I watched the footage of Hurricane Sandy as it came ashore on Oct 29, 2012. It left me quite a wide range of impressions and emotions. I see many of the same things every time we have a hurricane along the eastern seaboard or the gulf coast.
Every hurricane or major storm, we are all treated to visages of flooding and destruction. I begin to wonder why we don't long term plan on such matters. A hurricane may not hit a specific coast line for a decade, but the return of such an incident is as given as the sunrise. There are some spots where we as a country have developed counter measures, emergency responses, and defenses against the elements involved in such hurricanes, but why has it not been a national priority to do so over time.
Maybe it is cheaper long term to just rebuild, but the cost in lives, private property, and public damage is astronomical each time. Hurricane Sandy alone is estimated to be doing 6 billion dollars of damage. The subways of New York City became to some degree water filled. That is going to require pumping them out, letting the tunnels dry, and we can only hope they moved the trains out of the tunnels to high ground train yards. I can not see how it is better to just take it time after time with no thought to long term consequences and danger, instead of acting like a society with forethought and prudence.
I was horrified at the Captain of the Bounty. He tried to get around the storm, in a wooden tall ship replica that even with engines can only make 10 knots, yet the storm was moving perpendicular to his voyage at 15 knots. That just shows to me that in a society as individualistic as the United States of America, that to get some long term measures in place is going to take convincing private citizens, municipal governments, private organizations, state governments. We can not just expect a central government to do it all efficiently or even effectively.
Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 showed that FEMA just can not react effectively on a solo basis for a nation as large and wide as ours. The North American continent is a diverse climate with many potential natural disasters on top of all the potential problems a technological society can develop. As a nation we really need a dialogue on forethought and long term planning for such matters more....much more.
Every hurricane or major storm, we are all treated to visages of flooding and destruction. I begin to wonder why we don't long term plan on such matters. A hurricane may not hit a specific coast line for a decade, but the return of such an incident is as given as the sunrise. There are some spots where we as a country have developed counter measures, emergency responses, and defenses against the elements involved in such hurricanes, but why has it not been a national priority to do so over time.
Maybe it is cheaper long term to just rebuild, but the cost in lives, private property, and public damage is astronomical each time. Hurricane Sandy alone is estimated to be doing 6 billion dollars of damage. The subways of New York City became to some degree water filled. That is going to require pumping them out, letting the tunnels dry, and we can only hope they moved the trains out of the tunnels to high ground train yards. I can not see how it is better to just take it time after time with no thought to long term consequences and danger, instead of acting like a society with forethought and prudence.
I was horrified at the Captain of the Bounty. He tried to get around the storm, in a wooden tall ship replica that even with engines can only make 10 knots, yet the storm was moving perpendicular to his voyage at 15 knots. That just shows to me that in a society as individualistic as the United States of America, that to get some long term measures in place is going to take convincing private citizens, municipal governments, private organizations, state governments. We can not just expect a central government to do it all efficiently or even effectively.
Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 showed that FEMA just can not react effectively on a solo basis for a nation as large and wide as ours. The North American continent is a diverse climate with many potential natural disasters on top of all the potential problems a technological society can develop. As a nation we really need a dialogue on forethought and long term planning for such matters more....much more.
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