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To: Polybius
I want to clarify that when I said the extent of the disaster was inevitable, I was referring specifically to New Orleans and I don't think it applies to any other hurricane prone area of the country at all. The effects of hurricanes in Florida or Texas or South Carolina that you spoke of are possible to mitigate with current technology and established government procedures, but the city of New Orleans occupies a unique place.
16 posted on 09/03/2005 3:13:27 PM PDT by spinestein (The evidence fairly and honestly presented, truth will take care of itself.)
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To: spinestein
I want to clarify that when I said the extent of the disaster was inevitable, I was referring specifically to New Orleans and I don't think it applies to any other hurricane prone area of the country at all. The effects of hurricanes in Florida or Texas or South Carolina that you spoke of are possible to mitigate with current technology and established government procedures, but the city of New Orleans occupies a unique place.

I see your point.

What I am doing is making the distinction between people disasters and property disasters.

New Orleans, like Pompeii, was simply plopped down in a bad place. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

So is my brother's condo in Key Largo.

However, the tragedy is in the people killed and not in the property destroyed.

Take, for example, my brother's condo in Key Largo, just north of Islamorada. It's a great place to spend weekends at but he knows perfectly well that it can disappear on any given hurricane season.

You saw what that storm surge did to that train at Islamorada in 1935. That train had been sent from Miami down to the Florida Keys on the Flagler Overseas Railway to rescue 259 veterans working on the Florida Keys Overseas Highway construction as part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project.

The evacuation train, however, left Miami way too late.

It picked up the veterans, it started back for Miami and then the storm surge swept over Islamorada and swept that train off the tracks as if were a Tinker Toy.

All 259 veterans aboard that train died.

Every last trace of the 1935-era Islamorada is gone except for the Memorial commemorating the disaster.

Be that as it may, there is a new town of Islamorada and the Florida Keys are crammed end to end with condos.

However, everybody in the Florida Keys knows that they are on land that is only borrowed from Mother Nature and that Mother Nature can destroy every last piece of property on any given hurricane season.

However, any future disaster in the Florida Keys will be a merely a property disaster and not a human life disaster.

The lessons were tragically learned in 1935 and not a human soul stays in the Florida Keys when a major hurricane is coming.

17 posted on 09/03/2005 4:10:14 PM PDT by Polybius
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