Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/09/texas-official-people-enjoy.html
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Christ what an asshole.
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I wonder if this guy lives downstream of anywhere to see if he enjoys it…
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I’m sure he lives safely in an area where he can afford to be away from a flood plain.
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I assume this man would enjoy getting sucker-punched in the face because hey, free painkillers.
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Something tells me the development of his subdivision turned other people’s homes into a flood plain, it being Texas and all.
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No kidding; I don’t think anyone moves to Houston thinking, “Boy howdy, I hope I lose everything I own so that I can get insurance money out of it!”
And he should ask people along the Mississippi River who own farms in the area. They just love floods. They especially love it when FEMA says, “LOL, nope.”
Maybe. I wonder if the same thing is happening in Houston that’s happening in floody areas. This spring, Arnold, MO., once a little town and now just part of the St. Louis sprawl, got flooded bad. And something that people suspected about it ended up being true. Developers have been building in places that flood, but then build dykes around the neighborhoods. This has two effects: one, it keeps water out of the neighborhoods to a point; and two, it makes flooding worse for people downriver.
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NOLA is another case in point of where you can build is generally a function of class/economic/racial privilege. The elite built on higher ground, while the poor, working class, and racial minorities were left with land around the flood plains.
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It’s not just about location- half of the Netherlands is below sea level. They just put more care into building and maintaining their levee system.
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When his neighborhood gets hit by a hail storm, everyone cheers about the free roofs they are getting. What he doesn’t understand is that poor people getting hit by a flood is far more devastating to people who can’t afford deductibles, new car payments, getting kids to school, can’t take off work to clean up the mess, etc.
And fuck him, that is what insurance is for.
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He then went on to add, “They enjoy losing most or all of their possessions, and, boy howdy, evacuatin’ is a whole lotta fun, or so I hear.”
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Sure… and they’ve been doing so for centuries. The fact remains that in the US, that people in areas that are prone of weather related disasters tend to be poorer and blacker. That’s not always true (high end building on the beach is one example where it’s not), but flood plains are cheaper to build on and attract people who can afford to live there. They don’t enjoy having their houses destroyed and lives interrupted though.
I think the comparison to the Netherlands is sort of apples and oranges, then.
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I moved to Seattle after the big 93 flood… On my first visit back I was aghast at all the development on US40 past Chesterfield as the whole area was under like 19 feet of water only a few years prior.
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“only” a quarter : P (but altogether half of the Netherlands are below 1 masl)
it’s fucking impressive - they created a whole province in a few decades
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People enjoy floods for the insurance money just like they enjoy a punch in the face for the exciting ambulance ride.
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Yeah, I’m left wondering exactly who ‘those people’ who enjoy floods are, if you know what I mean…
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When I lived in Harris County, I hated floods, and I lived in a third-floor apartment (by the bay). One time, it rained so hard that when I tried to drive my wife to UH, we had to turn around, because the water was too high under the overpass. When we got home, she found that she had gotten a late email telling her that classes were cancelled.
Harris County, though, has plenty of non-flooding areas. Mr. Radack, for example, lives in a $400+k home in northern Houston, almost 50 feet above sea level. Flooding for him is something that only happens rarely, like when Democrats are in office and that whole “climate change” things turns out to be true.
But the idea that people like suffering catastrophes just for the payout is demented. Most people I knew who got property damage from Ike didn’t even bother with insurance, unless their house blew away, because dealing with the insurance companies was a huge pain. Heck, I knew someone whose house was effectively unlivable because of Ike, but was still living there, even if walking to her living room took her briefly outside. And these were people who worked at NASA.
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My best friends house flooded while he was at college. I am pretty sure he would rather still had his old art and comics and toys and other things from the past, rather than having his child hood home completely gutted. and redone.
That said, why DO people keep building and moving into flood prone areas? Granted some don’t know, and some are very rare, but there certain areas where it is a question of when, not if.
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“They get a free trip as part of the evacuation – it’s the next best thing to a vacation!”
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Yea he is a dick, but when I moved here 20 years ago I looked at houses with flood repairs. When I asked the realtor about it, they said exactly the same thing. Insurance pays for it and you get new stuff.
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