Re: Ike Report - Boat Storage in Galveston burns in uncontrolled fire.
I do know how those affected feel, and I feel sorry for them.
My mom lived in Clear Lake on the bay, and my brother lived on a half island. Both have since moved. My mom studied the flood plans for the area before buying their house when they lived their, and this made their high risk insurance a little more affordable than it would have been had it not been on high ground. My step dads company sent them to NASA to work, he had a choice, go there, or lose his, at that time 37 years, pension with the company. They stayed three years, retired, and got out.
My brother had no chance in paying the high risk premiums asked for his place, so he had none, just as most of his neighbors. Add this to the fact that he worked first for a very large marina, and later for a oil company. He often had the choice of securing the job site, or losing his job, when storms approached.
His personal possessions, his house, and his safety mattered little to his employers.
Perhaps some of those burning boats belong to some of these people who are employed by the oil industry, trying in a last ditch effort to save our oil & gas supplies at this very moment. Or maybe to the Medical, Police, Fire and Rescue personal who are on call, rain or shine.
I also have a friend here (Germany) who's family lives there, his dad is a Oceanographic/Marine Sciences Professor at the Texas A&M University at Galveston campus.
They all have little choice but to be there.
What bothers me is that after so many years of being there, the sea wall in Galveston should have been improved and extended by now. It has not changed since I was a child and we used to visited the town on vacation. Same was the case in New Orleans. Some of the water control systems and dikes date back a hundred years.
The building codes in some of these beach front neighborhoods, are also often the same as they would be in non-coastal storm prone areas.
Each time a natural disaster of this type occurs, we act like it has never happened before. I dare say that little has been done in Galveston, or the surrounding area since the last time they got wiped out.
My brother laughed on the phone last night when he talked about the preparedness of the chemical companies and refineries where he used to work. So much in our national economy rides on them being able to withstand frequent natural attacks, such as one that is happening at the moment, but little is done to prepare in advance on an infrastructure level.
The oil companies, and many of the cities alike seem to play the role of the proverbial ostrich, i.e. we will just stick our head in the sand, and act like it's not going to happen to us.
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