To: combjelly who wrote (317547 ) 12/31/2006 6:41:44 PM From: tejek Read Replies (1) | Respond to NO,sadly, won't be the only disaster city we will have in the future. What if The Big One hits LA or SF? What if the New Madrid fault pops? What if God, terminally embarrassed that He allowed Shorty to actually reproduce, sends a couple of Cat4 or Cat5 hurricanes to correct His Mistake? Katrina and Rita hit an area that is pretty lightly populated except for Beaumont, Lake Charles and New Orleans. But all of the Atlantic Seaboard is vulnerable to hurricanes. A few high cat storms in areas with a high population density could reshape the country. The Katrina Cottages are deeply flawed. They are an intellectual exercise more than a practical solution. But that is ok, they illustrate an idea that needs to be explored. How do we house large numbers of people who have been rendered homeless? If SF gets hit, do housing permits that cost $100k make sense? And so on. There are still people living in FEMA trailers from Allen. That was 13 years ago. That isn't a solution. We need to reformulate FEMA to deal with a situation like that. If FEMA could supply Katrina Cottages reformulated using lower cost materials instead of ideal materials, with some sort of arrangement where the owners eventually pay back the costs, we would be on more solid ground. Katrina/Rita was a wakeup call. Just because Smirk didn't and doesn't realize that shouldn't be a deterrent. We were lucky that the flaws were exposed in a relatively lightly populated area. We will have disasters that affect areas with greater populations. We can't afford to fail on a larger scale. As far as Beaumont, it has increased the White Flight, there is a larger percentage of Hispanics and a smaller percentage of Cajun French. i.e., it is walking the same road as NO in some respect. But without the tourism. Short term, things are booming. Lots of new construction, labor shortages, etc. Long term, the town has lost what little soul it had.
