A few days ago, Paul in Hong Kong asked why people along the Gulf Coast don't have hurricane-proof buildings. It's a good question, and I've been mulling over it for the past few days. There are a lot of potential explanations, none of them especially satisfactory.
Geography is probably the main suspect. It's the obvious reason that folks in the coastal plain don't retreat to the mountains when a hurricane approaches, as one Indian commenter suggested — the Ozarks are a long drive away. The vastness of the coastal prairie means that the entire area is a low-lying district. Orange County, Texas was spared flooding from Rita, but its average elevation is six feet above sea level. And it's an inland county.
Perhaps the local flora is the problem. Outside of the flooded parishes of Louisiana, the damage done by high winds is largely in the form of downed trees. In Austin, the scrub oaks might take down a few powerlines, but they could never really compete with the damage done by the eighty-foot pines along the Gulf.
Population density is another explanation. It doesn't require much to raise five hundred people out of a flood zone when they live in a single high-rise apartment. Elevate the foundations of the building and you're done. The task is much harder when those five hundred people all inhabit single-story dwellings. A single trailer park likely has the same footprint as a high-rise, but only houses a fraction of the people.
This brings us to economics. It doesn't add a significant percentage to the per-unit cost to hurricane-proof an expensive high-rise. Along the rural and exurban communities of the coastal prairie, however, housing is cheap — good houses on an acre of land can still be found in the five figures. This makes hurricane-proofing a significant expense to be weighed against the risk. And the risk is lower than it seems from elsewhere in the country. I'm sure that someone in Ohio has the same two-hurricane-strikes-per-year impression of Galveston that I do of southern Florida. But the coast stretches for hundreds of miles, and the comparions people are making of Rita are with Audrey, which was more than four decades ago.
English translations of Bernard-Henri Lévy's new de Tocqueville book have been appearing in the last four issues of the Atlantic. His observations on the subject are in the latest issue:
What takes you by surprise in Homestead is the vulnerability of the houses. What bewilders and stuns you is that everything has been rebuilt just as it was before, with the same prefab kits and the same kinds of trailers, which look as if they've been set down ready-made, patched together, a little rickety. You wonder what will keep them from flying apart in the same way when the next Andrew, Mitch, or Allison comes along. America has the means to protect Homestead. The American that hasn't ceased to dream of the Star Wars missile-defence shieldhas the most effective warning and prevention systems in the world. But, strangely enough, it doesn't use even a tenth of its capacity to keep the inhabitants of Homestead out of danger by strengthening building and insurance codes. Just as I've never seen a European airport as profoundly paralyzed as the major American airports can be by a snowstorm, for instance, so I can't imagine the principle of precaution so poorly applied in my country as it is here in Homestead. Why is it so neglected?Posted by Ben Brumfield at September 29, 2005 12:00 PMThere's a culture of risk, stronger than the culture of security and the inclination to self-protection.
There are the remains of a pioneering spirit that for decades, or rather for centuries, has accomodated itself to a sense of temporary habitat, perched as it were on the side of the road, pressing forward with the frontier, and by definition precarious.
But there is also, anchored deep in the mentality of the country, a magical, semi-superstitious relationship to what Americans, even the secular ones, are prone to call Mother Nature. As if their omnipotence found its limits there, reached its rational confines there. As if the Promethean will to get the better of all things and all people imposed on itself a limit of principle and wisdom in this relationship to the elements. No pity for our enemies, the American of the twenty-first century seems to be saying; no mercy for terrorists, certainly, or even for opponents of the country's economic supremacy. But we'll let nature take her best shot.
Ben explains the reason why gulf coast residents don't bother to hurricane proof their homes thus:
"There's a culture of risk, stronger than the culture of security and the inclination to self-protection."
Exactly, and how much sympathy or pity should the rest of us have for the gambler who plays and loses? To play with your own and your family's safety is one thing but what really boggles the mind is that it seems quasi-public buildings like hospitals and retirement homes don't have to take reasonable precautions either. Surely Ben's rather dubious economies of scale argument doesn't hold in these cases. From this distance it seems the problems in Texas and Louisiana are the result of years of public and private under investment in communal havens and secure dwellings respectively - and please don't tell me the local people can't afford it; a 50 cent per gallon gas tax would soon raise enough money and would be good for the Earth too.
Posted by: Paul Stables at October 1, 2005 06:11 AMPaul, those were Lévy's words, not mine. It's his characterization of south Florida building techniques as inadequate and motivatied by bravado, not mine. Were the state of affairs as inadequate as he portrays (and you seem to think), and were that situation motivated by pure recklessness, you'd be right.
Your point about nursing homes and hospitals is well taken, as is the idea of better-built public bulidings that can double as shelters -- in both cases the infrastructure is clearly inadequate, and economies of scale apply.
There's an alternative hurricane strategy for other dwellings, which is the one in place on the Gulf Coast -- insurance as a means of spreading risk to property. It has its inadequacies, as we're discovering, but I'd suspect that even you would use it yourself. In a hypothetical Gulf coast Sturmfestung Stables, there are still properties you'd insure rather than hurricane-proofing. Do you really want a 20-foot elevated cement bunker to park your lawnmower in?
Regarding the larger point, one might also ask how much sympathy anyone deserves for a misfortune that could have been foreseen. This applies to those on the Pacific Rim reckless enough to live over fault lines. It also applies to Westerners willing to make their homes in lands prone to bouts of murderous xenophobia.
Sorry Ben, I thought you were using Levy as a proxy for your own views.
Given the problem with storm surges in your low lying neck of the woods any hypothetical Gulf coast Sturmfestung Stables would certainly be elevated. It would be made of reinforced concrete but that doesn't mean it would look like a bunker. And yes I'd probably use the space underneath to store the lawn mower and I would take out insurance for that. And I would be quite happy to stay there with my emergency rations, my candles, and my battery powered radio for the duration of any hurricane, and it would be much more comfortable and safer than clogging up the roads in a long evacuation convoy.
Regarding your larger point of how much sympathy you would have if things went bottom up for those on the Pacific Rim reckless enough to live over fault lines or for Westerners willing to make their homes in lands prone to bouts of murderous xenophobia - well I shall leave it to those who live in such places to comment. It is my good fortune that neither applies to me. What does worry me about my situation is that it looks as though I am going to be uncomfortably close to ground zero for the next flu epidemic. And if H5N1 really does jump the species barrier from birds to humans then that's not going to be pleasant. And yes I do have life insurance for that.
You know, what I'd envisioned for Sturmfestung Stables was the typical layout of a southeast Texas home, only raised on twenty-foot mounds of earth, rather than stilts. Imagine Mayan pyramids. That'd entail a lot of grass, so you'll need a riding lawnmower and a shed to park it in. The image of a smaller twenty-foot pyramid to raise your lawnmower shed is a delightful one, you'll have to admit.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at October 2, 2005 09:12 PMBen said:
"The image of a smaller twenty-foot pyramid to raise your lawnmower shed is a delightful one, you'll have to admit."
Yes, but what would the angle of incline be and how would I get the damn mower up there?
Posted by: Paul Stables at October 3, 2005 06:42 AMPerhaps you could do a sort of spiral version of the step pyramid, like those medieval paintings of the Tower of Babel. That'd make your house wheelchair accessible, too.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at October 3, 2005 07:12 AM