One of the most popular stories today is about the ill-advised nature of allowing people to build homes on barrier islands.
“Every year there’s reporting on the foolishness of building on barrier islands, but people are going to do it anyway,” Morton told LiveScience. “We don’t learn from the past. If you look at the barrier islands on the Mississippi coast in particular, after both Hurricane Camille in 1969, and Katrina, what did they do? They rebuilt. It’s a perfect example of a coastal area that did get hit as bad as it can get, and they just go back and rebuild.”
Barrier islands tend to be even riskier places to live than coastal areas, because they bear the brunt of any approaching storm impact.
“If you think about their location, they’re basically lonely sentinels that serve as barriers for the mainland,” said Clark Alexander, a marine geologist at Georgia’s Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. “Basically you’re in a vulnerable spot, because you’re located where you get the first effects of anything coming in off the ocean.”
Setting up residence in these vulnerable spots is particularly perilous.
“From a safety standpoint, it’s silly,” Alexander said. “Because the lifespan of a typical house is something like 60 years. But if you live on a barrier island, you can’t guarantee you’ll have land under your house in 60 years. It’s trying to put something permanent in a place that’s very dynamic.”
How come no one is saying anything like this about a place like New Orleans?
Political pandering and the socialist mentality. If two million people want to live in a place where hurricanes naturally land, below sea level and run by a base criminal named Ray Nagin whose management skills are far below those of an average kangaroo, want to continue to live there, then a freedom loving society should let them. The caveat is that they should be on their own the next time nature strikes.
More than half the people in this country say the flooded areas of New Orleans lying below sea level should be abandoned and rebuilt on higher ground.
An AP-Ipsos poll found that 54 percent of Americans want the vast sections of New Orleans that were flooded by Hurricane Katrina moved to a safer location. About 80 percent of the city was flooded at the height of the flood. The city, home to about 484,000 people, sits six feet below sea level on average.
Six feet below sea level. In this country, all productive citizens are expected to pay for the problems of all citizens. I disagree with this mentality but it is the fact of our times.
Why then are we not discussing moving populations out of the way of natural disasters. We wouldn’t build on an active volcano. Yet we build in active earthquake zones. We continue to insist on rebuilding cities and towns below sea level. Why? I do not want to pay for this foolishness when nature takes it course and wipes these population centers out.
Let these people build where they want, by all means. However, they should recover on their own when the ill-advised nature of their decision catches up with them. I am not heartless but this country is trillions of dollars in debt and cannot afford to continue to pander.
This mentality is bankrupting us and pushing the country towards the brink of a disaster that will wreak more havoc than every hurricane that ever was.