Oddly enough, Spirit Lake is remarkably alive. It is a huge anomaly, a massive test tube for researchers. Life came charging back after the lake was turned into a pyroclastic tsunami.
Within 5 years, the fish and aquatic invertebrates had completely recovered. Within ten years, the lake was a monster fish factory, producing salmon-sized rainbow trout. Sure, it helped that no one was allowed to fish in the lake. But it turns out the massive log mat produces so much food for trout that they grow to enormous size.
apparently, one of the current conspiracy theories is that fema is using these hurricanes as a land grab. so it’s possible at least some of these people are convinced if they leave, the “government” will steal their property.
News is saying the police, in a last desperate attempt to get residents to evacuate earlier today, were asking those who chose to stay behind to write their Social Security Numbers on their arms in indelible ink to help search crews identify their corpses more easily.
Unfortunately that conspiracy theory often has a kernel of truth to it: eminent domain and informal land tenure.
After a natural disaster governments will sometimes seize land under eminent domain in order to create natural buffers to protect against such disasters (not ironically caused by land developers building said houses on prior existing buffers), while informal land holders lose the “rights” to their land when governments zone to rebuild after a disaster and discover “no one” owns the land (and are financially incentivized to not work with current occupants to formalize their land tenure*).
But really, land ownership doesn’t matter if one is dead.
(*My org works on formalizing informal land holdings, mostly women farmers, in developing countries. As an aside, we’re using drones to establish land boundaries, which has gone really well, as surveyors can survey multiple more land plots that the traditional method.)
IIRC, Reagan did that in Texas during his term. I remember reading about former residents of a disaster area who were caught up in financial red tape because of it. I’m not sure if they were expected to continue paying off home loans despite being unable to rebuild or if it created an insurance claim / valuation conflict. Either way, it sounded like making a bad situation worse for the survivors with no easy way through the process.
I get the feeling services like yours will be in greater demand in “developed” countries, too!
My organization is primarily focused on international development. But there are organizations focusing on land tenure, ownership, and retention in the United States, such as the Federation of Southern Co-ops.
Either way, it sounded like making a bad situation worse for the survivors with no easy way through the process.
