Things are truly screwed up, and no one with any real power has the intelligence or courage to actually do anything about it. All we get from ‘the smartest people in the room’ are lies and evasions. [note that there is no reporting on the IQ of the other people in the room. It might be in a day care center for all people know.]

Yes, Ellroon, as Badtux says: WASF…

Now this is the perfect quote that describes our first two decades into this new century….

We’re truly f**ked, aren’t we….

There is no force in the universe that can overcome human stupidity.

Impermanence is the rule, not the exception. Just sayin’.

This duplex I’m currently living in won’t survive an earthquake either, it predates modern earthquake codes. That said, the apartment I was living in the last time we had an earthquake was built to modern earthquake standards and it was still swaying back and forth like a downer cow when the Calaveras Earthquake hit (which was a rather mild 5.6 quake), and half the drywall was cracked afterwards as well as the bathroom vanity (luckily they *did* have the required flexible segments in all the piping so none of the plumbing or drains sprung a leak). So (shrug).

I lived in Alaska and San Diego, but didn’t get overly nervous about it because I was living and working in solid, newer buildings on flat land. I wasn’t in danger of sliding into a canyon hundreds of feet below. I had to attend parties [for business reasons] at houses that were in exactly that danger, including one I saw as it was being built, and could see without using an instrument, that the house was not ‘square’, i.e. the horizontal surfaces weren’t level, and the walls weren’t plumb. I met the owners on a trip a decade after I left San Diego. They were in a new house. He told me he should have listened to me, because the house was a disaster – the doors and windows wouldn’t open and close properly, and there was structural damage after a minor quake. Of course the rear deck projected over the edge of the canyon. The house was torn down when it was 6 years old, and there were some nasty lawsuits, and investigations of building inspectors. That is the sort of thing that makes it really scary.

Uh, you have never been to North Dakota, have you? Beautiful country … in the warm months. Minot AFB is in North Dakota. If you mess up in Alaska, they send you to Minot.

I have seen most of the world, and there is no perfect place. You’re better off appreciating what you have, because I can assure you, there are always worse places to live.

You tell people and they ignore you. The reason they could build near the water is because the only thing the old-timers built there were fishing shacks. You knew that anything built near the water was going to be destroyed by a hurricane, so you didn’t put anything permanent there. The old ‘waterfront’ houses were all built on bluffs back from the water and there are still houses on those bluffs that are more than 70-80 years old. If you replace one of those places you will discover that the bluffs are where the Native Americans lived for thousands of years. It is normal to find chert points and stone tools anywhere down here on the edge of bluffs over any waterway.

You can get wind insurance, but it isn’t cheap. You really need flood insurance, because water causes most of the damage, especially the storm surge.

If you buy a condo on the first floor of any major project on the barrier islands, you can’t get any kind of insurance. To protect the entire structure, the first floor is designed to blow out and allow the storm surge through. Originally most of the first floors were used as parking, and didn’t have walls, only support columns, but the developers got greedy. Somewhere is the sales agreement is the bad news about what will happen in a storm, but people don’t seem to care.

Unemployment has cause some out-migration, so the population isn’t really growing anymore. There are still too many people for the available resources and the infrastructure.

It isn’t just Mailibu, the same stupidity is on display all over San Diego county. The clowns on the edge of canyons can have their houses launched by an earthquake, or burned by fire racing up the canyon wall. If there is a fire in a canyon, some houses may have their foundations weakened by all of the water used to fight the fire. It is just a stupid place to build a house. If people want a view of the canyon, it would be cheaper and safer to install an HD camera on the edge, a large screen television on one wall, and connect them with a mile of cable. You could pan and zoom from your recliner.

I don’t think you can get insurance that covers sinkholes. Like flood insurance, it would probably require the Federal government to get involved and run the program.

So, when the sea level rises, there will be a lot of retirees and rich people whose idiot decision to build right at the water’s edge will come back and bite them…. And they’ll sue the builders, the cities, and the state.. and the federal government for good measure.

Kinda like in Malibu out here in Southern Cal. The elites’ houses are either falling into the ocean in our yearly mud flow season or going up in flames in our yearly fire season because they insist on building on the cliff’s edge for the view or in the heavy vegetation covered hills because of the quiet and isolation. Then they are so surprised when they come home to a new cliff or a pile of ash…. and then demand city/state/federal help.

If they would acknowledge that living in such areas does come with some dangers, and get the required insurance… like the earthquake insurance we have available in California, it might help. But to ignore the dangers and then be surprised when the inevitable happens is arrogant and tiresome.

Are you able to even buy hurricane/sinkhole insurance in Florida? And can you even stop the flood of people coming into the state? Maybe by more stories of alligator/crocodile/Burmese python v human altercations…