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?
We have a choice between 2 main groups. One believes there’s a climate problem of human making. The other does not.
Of course they are, it’s why they are using their weather control powers to cause all of these storms. Duh.
Here in Europe we don’t get such hurricanes, but we still build very sturdy houses. Why don’t people in these American areas do this too?
Trump’s campaign includes making homes less sturdy so we can have a larger supply 🙃
That’s a good question. We do, now. But most of us can’t buy a new house, so we live in an older house. We don’t have a stone quarry anywhere nearby, so no tradition of stone houses, more frame houses because it’s hot and there wasn’t air conditioning so we built ventilated lighter houses that were cooler in the summer, there are still a lot of them around.
Yes, home hardening is one factor and even here in Florida, the building codes have been updated and the state provides matching funds for making improvements to existing houses (you apply, it can take some years to get to the front of the line) we got storm windows this way, and we got a strong metal roof when we needed to replace the roof covering. It just takes a really long time to change out or update the stock of houses.
And also, even though it seems like houses are getting knocked down every 5 minutes, there are still houses in Tampa built around 1900, it’s not that common in most cities. I was born here, am over 50 and haven’t even had to evacuate yet, assume it’s coming eventually but is not a frequent event here. Last direct hit around 1925.
People are so flippant about “just move” but I was born here, have seen the city get better, love it, have a good job, most of our kids still live nearby, its really expensive to move anywhere and pretty nice here most of the time still, and as a climatologist told my kid when they asked, probably will be ok through their lifetime.
Thanks for the in depth answer. I hadn’t thought of there being no easy stone mines.
I’m sad that I’m getting downvoted for simply trying to understand the current housing situation.
Be skeptical:
Without adaptation strategies, the following conditions will likely incur substantial social and economic costs:
- Flooding of streets, homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, emergency shelters, etc.,
- Shoreline and beach erosion,
- Impacts to the operations of coastal drainage systems,
- Impairment of coastal water supplies and coastal water treatment facilities and infrastructure, and
- Shifts in habitats and reduced ecosystem services. source
Might be worth it to get a second climatologist opinion.
Climaxologist?
even cheapo plywood and cardboard houses cost a fortune so construction companies don’t build with stronger materials because no one would buy the house. that’s my armchair opinion at least.
Funny, though, that cheap sticks and cardboard houses like they are common in the US are a rarity here in Europe. Reinforced concrete basements are the norm here, and the rest of any halfway modern house (from the last 80+ years) is brick and mortar. My house has 30cm walls made from concrete blocks, and this is no outlier.
They mostly don’t own anything. Either a rich person or a company owns where they live.
No need to hate on capitalistic America that much. My question is also relevant for companies and landlords that would build houses for other people to live in.
deleted by creator
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.
But then we would have to charge the hurricane with destruction of evidence.
Top Secret papers all over Florida!
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!
Just gotta concentrate a bunch of gays in one place, and the hurricanes follow. It’s science!
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.
If we make this ILLEGAL to Talk about then we’ll be Fine!
Don’t look up… or out, in this case!
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.
That’s terrifying… I hope you and your family are able to get somewhere safe for the time being
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 used to live in Charleston SC and my boss owned a beach home on Folly Beach - one of two houses there that survived Hurricane Hugo in 1989. It survived because it was elevated on massive concrete pilings that extended 60’ down to bedrock. When it was built in the 1970s it was two streets back from the beach; after Hugo it was beachfront property.
My dumbass boss (a Rush Limbaugh fan, no surprise) had it torn down despite its being in perfect condition because it was too small (it was “just” a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, one-story layout). He built a much larger, conventional foundation house on the lot, which was apparently badly damaged by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, although it apparently survived and has been repaired. Just a matter of time …
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.
Yes I’m sure you know better than the engineers who write building codes for a living.
Europeans never understand why houses are made out of “flimsy” materials in the US.
The simple answer is that your brick and mortar houses would also be completely destroyed by a hurricane or tornado or earthquake.
They’re just way more expensive and take longer to rebuild.
The scale of natural disasters in the US is and always has been such that we expect buildings to be demolished by nature from time to time. Europe is a very stable place. The US is not.
Having a house that is lighter and stronger per pound than brick makes a lot of sense too. Stick frame houses can twist and shift a considerable amount and recover. Twist a brick house and it crumbles.
It’s an overpressure problem. A tornado causes a sudden vacuum, and the house can’t withstand the pressure. Brick will fly just like wood in these conditions.
We have 3.2+ earthquakes, well, the rate I get alerts I’d estimate every other month on average. 4-5 times a year in a hundred mile radius (what I’ve got alerts set at). You are correct. Brick is used at most as a facade around here.
We don’t even issue alerts for anything below magnitude 5. Below 4 can barely be felt, we wouldn’t even call that an earthquake here.
I would only find out on half of them because folks on reddit, mostly new arrivals to the area, would be freaking out “DID YOU FEEL THAT” and those of us who grew up here would be like “what, a truck?”. Then I set up the google alert and you know.
I’ve lived in the Caribbean. Well-off people lived in reinforced concrete buildings not in flood areas. Worst that usually happened is some broken window.
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.
Even in UK, houses are made of brick and concrete which have the ability to withstand flood and hurricane at a certain level
Good job y’all don’t have earthquakes.
That’s why earthquake was not mentioned ^… And no Ivan earthquake seems to hate the place so they don’t bother
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.
Arizona will start complaining that they’ve run out of water
Little community refused to connect to the public utility grid. Wanted to live the libertarian, no government, get eaten by bears ideal. Local government they were mooching off for water said “Hey, we actually need this for our community. No more mooching.” They could fix the problem by incorporating, but instead they went to the news media.
Meat? 😶🌫😶🌫😶🌫
literal sunk cost fallacy
We’ve been using the sunk cost fallacy for too long to give up on it now.
Sunk Coast Fallacy
They also had sunk all their savings into that rebuild. How do you think about trying a third time when you have nothing to even work with?
this might be a shock, but: in florida there are a lot of stupid people with a lot of money but don’t know what the fuck they’re doing with money
these people likely also bought spray painted gold sneakers not too long ago
The best way to prepare yourself psychologically for the next fifty years of ecological catastrophe is to cling to this fact and save your pity for people who matter.
Yeah, I don’t get it, except the couple I saw (maybe you saw the same interview, there seem to be several of these) acted like this is just a bad year for weather and they ‘don’t want to think’ about climate change. They at least seem the type who don’t think it’s real.
I feel for rescue units who can’t leave, and who will likely be rescuing these stubborn cunts when the next massive storm of the year hits them.
Honestly this is great news because then I don’t have to feel bad about them. Kinda uplifting actually.
Get more people to donate to your GoFundMe campaign, I guess?
I don’t know if this is the case for that couple, but a lot of insurance requires that you rebuild on the same location. We need to change laws so that this isn’t the case anymore. It is a massive problem.
I mean, you can probably build a house that can reliably survive the conditions there. It’s just gonna be really expensive and may not look all that pretty.
It’s gonna have to handle water up to a certain height and wind-blown debris smashing into it.
Like, think of a lighthouse or flak tower or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse
Sometimes a lighthouse needs to be constructed in the water itself. Wave-washed lighthouses are masonry structures constructed to withstand water impact, such as Eddystone Lighthouse in Britain and the St. George Reef Light of California. In shallower bays, Screw-pile lighthouse ironwork structures are screwed into the seabed and a low wooden structure is placed above the open framework, such as Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse. As screw piles can be disrupted by ice, steel caisson lighthouses such as Orient Point Light are used in cold climates. Orient Long Beach Bar Light (Bug Light) is a blend of a screw pile light that was converted to a caisson light because of the threat of ice damage. Skeletal iron towers with screw-pile foundations were built on the Florida Reef along the Florida Keys, beginning with the Carysfort Reef Light in 1852.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_tower
With concrete walls up to 3.5 m (11 ft) thick, their designers considered the towers to be invulnerable to attack by the standard ordnance carried by RAF heavy bombers at the time of their construction.
The Soviets, in their assault on Berlin, found it difficult to inflict significant damage on the flak towers, even with some of the largest Soviet guns, such as the 203 mm M1931 howitzers.
After the war, the demolition of the towers was often considered not feasible and many remain to this day, with some having been converted for alternative use.
Living in a lighthouse sounds great. If you open windows at the top it’ll pull air up through the whole structure for cooling.
It would be cool, but you would also have to contend with the rest of Florinda.
I mean a flak tower could be pretty badass to live in. If shit ever hit the fan you’d already be fortified. It would probably look good to an insurer too.
I think I had seen this on lemmy first, that they turned one of the flak towers into a hotel.
Buy me a flak tower in Berlin daddy. Rescue me… and my wife and cats.
only if it comes with the original flak guns and a good supply of ammo.
Need something to keep those damn kids off my grass.
So listen, those flak guns don’t aim below the horizon, so you’re going to need to modify those. Don’t want you going in blind. Like as blind as you would quickly be shooting flak at close range.
Its not about being effective.
its about sending a message.
You mean a house that looks like a cybertruck?
Good point, thanks!
At least don’t fucking rebuild it the same way, with the same materials, as the last half dozen times.
Sink some footings down deep, cast the walls out of concrete (you can still put fancy shit up on the concrete to make it look nice, but the concrete will be a fuckton stronger against wind/water/etc)
I know some people from Clearwater and I think they’d just say “this is our community and our home”. It doesn’t make logical sense, but I’d say a lot about the town a person decides to live in is emotional over practical (unless you move somewhere for a job).
Well it might be where you live but there ain’t gonna be any home or community there much longer
Mother Nature is speedbaggin’ North America’s penis.
Bet it’s gonna be a 4 because of how hot the water is.
as if you didn’t have enough reasons to get the fuck out of florida already. leaving that removed 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.
Climate change is a removed, huh, Republicans who’ve spent thirty years denying it? (My heart goes out to all the people in the southeast who actually didn’t spend decades denying its existence and hampering efforts to slow it.)
Maybe if all those sinful woke communist homosexuals would leave Florida, God wouldn’t have to keep sending hurricanes to punish all the good God-fearing patriots for tolerating their iniquities! /s
Shit, it’s headed right for where I live.
Username related. Don’t wait until the last minute.
Take your whiskeys wid u 2
Always. I store it in my stomach.
U will survive everywhere
Time to reconsider where you live.
It’s a lot harder than you think to leave
I know. But I’d do everything in my power to get out of there. This is only going to get worse. Stay safe.
The last time I tried to escape Florida, it took me 6 years, and I just barely made it out.
I’m already a year in this time, and I’m mostly trying not to kill myself.
I’m working on it
You are living in one of the wrongest parts of the world then.
Not on purpose. Just because I can’t afford to leave.
Well, can you afford to stay, then?
Only by the skin of my teeth
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.
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
Or they’ll march on the capital again and demand the weather machine controls.
You presume that that information reaches them and that they’re willing to consider it.
Even if the info doesn’t reach them, looks like the hurricane will.
This is coming straight for me. FML
Stay safe.
Well shit. I’ll have to put up the shutters 1 week after taking them down.
My poor garden. All I can think of is all the fruit and veggies that are gonna get blown away
Maybe one a month in the next few years, MAGA drill baby drill!!!
Gotta protect those gas stoves, oversized pickups, generally fucking everything up out of anger, and fighting culture wars instead of the class war keeping us all in the gutter.
Hurricanes track:
