The FL Panhandle Has Been Forgotten

[Zen Traveler]

1 minute ago, CECAA850 said:

Then we're making progress.  Thank you.

No. You are still the one who deems things political or not and we know where you sit. Btw, not complaining as much as pointing it out once again. I understand the rules and you are in charge of the gray area. It sometimes seems you think I am the one being political when in fact the topic has no choice but to get political if people actually start discussing remedies. I understand the Klipsch Lounge is not for that but still feel the need to respond when I see others bring up important topics.

[Zen Traveler]

On ‎4‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 6:03 PM, boom3 said:

My friends outside the area agree the news cycle has moved on and since the area does not have the unique identify of New Orleans (my adopted hometown) the media is unlikely to re-engage unless it is starved for other things to report.

Btw, I don't blame the media and it's GOVERNMENT who isn't doing their job!

[Dave A]

Disasters are bad things for sure but some are entirely predictable and some are not. My brother bought a house in Palmdale, Ca.  On the way there he says that narrow little strip with nothing built on it is the actual San Andreas fault line. Less than a mile away and if his house crumbles during the big one so be it. He KNEW it was there when he bought it. People who build on flood plains or 20" below sea level like New Orleans might expect to get flooded during Hurricanes or serious flood events. 

 

  My son in law bought a condo in Gulf Shores. We happened to be there the week Micheal blew in  but all we saw was the very outer band. However the water had risen to less than a foot of going over the dunes into the parking lot. Some streets were partly under water. I have seen the storm surge level maps from Katrina which went for many many miles. I would not stay there at that condo even during a Cat 1 direct hit because even though the condo would do fine your flooded car would not. We like to go there and love the beach and I can understand building there but assume your own risk since the recorded history proves you will be in danger.

 

  I feel sorry for people who wanted a dream and built there and then have it taken away from them. Nature IS a harsh teacher. But living on the beach or the Mississippi river shore or the San Andreas has known risks and I would not build there and don't want to pay for those who have. If you can't afford to walk away from the money you spend to live in these areas think real hard about living there because you can lose everything including your life.

 

  I wonder what the Italians who have built on Mt Etna think when those frequent eruptions wake them up and if they expect the government to bail them out because they lived there.

 

  In my opinion this is a purely common sense thing and not a government thing other than they manipulate the situation for votes and love to make promises and stir the anger pot for votes.  If you can't buy or afford private insurance for a dwelling it might be a warning sign you are in the wrong place.

 

  I am for the military taking bases from known danger zones and placing them in  safer places. The idea of bases has become a giant gimmedat that politicians use to "bring the bacon home" and not as a purely sensible defense strategy where lean and mean and best use of taxpayer dollars rules.

[T2K]

As far as I know FEMA offers relief, as stated on their website, not a guarantee to rebuild personal property. The only thing political about that is proper funding and the manpower needed to implement their mission quickly. From the billions spent on Katrina to the hundred million spent on Michael it's baffling to me as to how the US can continue covering these costs in the future.

 

Keith

[CECAA850]

17 minutes ago, Zen Traveler said:

It sometimes seems you think I am the one being political when in fact the topic has no choice but to get political

  Yes I do.  It seems fairly obvious to me.  I realize that you enjoy political discussions which is great, but not here.  I also realize that you enjoyed the area that allowed those discussions and it's no longer available to you and others that enjoyed it.  Unfortunately that's out of my control.  We're tasked to keep things civil here on the forum and unfortunately much of that is left to our discretion.  In as much as no two people think alike, our decisions are not universally agreed upon.  It is however the system we've been given to work with.  Early on it was easy to notice triggers that would send threads spiraling out of control.  Sometimes we pull the plug too early, sometimes we pull the plug too late.  It's not an exact science but we all try to do the best we can.  I'd rather hide posts and or lock threads then to act too late and give warning points but that's just me.  Other moderators act and react differently but we all still try to stay within the parameters of the guidelines we've been given.

[dtel]

It's not the government's job to hold everybody's hands to rebuild, people need to take some personal responsibility, before and after a storm.

 

Before, have insurance and prepare or be ready to evacuate.

 

After, contact insurance to get it started and start cleaning up your property and do what you can.

 

Initial response by the government is to rescue people and supply some sort of water or supplies and in some cases shelter. Not to rebuild peoples personally property or hold there hand for extended periods, although they do some of this also.  

[Gilbert]

Looks like there's a deleted thread. Let me illustrate another way.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

[HDBRbuilder]

First off, let me say two things:

1.  One day I called in to Klipsch about 30 minutes before clock-in time and told my foreman that I had personal business to take care of and needed to take a day of vacation time.  What the personal business was amounted to cramming for college exams that I had to take in Texarkana that night.  SO, there I was at home alone in the rent house I had south of Hope, with the TV on but the volume down low...on the couch studying for my finals, which were that night.  I noticed the weather alerts on TV, and that a truck stop in Texarkana had "just" been hit by a tornado....but had no idea that that would happen so quickly to the area I was in.  So the weather got worse and worse outside  because I could see it thru the 4' x 4' plate glass window to my right facing south...my less than-6-month old new Dodge D-50 Sport truck was parked immediately in front of the house to the east.  Outside of the plate glass window to the south, was a tree-line running east-west about 40 feet from the side of the house, the other side of that tree line was an old section road, and the other side of it was a barbed wire fence.  It was raining and blowing rain so hard that I couldn't even see the tree trunks anymore...then, all of a sudden it got VERY QUIET outside that window, and the rain was almost non-existent...and the sound of a freight train getting close from the rear of the house (west) was heard by me.  I had been thru this BEFORE and I jumped up from the couch to make a mad dash to the bathroom tub down the hall towards the west, but only got as far as the beginning of the hallway, stopped and put out my arms to the walls either side of me and braced myself...I could see the plate glass window bow inward and outward a time or two in rapid succession before it was literally sucked out of the wall, and what sounded like ten-ton hailstones running down the peak of the roof towards the front of the house and the sound of the freight train went right over the house! with the house rocking around with me inside of it! Then it was over...or so I thought. the rain was just light rain, and I could see clearly a few hundred yards out into the pasture the other side of the fence.  All I could say out loud was: Thank YOU GOD, Thank YOU!   SO I wandered thru all the rooms in that house, everything seemed OK but that plate glass window.   Then I went over to the other side of the living room and looked out the window facing the front yard...which was about 100 yards of front-yard towards the east, then what HAD BEEN a STAND OF TALL PINES past the yard....on ground that started to rise to the east from the level that the yard was...It now looked like a GIANT COMB had parted those pines right down the middle...because that is where the funnel made it COMPLETELY to the ground.  And to the right edge of that stand of tall pines, directly beside that section road running up-slope to the east the trees were relatively OK but there was corrugated metal wrapped around all of them from the chicken houses just across the fence the other side of the section road...with chicken corpses everywhere on the road.  I still had not totally seen the damage so I opened the front door, and there was my almost brand new truck completely covered with huge limbs which had been twisted out of the tree sx running right beside the house...every tree!...both side mirrors were history, the truck roof had two creases running across it, the hood had two even larger and deeper creases running across it, the left front fender was severely creased and badly dented its entire length, the ;left door was caved inwards, and the windshield was totaled-out!!  Because the tornado was only on the ground for a few hundred yards, and nothing happened anywhere else in the county, there was no disaster declared.  Because it was an "act of God" I got very little out of my full-coverage car insurance...so the repairs were pretty-much all out of my pocket!  The same for the neighbor's chicken houses!  It is what it is!

 

2.  Years later I was living in Fort Smith, Arkansas, but commuting to a rented room each week in Oklahoma City...where I was doing some extraordinary interior custom carpentry/cabinetry in a home there.  An ice storm came thru OK City, and did all kinds of damage throughout the area...my truck and its contents was part of what was severely damaged by the splitting of a Bartlet pear tree beside the driveway where it was parked at the work-site.  The ice was not expected to happen and hit extremely hard and quickly! My truck bed was crushed by the ice-laden tree and the tree rolled off the rear of the bed ripping off my tailgate.   Everything in the bed was destroyed...lots of stuff was in the bed...miter saw, Delta contracter saw, etc....  The area was declared a disaster area, but I was not a RESIDENT in the area...so I got nothing out of it...and that is the way it works!  It was an "act of God" so truck full-coverage paid pretty-much nothing.  It is what it is!

 

So FINALLY...here is a link for those of you who think that the government or those politicians in charge are actually responsible for getting things done when there is a natural disaster declared.  You might want to read this...it is just as valid today as it was almost 200 years ago...welcome to the speech Davy Crockett gave in the House of Representatives in Congress:

https://thestoryoflibertyblog.com/2013/02/16/not-yours-to-give-davy-crocketts-speech-before-the-house-of-representatives/

 

Have a great read!  I have nothing left to say, which could be nearly as eloquent!...except.....if you choose to live somewhere which is prone to be hit by hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, in a flood plane, in an area where out-of-control brush or forest fires can devastate entire communities, volcanoes can happen, severe ice storms can happen, etc....I feel sorry for you if it happens...but the "bottom line" is that it was your choice to live there. 

 

I spent parts of three separate years in the early 2000's doing hurricane clean-up in Florida and Virginia...I know what it looks like, and my job was to help get everything cleaned up , but what I made doing it never even equaled my out-of-pocket expenses...I was a bottom-end contractor who lost money trying to make a living the hard way!  And each time it just got to a point that I just had to leave, knowing that the residents would believe that they were just left without help...and would never understand why everything came to a stop!  That THREE-Hurricane-back-to-back-hit in Florida one of those years put lots of contractors out of business for good!  I was one of them!  In the Virginia Beach area hurricane hit I was just a peon with a chainsaw in my hands...working FOR one of the bottom of the tier contractors, and lost money, too!  After that, I swore to myself...NEVER AGAIN!

 

 

[Zen Traveler]

19 hours ago, CECAA850 said:

19 hours ago, Zen Traveler said:

It sometimes seems you think I am the one being political when in fact the topic has no choice but to get political

  Yes I do.  It seems fairly obvious to me.  I realize that you enjoy political discussions which is great, but not here.  I also realize that you enjoyed the area that allowed those discussions and it's no longer available to you and others that enjoyed it.  Unfortunately that's out of my control. 

I won't belabor this point but if I were moderator I would shut down discussions that were political in nature and you seem to let them go on without realizing, in my eyes your comments in themselves are political. When you complain about government without considering someone else's opinion (mine) then you are making a political statement. IOW, "discussing politics" is in the eyes of the beholder and I for one want our Government to work. Republicans are always blaming "Government" and I for one think it's important to pick out the players and policy....The tricky part is if the rule is "no red and blues," then when we mention names or titles "The President, The Speaker of the House, The Fema Director, etc," or any by name I gather that would be deemed "political" even though we don't mention party....

 

On that note we've come full circle to where if folks are going to "blame the government" as you did and we can't discuss who (actual people we voted for or not) is at fault then my hands are tied and gotta admit resent you blaming me for getting political.  {Note: My last comment because I do understand it is your job to shut down threads that get outta hand and thank you for letting me participate in your forum.}

[Zen Traveler]

18 hours ago, dtel said:

It's not the government's job to hold everybody's hands to rebuild, people need to take some personal responsibility, before and after a storm.

I agree with you but it is there job to provide safety nets with insurance companies and policies in mind.

18 hours ago, dtel said:

 

...Initial response by the government is to rescue people and supply some sort of water or supplies and in some cases shelter. Not to rebuild peoples personally property or hold there hand for extended periods, although they do some of this also.  

Agreed on the personal property but government is responsible for planning and building damaged infrastructure and the legalities that ensue after the event...There are also a lot of environmental concerns after these events and we find out that there SHOULD have been more regulation and oversight when contaminations of air and water occur.

[Dave A]

6 hours ago, HDBRbuilder said:

Because it was an "act of God" I got very little out of my full-coverage car insurance...so the repairs were pretty-much all out of my pocket!  The same for the neighbor's chicken houses!  It is what it is!

Might be an insurance problem. We had a hail storm here that was 2.75" on my house and 4" just south of here. Our riders cover those things and we had no trouble getting compensated for damage. All they asked was we send proof the damage was repaired with that money. Had an F5 blow nearby some years ago and those with good insurance were covered. Often no one thinks to really see what insurance will cover and make assumptions that they will be covered.

[CECAA850]

1 hour ago, Zen Traveler said:

you seem to let them go on without realizing, in my eyes your comments in themselves are political

 

 

I'll let things go till it seems they are getting divisive.  It's fairly easy to see when threads turn the corner and what post(s) trigger it.

[CECAA850]

42 minutes ago, Dave A said:

Often no one thinks to really see what insurance will cover and make assumptions that they will be covered.

If you want your house covered for natural disasters here you'll need 3 separate policies.  Homeowners, flood and windstorm. 

[HDBRbuilder]

It all boils down to ONE REALITY:  NOBODY is responsible for acts of nature which cause devastation!  PERIOD!

You cannot blame the government, politicians, religious groups or anything else...JUST NATURE!  THAT'S IT!

All you can do is make it POSSIBLE for emergency supplies to get into the area in order to save lives long enough to get those lives OUT of the devastated area to somewhere else either temporarily or permanently, PERIOD!

The people who are "caught-up" in this kind of devastation are themselves responsible to contact family, friends, or whatever to help them salvage what they can, and get out of the way, while the people who arrive to start cleaning up the mess enough to allow emergency supplies in for a relatively short time can do their jobs as rapidly as possible!

It is not SUPPOSED TO BE a tax-payer-funded event!  It is a roll up your damned sleeves and make it happen event!  The choice to live someplace that is MORE prone to natural disasters falls on the individual who makes that choice! PERIOD!  I cannot think of any place in the USA or its territories that is not at least a little bit prone to devastation due to natural causes of some kind, can you??

Sure, it sucks to see things taking what seems like forever to get fixed, but there is nothing that can be done to speed it up, unless the survivors themselves roll up their sleeves and get to work!

Pointing fingers and placing blame is an exercise in futility...either be a part of the solution, or you are adding to the problem, which I believe is big enough already!  

[Dave A]

20 hours ago, dtel said:

It's not the government's job to hold everybody's hands to rebuild, people need to take some personal responsibility, before and after a storm.

 

Before, have insurance and prepare or be ready to evacuate.

 

After, contact insurance to get it started and start cleaning up your property and do what you can.

 

Initial response by the government is to rescue people and supply some sort of water or supplies and in some cases shelter. Not to rebuild peoples personally property or hold there hand for extended periods, although they do some of this also.  

It is amazing how few people take rudimentary precautions. Back in the mid 90's we had a severe ice storm here in Southern Middle Tn and surrounding areas. Some nearby were without power for a month. We were lucky and had ours back in a week.  It does not hurt to have food and water for at least a week on hand no matter where you live. Something about living in the country makes one look more to themselves for answers to as compared to city dwellers which look to place demands upon others first. Certain mindsets also dictate that proper response is outrage that others are not doing things instead of taking that same energy and rolling up their sleeves and getting busy on their own. I loved it when Reagan said some of the scariest words ever said were, and I paraphrase, "I am from the Government and I am here to help you".

 

  I watched as Katrina blew in and three days ahead of land fall the weather service was issuing dire warnings saying things like reduced to third world conditions for weeks and perhaps months. To leave while you can or risk losing your life. Catastrophic surge levels predicted and still many just scoffed until their personal dumb decisions put them in danger and then they blamed the government for not doing enough. Years later the corrupt pols down there still have not fixed the levees like they promised and used the money for other things but they were there to help. I choose to not live like that.

 

 

[Dave A]

1 hour ago, CECAA850 said:

If you want your house covered for natural disasters here you'll need 3 separate policies.  Homeowners, flood and windstorm. 

Bet insurance on Galveston is not cheap. When was it that that place was almost swept clean and 6000 died?

[CECAA850]

24 minutes ago, Dave A said:

Bet insurance on Galveston is not cheap. When was it that that place was almost swept clean and 6000 died?

Early 1900s I think.

[Jeff Matthews]

22 hours ago, T2K said:

From the billions spent on Katrina to the hundred million spent on Michael it's baffling to me as to how the US can continue covering these costs in the future.

That's because you don't realize just how rich our nation is.  That kind of stuff is peanuts to our budget.

[Jeff Matthews]

1 hour ago, HDBRbuilder said:

It is not SUPPOSED TO BE a tax-payer-funded event!  It is a roll up your damned sleeves and make it happen event!

This sounds fine in concept if you could get everyone to go along, but you can't.  What inevitably happens is the reverse of the freeloader problem.  Many people WILL NOT or CANNOT fix their stuff up.  They will leave it in shambles, while the rest of the neighborhood is trying to restore decency.  It is a bad deal overall.  It would be similar to leaving all the sick, contagious people without hospital/nursing home care so that they can wander the streets, beg for money, and infect everyone else.

 

There are millenia of experience behind our current policies. Those who fail to appreciate history are doomed to repeat it.

 

P.S.  Zen, this is how you discuss politics without having to resort to parties and candidates.

[Jeff Matthews]

46 minutes ago, Dave A said:

Bet insurance on Galveston is not cheap.

Flood insurance is cheap.  It's underwritten by FEMA.