone care?”
Or more to the point. If you have the money to build a beachfront house, why are you not building it to be virtually indestructible? Like one of those indestructible monolithic dome homes.
We can build concrete structures that will laugh at hurricanes. We can build them with their living areas raised well above the ground so water can simply flow underneath and around them. Sure, it’s more expensive to build this way, but it can be done. And really, I would argue that if you can’t afford to build such a home, you simply cannot afford to live right on the beach.
I always wonder what’s going on in the heads of Americans when they go to an area notorious for being hit by hurricanes or tornadoes and then decide they should build their house out of basically toothpicks with some plaster. Here in Switzerland, pretty much everything except for maybe a garden shed is poured concrete, and I guarantee that if the folks in Florida or Oklahoma did the same the “devastation” would be comparatively tiny.
How arrogant of you.
Florida is a little different than Switzerland, not least due to weather and poverty. There indeed ARE fully concrete and hemp-crete type homes (many styles of homes), but they are unpopular (but becoming more popular) because they trap damp (Florida is extremely humid, unlike Switzerland), grow mold, don’t breathe, and cause sickness. Since 2005, all newly built homes are required to have concrete and rebar at certain areas including windows and doors.
https://www.etr-aw.com/full-concrete-homes/
They also are prone to cracking due to shifting. The lower blocks can absorb water, either through these cracks or cracks in waterproofing like paint, and then leak with every heavy rain. Cement (a component of concrete) is one of the largest CO2 emitters in its production, and cement dust is carcinogenic. Concrete houses that are flooded (eyewitnesses report up to 25-50feet of water height) will have to be gutted and possibly torn down anyway once flooded, since the flooding itself ruins everything and makes it unsafe. Since you’ll have to gut the whole thing anyway, may as well use wood which can be replaced more easily.
Tornados (since you mentioned Oklahoma) can punch a 2x4 board through a concrete wall. Concrete isn’t a Kevlar vest house against all weather types and it isn’t an ideal material either for building in every climate.
If the people who were flooded had stayed because they had concrete houses, even more would have died, but instead drowned in a concrete box. This was a storm that needed evacuation.
Florida is extremely humid, unlike Switzerland, grow mold, don’t breathe, and cause sickness.
Concrete houses are still being made in the humid regions near the equator and will still be made in the long future… As for the mold problem, the houses are made such that water seepage is minimised heavily.
Don’t wooden houses have the problem of termites making big joint families of their siblings?
And full concrete houses are made in Florida currently. But the original question was why do some people prefer wood houses to concrete in Florida - and I gave a long list. Yes there are pros and cons to many materials. That’s not really the original question though, which was asked pretty insensitively and condescendingly in a thread about a very recent, ongoing disaster where they are still finding bodies.
Maybe in proper houses they would be fixing broken windows instead of finding bodies.
“it’s not the time to discuss solutions to this” seems to be the American way of dealing with any disaster, from hurricanes to mass shootings.
A proper house won’t save people from fucking 25 FEET (7.6 meters) to 50 FEET of flooding in a hurricane. A ship can’t even save them because it’ll get knocked into houses. Same thing with a sub. There’s weather you can’t survive.
it’s not the time to discuss solutions to this
I never stated that. I am just unwilling to go over every building material pedantically when the problem - overwhelming climate events - isn’t going to be fixed with fucking concrete blocks.
literal sunk cost fallacy
as if you didn’t have enough reasons to get the fuck out of florida already. leaving that shithole state was the best thing i’ve ever done, not just for my mental health, but apparently physical safety also
My moving date was literally scheduled for this upcoming Friday… I pick up the u-haul on Tuesday, and my lease in Colorado starts on Tuesday of next week. This thing is trying to keep me here in hell.
Maybe if they stopped voting for fucking Republicans and start fixing the climate they wouldn’t be all kinds of fucked as climate change causes insurance companies to say fuck these southern states.
Are you saying Democrats aren’t being lobbied?
Of course they are, it’s why they are using their weather control powers to cause all of these storms. Duh.
They’re clearing out the coast so they can more easily mine lithium.
This is legitimately a conspiracy theory being pushed and parroted by
fucking moronspeople who voted red
We have a choice between 2 main groups. One believes there’s a climate problem of human making. The other does not.
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Trump’s campaign includes making homes less sturdy so we can have a larger supply 🙃
You answered your own question lol. Your “sturdy houses” would also get fucking wrecked by a hurricane or tornado or earthquake or wildfire. We expect our buildings to get destroyed every so often.
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Originally they thought that Helene would be a cat 3, too.
But the Democrats aim with the Hurricane machine proclaimed by MTG is getting better. Maybe the third try actually turns Mar-a-Lago into a pile of rubble.
I’m on the team running the weather machine this time. We are very excited for this run!
After gathering so much data from the last several storms, we finally have the power to call hurricanes and tornadoes exactly where we want them to go!
We’ll be feasting on the fetuses Boden personally hands us after this run, fellas!
I just put 3,000 Soros bucks into the Jade Helmet system with instructions to level the homes of any florida lemmygrad commenters in this post. You’re doing “there is no god”’s work, friend.
Just gotta concentrate a bunch of gays in one place, and the hurricanes follow. It’s science!
Great, you just gave maga all the fully verified truth they need to confirm their insanity…
Wow that GOP rep that said democrats created the hurricane is going to have to start working overtime to sell the argument again. At some point the people in the red states must start to wonder why it’s so coincidental that the predictions from the left (science) keep coming true.
Well, at least their aim is much closer to Mar-a-Lago this time. Maybe the next major hurricane gets the direction right, and then the Democrats will dial it up to a cat5 or better! /s
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Shit, it’s headed right for where I live.
Run! Be safe but Run!
I need $4200 to ditch this place and get back nyc (my home), but I just can’t seem to get it together. This place is like a black hole.
What a specific number.
I’ve had the last year to work it out.
$3k for the first month and deposit on a place in Brooklyn I already have planned, and $1200 for the drive up (I need a U-Haul to move stuff). This includes my calculations for how much gas I would need and food I would eat on the trip up.
It’s a 16 -20 hour drive, and I plan to do it all in one shot.
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If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t have a problem moving
That’s how I moved back when I was poor, and I moved a lot. I would buy used furniture in whatever new place I was in. Saves a lot of money if you don’t ship your stuff with you. And media mail is fantastic.
I live on a 29’ cruising sailboat and I’m in SFla and I moved into a mangrove swamp / waterway last night to ride out in, same one that I just left for the last storm a week ago.
It’s been 10 days since the last storm that we saw 45+ knt winds in, and for 5 out of the last 10 days, at least here, it’s been raining and everything is WAY over-saturated.
This storm is going to seriously fuck some shit up.
I know this isn’t a great thing to say due to housing costs, but I think you really need to find a different place to live than a boat because hurricanes are only going to get worse.
At least boats can move
And sink.
You can’t really be claiming that houses are no safer than boats in a hurricane.
You can when the boat is half way up the coast in the Chesapeake bay.
Exactly how fast do you think a sailboat someone lives on goes?
Yo this guy is awesome, whole ass sailor
Thanks man, I needed the lift.
Ay, stay safe out there. I’m not expecting it to be too bad for me, just hoping we don’t lose power for an extended period of time.
Best wishes from 239.
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Did you make it through alright?
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Great to hear! I got power back about 3 hours ago myself
Hurricanes track:
