The East Coast was shattered by a hurricane named Sandy this week. It flooded NYC subways and left Manhattan in the dark. The New Jersey shoreline will never again be the same. A replica of the HMS Bounty was sunk off NC. Philadelphia was hit hard with winds and flooding. Storm surge was 14 feet above high tide, and Sandy hit on the day of a full moon. The ocean met the bay in many places. CT was also devastated, but not to the degree of NJ and NY. She hit land n Monday Oct. 29.
People drowned in their homes. Over a hundred homes in a NY area of the borough of Queens burned down when firemen couldn't reach the area due to flood waters, and the high winds fanned the flames from one home to another. Father drowns getting other family members to safety. A mother leaves her home too late and car drowns out and she gets out with 2 kids and goes to houses for entry and is refused. Then waves tear both kids from her and they drown. A tanker uprooted from its moorings and grounds on the paved shoulder of a highway. Jersey Shore landmarks swept away.
So few people actually evacuated, especially those in flood plains. Oh, it has never flooded here in 50 years. You know how the govt overreacts. This was at least a hundred years storm. So yeah, the evacuation warnings were not called for. I really don't feel sorry for folks who remained behind and were trapped and are now trying to survive sans power and water. They could have found rides out of the area, or at least evacuated to much higher ground. However, the federal govt has been very slow in getting assistance to these folks. Today is when they showed up. Not Wed. or Thursday, but Friday. 5 days after. Hmm, sounds like Hurricane Katrina for New Orleans...
I don't feel too sorry for a lot of the folks who lived in these fancy homes right on the shore. Who never planned for such floods when they built/bought. Rich, rich people who have 2 homes, one of them a summer home. The Hamptons on Long Island. They have just paid a high price for their elitism and privilege. No, I don't feel sorry for them. I do feel sorry for those folks who have lost everything. This one lady said they saved for 30 years for their house and the bought it and retired there (in a neighborhood where their income wasn't up to par with the neighbors, but having paid for the home they could survive) and have lost everything. She found some possessions over a mile away, but the house is long gone. Hope they had good insurance.
Why do people insist on building homes in areas where natural disaster WILL strike at some point? On mountainsides where the soil is unstable because of all the building. On beach fronts where the sand erodes with every storm. Where dunes come and go. On floodplains where rivers and lakes rise. Or live in a state that is merely a penninsula jutting out in to the ocean and which gets raked by hurricanes year after year after year. Just how stupid are they? Location location location. And the East Coast just got a huge lesson about Location. AND what is going to happen when the polar ice packs melt during this century. NYC will be completely under water, as will almost all of FL. Darrell will not be welcome here when FL gets inundated. Chris, if still in Portage, could be flooded out too by global warming, by Lake Michigan or tributary rivers to the Lake. We should be OK here, at 814 feet above sea level. But it won't be 814 feet when the ice packs are gone. Maybe 2 to 300 feet above, then. Or if Chris is in FL at that time, he won't have a place to come back to. Of course I may not be alive by that time, so HERE won't be here. But you get my point. I am not so stupid as to live on unstable mountainsides in California or along fault lines, or along oceanic shorelines. Sure, I love the ocean, but there are storms that destroy homes all the time. A nice place to visit, but NOT to live, even though I was tempted, once. But just once.
