“Family and very dear friends will say, ‘What are you doing here? Why are you still here? Especially if you know what’s coming. What’s wrong with you?’ ” says Gayle Killen, whose house on Main Street was built in the 1800s and has flooded repeatedly. “I tell them this place is worth sticking around and working for. If I do nothing else with my life, I will at least occupy a space and improve it.” Here's the real question - would she still live there without publicly-funded flood insurance?
Would anyone? Cause honestly, even with flood insurance, I personally wouldn't want to subject myself to the financial and potential health risks of living in such a place.Here's the real question - would she still live there without publicly-funded flood insurance?
"Such a place" is becoming inescapable for many in the midwest. https://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska/conditions-ripe-for-missouri-river-flooding-in/article_5c2f87ff-d9b6-5024-891b-a5fb40c95c7a.html Coming in with the Rural Take (tm) - farmers are tied to their lands. Plus, people live near bodies of water for a reason. Unless we, as a nation, are going to step WAY back from major rivers (and the plurality of large cities settled on them)...Yes, people will continue to live in areas prone to flooding, especially because "areas prone to flooding" are going to encompass more and more of livable land.
Would anyone?
This isn't the whole of the problem, and it isn't the whole of the solution. It's a worthwhile discussion but it's gonna be political. I had to give up on a dream farm because I discovered it had been red-tagged. It was a lovely 1928 farmhouse by a bend in the river on 70 acres for a ridiculously low price; no amount of real estate savvy could figure out why for me. Eventually i got gud at this stuff and discovered that the whole of the structure ended up on the 100-year floodplain when FEMA came through and redrew their flood maps. Consequence: the county would not permit any work on the place. there would be no furnace installs, there would be no new windows, there would be no work requiring city say-so. People could continue to live there (and, as I understand it, buy fucking flood insurance!) but the minute it needed a new roof it was a derelict. Period. The end. There's a property down the way from me that is at the bottom of a long slope towards the river. It's also in the 100-year floodplain. Guy started listing it at $3.8m; he's come down to $750k but never gets past "pending" on Redfin. 'cuz if you wanna live there, the first thing you need to do is move the house 150 feet east. I have no doubts that the owners of these two properties had their retirements tied up in them. I have no doubts that FEMA moving the floodplain basically wiped them out financially. But I also know that the river in the first instance has flooded above the 100-year twice in the past five years and I know that the river in the second instance flooded above the 100-year Monday. We had like an inch of rain in 24 hours. in Seattle. And it flooded out fourteen apartments between here and my in-laws' place. Near as I know my dream farm washed away some time in 2015. That's a claim that didn't get made because on the assessor's form the structure value is $0. It's also the death of a hundred year old farmhouse. Went out to the Big Island. Kona side? Where the airport is, where the tourists go? Big resorts up on a cliff. Hilo side? Where the hurricane hit in '67 and the laws were passed that you couldn't get a permit for anything that hadn't been redeveloped with hurricanes in mind, IE built on stilts? It's a shantytown. I got pictures of a building with a pottery studio on one side, an ice cream parlor on the other side, and the space between them had ferns six feet high growing in it because you can't get a permit to fix the roof. Out where the rich people are the grass isn't even tall. Out where the natives live you're basically squatting. So yeah. Current flightpath is wipe out the poor people, make them move away from their homes, or make them buy flood insurance. 'cuz here's the thing: our flood maps and our floods don't match up so the yellow red and purple areas on your map aren't eligible for subsidy. I'm not... and I'm 50 yards from the river. Aggravating the issue is that our flood control in this country is done by the Army Corps of Engineers, the guys who brought you Katrina, and their basic approach has been "dam and culvert everything." Dams silt up and culverts kill wildlife. Not only that, but pretty much every dam and culvert we have was designed around hydrology of the 1930s which meant not only are they adapting to conditions from an era before global warming, they're built around the population patterns of the 1930s. Dealing with this is literally going to remake the landscape, which means there's a lot of opportunity for people with some influence to steer things their way, which means lots of assholes are going to get rich and lots of people are going to die.
Which sucks for people imo, but I don't see any other solution being offered up anytime soon. If you'll let me be hyperbolic: Almost every person I've loved, every place I've called home, every school attended and every stadium, cemetery, and or church sat in exists in the yellow red and purple. I've been thinking about why I'm commenting so much in this thread...and it's because the scale of it baffles me. If you have to relocate a town of 300,000, maybe your city's neighbor can take you in. If you have to relocate 150 million? Our infrastructure will bend, buckle, and break. It means climate refugees right here, soon. My home is going to be the fucking marching ground of these assholes, and my people are going to die. Have died. It's got me riled up. Thanks for the thoughtful comment as always klein, wish I had more of a useful response for you than this.So yeah. Current flightpath is wipe out the poor people, make them move away from their homes, or make them buy flood insurance.
'cuz here's the thing: our flood maps and our floods don't match up so the yellow red and purple areas on your map aren't eligible for subsidy. I'm not... and I'm 50 yards from the river.
Dealing with this is literally going to remake the landscape, which means there's a lot of opportunity for people with some influence to steer things their way, which means lots of assholes are going to get rich and lots of people are going to die.
Bleakest part is you aren't being hyperbolic, you're being realistic. I said "dealing with this is literally going to remake the landscape" and I meant it. Prior to the Army Corps of Engineers and sucking the Ogalalla dry, the Great Plains were the Great American Desert and the ecosystem out there consisted largely of prairie dogs, condors and bison. Two out of three of those are effectively gone and where they'd live is covered in Midwesterners and corn. The American Savannah is not going to come back on its own and even if it did it would require the middle of the country to move somewhere else. Thing is? The proximate cause of the Syrian Civil War is climate change. The proximate cause of the Border Crisis is climate change. Drily and dispassionately put, "kids in cages" is the expression of a policy debate regarding global warming. There's 18,000 people in Inyo County and 18 million in Los Angeles because of water wars. I got a friend who's a Lebanese refugee - he got out of Lebanon while the Phalangists were still rabble-rousing rather than shooting. I got friends who are Iranian refugees - they got out when SAVAK was shooting people on the sly rather than in the open. Los Angeles looks like Los Angeles in no small part because enough of the cinema and artist community bailed on Berlin between the Beer Hall Pusch and Kristallnacht. Some people get ahead of the tragedy, do what they can to rebuild their lives and try to throw back a few sea turtles. Most people drown. I am subjectively rich. I am objectively middle-class. Through hard work and cunning I managed to cobble together a life. Thing is? My parents managed to fail their way to a better life than I got because things were way the fuck easier for them. And everyone around me has gotten where they are by hustling while their parents sit back and wonder why their kids are such failures. And they're proud of their kids nonetheless because apparently everyone these days is an utter fuckup who just can't get ahead because, well, surely it isn't because life is hella harder than it was in the '70s. But it's hella harder than it was in the '70s and I think we all subconsciously know it. It occurred to me that one big problem is from about 1930 to about 1980 if you were white, things were gonna be largely okay. Other white people had your back and the rules and policies that governed life in these here United States made it so that rich people pretty much had to do kinda sorta the right thing towards poor people. But drives towards racial equality came hand-in-hand with drives against economic equality so the rich people banded together and because rich people have more education it was easier for them to see that they have more in common with a rich person in Venezuela than they do with a poor person in the United States but the poor people in the United States? They still think the darkies are out for their job (which realistically speaking they are) but rather than band together with the poor people that aren't their color they still expect the rich white people to save 'em. I have no power to improve things. I can't fix this. It seems unfixable. But I created five jobs this year, three of which belong to minorities, one of which belongs to a felon and all of which belong to women. I left the house with a garbage picker and two empty bags and returned with four full bags of garbage (two empty bags were on my goddamn walk). Because sometimes you have to make things a little better even in the face of inevitable catastrophe.
This is how I have been feeling for... basically my whole life. Sometimes more top of mind than others (front and center since commenting in this thread yesterday). I wish I had some answers. I have more thoughts on this than my thumbs can keep up with. I’ll finish this from the computer in a bit.I have no power to improve things. I can't fix this. It seems unfixable
In elementary school in the 80s, we were given presentations about how photovoltaic cells were going to change the world. Utopia was just around the corner as soon as they could work out getting just a little more efficiency out of the panels and as soon as costs came down just a little. In the 90s, GM made an electric car that actual mortals could lease (not buy - see Who Killed The Electric Car). If we all recycle, then we could save X amount of aluminum and plastic. If we compost and garden we could reduce landfill waste. If we all do X then we can save Y. . . I guess I'm just tired. and maybe a little bitter. . . I got excited about solar and wind. I turn off lights when not in use - have for years. didn't buy a car until I was 21. I don't eat a lot of meat - partly because I don't love it, but partly because of the amount of water and energy it takes. I pay extra for recycling - have for years. I changed out my bulbs for CFLs I changed out CFLs for LEDs. I got an electric car in 2013 I bought a house with solar. I carpool even though it is almost painfully inconvenient. When I'm not carpooling, I ride my bike 13 miles each way to work. . . I spend, and have spent more mental anguish, and had more environmental guilt on these subjects... and I'm tired... because it feels very much like my actions are dwarfed, swallowed up, and more than negated by ONE steak eating, monster house dwelling, F-350 diving real estate agent who logs 100 miles/day. I think I'm just tired, disillusioned, and burned out on the subject. just so tired. I'm not going to quit doing these things. I've just got a lot of sub surface anger and frustration boiling about it. I've been doing so many of the things... and talking about it. And evangelizing for it. And it feels like a life wasted on deaf ears, blind hearts, and hard hearts.
DUDE. I've got a Ford F350, lifted, that I see almost every morning on the way to work. He lives about 3 blocks away from me, and apparently we have similar schedules. As he passes me in my electric car every day, he's doing 50 MPH on the 35 MPH two-lane road through our part of town, and I get to read his 6-inch tall black letters on his tailgate: MPG? LOL! As Jane's Addiction said, "Some people should die / that's just uncommon knowledge..." I'm so tired of living in a culture where being an asshole is an admirable trait.
Absolutely! And I have no need to force him to drive a different vehicle, even. (This is NOT a work truck... it is purely a Compensator.) Drive your asshole vehicle. Fine. I can't make you buy something different. But actively projecting your assholeitude on others with the "MPG? LOL" thing, is something every mother should be embarrassed about.
This is one of those topics that makes me irrationally angry. People should not live in known flood zones, and if they do, they do so at their own money flushing peril. No more flood insurance for anyone in those zones. I don’t give a crap about the history of your town (looking square at you N’awlins).
... The trend of extreme rain will continue in the coming decades. The point I'd like to make is that, "known flood zones" are expanding, and they're only going to expand faster - If all we have to offer is irrational anger, we're going to be very angry at a lot of dead people who couldn't escape due to financial burden, limited mobility, or because they've been misguided by someone else. That's the point of the story - They lived in this geological funnel that wasn't a problem for a long time. At the beginning of the story, it wasn't a known flood zone. After the first flood, it still isn't a known flood zone, it's just a place where a flood happened. The second flood happened less than two years ago, and has thus only recently been acknowledged as a "known flood zone." So, fine, we finally get the data and discover that it's a place that floods now due to climate change. Maybe they should move away now, but what about the people who can't afford to? What about the people who aren't healthy enough to move? Of course they should get out of dodge, but your irrational anger isn't helpful because it doesn't save any lives or offer any sympathy to victims of a freak accident. It doesn't accomplish anything. I'm not trying to admonish you here, and I honestly intended the TPUSA image as a light-hearted jab rather than an insult! But homes in Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska were some of the largest victims of catastrophic flooding last year, and I think it's important to ask how we defend against wide-spread flooding when the "known flood zone" is an entire region: If your metric for outrage is, "People who live near bodies of water," I've got some bad news for you: There are estimates that 150 million could live below the high tide line by 2050. I'm really, really not trying to be a dick when I say this, but irrational anger doesn't solve anything. It doesn't answer the big question: How are we going to deal with this? We don't answer that question by pushing the blame onto victims of catastrophic flooding.The National Weather Service said the flood had been a “1,000-year event” caused by extreme rain.
Well stated, and well received. I think we're up against a multiple faceted problem that will require a multi-faceted solution. One of those solutions (IMHO) isn't subsidizing flood insurance to allow people to rebuild exactly where they were before. We should use those subsidies to move them to a place out of those zones, and far above sea level (subtle jab at the re-building of New Orleans). It's not that I'm suggesting people move at their own expense... I'm suggesting we don't allow people to use subsidies to rebuild where we know they're screwed. EDIT: These two floods were not the first time this town has been flooded. 2011 they flooded and homes were damaged/destroyed. A little digging is showing me flooding issues the've known about since at least the 70s. It sucks that this happens. It's frustrating that these storms happened so closely together - caused by climate change. It all sucks...but this place doesn't look like a great place to have a city. We should also be attacking climate change at every opportunity.
Ahhh, I think I might have carried some angst against comments made by relatives over the holiday season into this conversation! Sorry Steve - well said. I agree, we shouldn't be subsidizing new development in danger-prone areas where possible. My addition is this: Part of the multi-faceted solution is going to require some solvency for the vast swathes of land that are going to begin flooding regularly. We can't relocate entire regions of the heartland. A huge part of the problem here is that we lack adequate infrastructure to handle flooding on the scale we've been getting it, and the infrastructure that does exist is crumbling. Attack climate change, and mitigate the results of it where necessary - and with this, I believe it is necessary.