Hurricane Irene has weakened to a category one storm with sustained winds of 85 miles per hour as its core comes ashore in North Carolina, but it’s not the winds many on the East Coast are worried about. It’s the water. And to understand why, you need merely look at the Google map of where my daughter and I were visiting family just a couple weeks ago: The narrow spit of sand known as Longport, New Jersey.
At its thinnest, Longport stands only one block wide between the Atlantic Ocean and the bay. At its highest, Longport has an elevation of only 10 feet; the National Weather Service is predicting a storm surge of up to 6 feet, but that’s only a prediction, and that’s only this time. You’ll notice from the map that the southern tip starts at 11th Street, the missing ten blocks having washed away in a series of storms between 1900 and 1916.
To argue that it’s stupid to develop real estate on such fragile and ever-changing barrier islands is beside the point. The developments are there, up and down our coasts, both on these islands and the nearly equally vulnerable shorelines just inland. If it hits at just the right time, in just the right way, even as a weakened tropical storm, Irene’s storm surge could push four feet of water into Manhattan’s Battery Park. The ocean could be pouring down Wall Street. Our coasts are where the bulk of our nation’s population lives, and where most of its wealth is generated. Different communities, similar stories.
I’ve heard some mumbling about this is what you get for building your homes in the path of hurricanes that you know will eventually come, just like we heard at the time of Katrina. It’s easy to enjoy our sunny summer weekend and feel totally detached from what’s unfolding on the other coast. But back east there are folks who think I’m totally fucking nuts to choose to live on top of a mega-quake-producing subduction fault that is due to rip just about anytime now (on a geological scale). Hell, I don’t even have earthquake insurance, as I can’t afford the retrofitting my 99-year-old house requires to qualify for it. But it’s home.
And well, that’s life. The same natural forces that make this a living and livable planet are also the ones that make it so volatile and dangerous. Shit happens. So while it’s tempting to tell hypocritical anti-tax Republican douchebags like Rep. Eric Cantor to go fuck themselves when they come asking for federal disaster relief for a little wind and rain, let alone a piddling 5.8 earthquake, it’s important to remember that our time will come, and we’re all much stronger as a nation when we stand together than when we stand apart.
In the year 1900, the entire city of Galveston, Texas was destroyed by a hurricane as it flooded the city.
It’s still the deadliest hurricane in recorded history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_H…
It’s true. People are vulnerable, no matter where they live, to the forces of nature. Wildfires, tornadoes, earthquakes, storms, droughts. We all will likely face some disaster in our lifetime or just escape by the skin of our teeth. And damages can excede a states ability to repair property and lives.
I’m with you on this, Goldy. But I’m guessing it won’t take long before the flaming assholes who hate everything “east coast” weigh in.
Even though I’m living comfortably at a mile high (the only thing I have to worry about is drought and the possibility of Yellowstone exploding), I agree too, the coasts need protecting.
Except for Florida. That state can fall into the ocean.
I’ll be holding them in my prayers and hope that most are able to survive such a monster. It’s amazing, the experts say that such a thing has never been seen in places like MA and NYork yet there it is, after so much mocking has been made of people of faith, nature and our Creator by the governments of those states. Tho what’s happening over there is something regional we do have our share of possible disasters over here also because sadly we here seem to be bent on imitating their errors, perhaps the benefit of seeing the outcome there will help most of us rethink our own actions here, mother Nature is second only to our Mighty Creator. May God Almighty have mercy on them all so that few innocent lives are lost.
@8 God does not punish us, we punish ourselves with our own behaviors. God is merciful beyond our comprehension. Genesis 18: 22-33
@8: Huh? I think at least Job and Abraham would beg to differ.
Loveschild is a chucklehead, but you’re full of shit.
Let’s be honest. We’ve all been waiting for New Jersey to get flooded out. We just thought it would be the cheesy cologne that got ’em first.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/massive…
Oh my god, I am so freaking happy that Loveschild is back! Where were you for so long??? We need to introduce you to a lovely man named Seattleblues. You two were meant for each other.
@12: I have a feeling that those two are already well acquainted.
Goldy you’re an awesome motivational writer.
@7: Lots of death so far in North Carolina, a state that is attempting to ban gay marriage… and recently a large quake centered in Virginia, which banned gay adoption and gay marriage with the most notable destruction from the quake outside of anti-gay VA being the damage to the national cathedral. If we stopped banning gay marriage, maybe people would have the mercy they seek?
/poeslaw
Why did they build a town on what appears to be a sandbar?
Why do people in California build their houses on cliffs, prompt? Same answer.
Hmmm… Fall semester about to begin, Loveschild reappears. I grow increasingly convinced she is simply some sociology professor’s group work project on how groups respond to bizarre or irrational stimuli.
It is beside the point to argue whether or not it’s stupid to develop land that is bound to be washed away sooner or later. What matters is how stupid it is to BUY property that is bound to be washed away sooner or later. Holy crap. That’s fucking retarded.
FEMA went to Idaho and told the trailer trash living in a flood pain that they weren’t getting aid when (not if) the floods came. And rightfully so. The teabaggers in Idaho complained about “the government telling them where to live”? Yeah, WTF?
The real problem with Irene is that FEMA should have let a few more of these deficient types know that disaster aid isn’t guaranteed when you choose to live in a disaster waiting to happen. Cause. Effect. Simple. Predictable.
@13 I lolled.
Sorry… this has nothing to do with East Coast hate or anything, but if you live on a block-wide spit of land next to the ocean, you’re kinda asking for it.
Build in a flood plain, you’re going to get floods. Live next to the ocean you’re going to get storms. Put your cabin in the boonies in Montana, you’re going to get forest fires. Shit just happens, people. Put your car in front of a freight train and we blame the person in the car, and they pay. Put your house on a block-wide spit of sand <10 feet in elevation, and we cover your plight on the national news and throw insurance and tax money at you so you can rebuild right on that spot.
It’s insane. We should let the storms take these places back permanently, unless we just want to set up another generation for certain future misery.
Oh, and sorry Goldy – there is a sliding scale of risk-benefit. It’s worth 150 years of economic growth, human life, etc. to put a city on a fault zone. It’s not worth a handful of houses to site them on a tiny spit of land next to the ocean where storms and damage are likely to be far more frequent, and catastrophic in some cases.
Yes, defend the coasts, but don’t spend your money defending block wide spits on land sitting on the ocean. Spend in line with the benefits. New Orleans is the biggest grain port in the world. There’s a reason – a benefit – to having it sited where it is, even though it requires constant engineering, pumping, levee-ing, etc. to keep it there.
A block’s worth of houses. Look, it’s sad, but at some point you have to ask yourself what rebuilding or building on these tiny spits of land is worth. Are the residents there because they had no choice, or because they thought it would be cool to “live on the beach?”
If the latter, maybe we should re-think defending every inch of coastline.
@22 You do realize there’s an economic benefit to building houses, don’t you? Employment, material sales, GNP growth, etc.? What better way to build in a permanent economic stimulus than to have self-destroying houses? After all, it’s just an extension of the consumer economy: buy, dispose, buy more, rinse, repeat. If every house just lasted forever, things would stagnate.
Rainier could blow tomorrow and there wouldn’t be the kind of 24/7 coverage this hurricane is getting because Seattle isn’t along the axis of our east coast centric news media.
If Rainier blew tomorrow, it would affect, what, a couple million people, tops? We’re talking 65 million people affected by this storm. Slight difference.
And by the way, I’m not saying the media isn’t “east coast centric,” only that there’s a reason why it is. Like it or not, it’s the center of both government and population in this country.
@26,
Not to mention the center of the nation’s (and much of the world’s) economy, too.