Not to pick nits with one of my favorite doctrines of law, but this is the first time Florida's experienced significant hurricane damage since Andrew eleven or so years ago. It's a slightly more rational risk to assume when you keep that in mind.

Eleven years? Oh, that's much better. Growing up in Seattle, every time the Snohomish river flooded, I would grate my teeth as the flood victums stood there, up to their hips in water in their living room, and grimly proclaimed "We're gonna rebuild!"

I live in Orlando, the center of the state, where there was significant damage to homes, though thankfully not mine and not to the extent of the homes on the coast. The only way to avoid hurricanes is to empty the state, which would be fine with me. I'll just let everyone else go first.

How hard is it to build hurricane-proof houses? Zoning laws might not permit it, but it's hard for even a hurricane to blow away a concrete dome.

In theory, and in law, you're not supposed to be able to rebuild in a flood zone, unless you can pay cash up front.

The federal flood insurance law forbids issuing insurance on real property with any significant risk of flooding.

We could start enforcing that.

PapayaSF:

Concrete domes are fairly cheap, very durable, and almost always in accordance with local zoning laws.

The problem is that few want to live in 'em.

Politicians typically think about risk in only two contexts: "did anyone get that on tape?", or "what will this mean for the next election?".

Insurance (and its limitations) is beyond their grasp. All the struggles the states have with no-fault auto insurance bears that out.

Weren't the code restrictions tightened in Miami-Dade (or all of FL) after Andrew? Wasn't that supposed to 'solve' the problem?

But what official is going to turn down beachfront development (and the concomitant tax base)?

I think the problem is building in really stupid places.

Like 100' from the surf, or in a flood plain.

I just moved to Tampa.

New homes are built to post-Andrew codes. This greatly reduces (but of course can't eliminate) claims.

Insurance in Florida is so expensive you have to go through a state agency which pools coverage, and Floridians all pay into a catastrophe fund which is likely to demand a Charley-Frances surcharge. Ivan plus the rest of the season is still on tap!

I don't have beachfront and we're not in a flood zone, but my insurance has more than doubled from my old place in boring PA.

I've lived in the Tampa Bay area for 30 years. Not once (knock on wood) has a hurricane caused any problem for anyone I know (other than loss of power for a few days). Florida is a huge state (do I really need to give y'all a geography lesson?) and any given area has a chance of a hurricane hitting that is much smaller than the chance of a hurricane hitting anywhere in Florida. As Karen noted, Hurricane Charley hit Orlando hard and it is the middle of the state and not subject to the flood insurance of the coast lines.

My house is supposedly built to withstand 150 mph winds (I say supposedly because I don't want to find out what the threshold is), is built up one story (so now it is a 3 story house), with blow out walls in the basement so it won't crumble under storm surge and my astronomical flood insurance will not kick in until we have a storm surge of at least 18 feet (never happened before in the whole state). My insurance goes up yearly even though my house is well above code. Mr. Hamlin--the codes only apply to new construction. The politicians have no problem putting all kinds of restrictions on new, and that isn't anything compared to what the mortgage companies require when you seek a construction loan.

And then we have the Carolinas, Louisiana (husband's mother lost her home in one hurricane, his grandparents lost theirs in another), Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. Haven't they dealt with a hurricane or two, now and then? How is Harry's hurricane insurance out in Hawaii? I seem to remember Hurricane Iniki hitting Kuaii (spelling? the one with the Napali coast) pretty hard in the 90's. Not to mention volcanoes and tidal waves. As least I don't have to worry about blizzards, killer deer and mountains falling down like Mr. Judd. And I won't get into California, since it would require me to post on another page. Or the mid west's penchant for tornadoes and floods and blizzards and wind storms. Or Colorado's habitual forest fires and snow storms. Those who live in glass states shouldn't throw federal aid stones.

I don't know where some of the rest of y'all live (Mr. Guinn), but feel free to chime in with your state. I'll find a natural disaster or two to go with it. And if there isn't a natural one, I'm sure a man made one is in the offing. Heck, wasn't one town flooded in molasses years ago?

"I think the problem is building in really stupid places."

Just about every location is prone to some kind of natural hazard. The East coast has hurricanes. River valleys have floods (here in the Mississippi river basin we've had 3 100-year floods in the last 13 years). The Midwest also gets tornadoes. The West gets forest fires, and the Pacific coast gets earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
We're willing to bail others out because we all expect to get bailed out when our turn comes.

Buttercup:

Oddly enough, it was part of Boston that was flooded with molasses, on Jan. 15th, 1919.
Two and a half million gallons of molasses, meant to be made into rum, burst from a huge storage tank, which emptied in seconds.
A wall of molasses between eight and fifteen feet high swept through the streets, at up to 35 MPH.

21 people were killed, and 150 injured.

There are still people in Eastern NC living in "temporary" housing after being displaced by the flooding from Hurrican Floyd (Sept. 1999). The damage from the flooded hog farms (the refuse ponds) was quite severe.

People can usually rebuild from the 'impact' damage on the coast, but the inland tolls can take a lot longer. I believe it was 2 or 3 years before the Susquehanna River basin recovered from Hurricane Agnes (July 1972).

People won't stop building at the beach until the very sands are washed away.

There are still people in Eastern NC living in "temporary" housing after being displaced by the flooding from Hurrican Floyd (Sept. 1999). The damage from the flooded hog farms (the refuse ponds) was quite severe.

People can usually rebuild from the 'impact' damage on the coast, but the inland tolls can take a lot longer. I believe it was 2 or 3 years before the Susquehanna River basin recovered from Hurricane Agnes (July 1972).

People won't stop building at the beach until the very sands are washed away.

My friend owns a condo roughly 500 yards from the San Andreas Fault north of Los Angeles. Naturally, insurance premiums in that area are a wee bit higher than in your average suburban community, but the land has built up because it's in the area closest to Los Angeles that still has any semblence of decent priced housing. The same should hold true for areas with a high probability of impact by hurricanes; they shouldn't ban you from building there, but the cost of such action should be borne by the owner, not Uncle Sugar.

Buttercup:

There are people who had built houses on the Mississippi flood plain and been flooded out multiple times. There are people who build condos right on the Florida shore line, then expect others to pay for jettys to keep them from washing into the sea.

That is what I mean by really stupid. Not just prone to bad roles of the dice, but Siegfried & Roy stick your head in the mouth of a tiger stupid.

>What ever happened to "acceptance of the risk"?

That ceased to exist with the first Baby Boomer.

Buttercup, after Iniki, all the casualty insurance companies in Hawaii stopped underwriting wind damage, so the state stepped in and organized a minimal reinsurance program for a number of years until the casualty insurors starting writing wind insurance again.

The wind insurance costs as much as all my other coverage together -- in other words, our insurance costs doubled.

But pity the poor bastards who had insured with a company owned by the state's electric utility. It welshed; didn't pay anybody.

(I suppose I'm one of the few people living who has been through a molasses flood. We had one down at the harbor about six years ago. Not disastrous like in Boston. The street was about six inches deep in molasses.)