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Harvey

Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Messages
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Location
SE Texas
Been thinking of all the folks I have met and ridden with in the TSCEC and various HS series since '72. I am near Beaumont and blessed to have only had minimal flooding to my office bldg, nothing at my home. Sending prayers and good wishes to all you guys and your families.
 
Last night I talked to my best friend, Stan, from high school back in ye olde Germany. He's retired military in Houston. He survived the first and second hits. But he lives on the far west side, and when the Corps of Engineers was forced to release water from the reservoirs, things finally caught up with him. He got about 2 to 3' of water in the house and, so far, still can't get back in.
 
Texas Republicans facetious bumper sticker...

"keep your filthy government hands off my disaster relief funds"...

I really don't want anyone to suffer unnecessarily, but hypocritical Republican idiots like Ted Cruz is eating major crow and paying a high political price right now. Cruz and his cronies are squirming as they contradict all their past positions on disaster funding.

Someone in Congress really needs to point out Cruz's flagrant hypocrisy when he comes to the Senate floor demanding Federal funding for Texas, remember Sandy, Senator Cruz, we can't vote for the Harvey bill because it will assist Texas way too much....

Yes, that "big gubmint" is all bad until you actually needs its services.

ducking.gif


You can't have it both ways my cowering Libertarian leaning friends.

Fred
 
"Similarly, rebuilding Houston will not create any new wealth; it will merely restore some of what was lost"

Real estate construction, development and restoring housing does not create wealth by creating jobs etc?

Twisted logic from a Libertarian think tank...The Cato Institute.

:lol2:

RB

Heck, line up the hurricanes, then. :-P
 
"Similarly, rebuilding Houston will not create any new wealth; it will merely restore some of what was lost"

Real estate construction, development and restoring housing does not create wealth by creating jobs etc?

Twisted logic from a Libertarian think tank...The Cato Institute.

:lol2:

RB

:tab Are you even remotely being serious here? :brainsnap

:tab Sure, SOME people will get wealthy from this because other people will have to pay them for the things/services needed to rebuild. That does not mean that the NET wealth of the region has increased. REAL assets have been damaged and destroyed. Those assets are wealth. That wealth is now GONE. It can only be replaced by creating new wealth. The effort expended to create new wealth to replace destroyed wealth could have been used to create additional wealth. Think of it like this,

No destruction
1 + 1 = 2

Destruction and rebuilding
1 - 1 + 1 = 1

In the first case, old and new wealth are added together and there is more.

In the second case, old is destroyed (-1), so you are starting over. When it is replaced, you are no wealthier than you were before you started.

:tab All the destruction does is shift where the creation of new wealth goes. Instead of adding to the wealth of those that have suffered loss, it merely helps them regain what has been lost. The producers of the goods/services they would have bought if they had not suffered the loss will now suffer the loss instead. So while people in construction might benefit, people that provide other services and goods will lose out.

:tab If destruction were actually good for the entire economy, then we should be randomly destroying a major city every year or so to stimulate the economy! Maybe we could implement a Lotto system to select which city gets the honor of being sacrificed for the good of the whole! :cool2:
 
:tab



If destruction were actually good for the entire economy, then we should be randomly destroying a major city every year or so to stimulate the economy! Maybe we could implement a Lotto system to select which city gets the honor of being sacrificed for the good of the whole! :cool2:

I'm pretty sure I could come up with a short list of cities to start with. :trust:

Cutting budget line items for disaster help is really short sighted. The fact is that, whether for humanitarian reasons or political reasons, no politician is going to stand there and watch a Harvey or Katrina or Irma situation unfold, while smugly saying "let them eat cake." Not happening. Taking funding away simply means having to find emergency funding on the backside.

But in any case, the response to the gulf coast is proof that, in any case, good people acting from their hearts will probably do it better than the government.
 
Cutting budget line items for disaster help is really short sighted. The fact is that, whether for humanitarian reasons or political reasons, no politician is going to stand there and watch a Harvey or Katrina or Irma situation unfold, while smugly saying "let them eat cake." Not happening. Taking funding away simply means having to find emergency funding on the backside.

:clap:

Exactly.

The social cost of doing nothing with that many displaced individuals would be a tragedy.

RB
 
The one good thing I can say for Cruz (and about the only one) is he blocked Shela Jackson Lee's camera time during their conference with the Houston City Counsel.
 
The one good thing I can say for Cruz (and about the only one) is he blocked Shela Jackson Lee's camera time during their conference with the Houston City Counsel.

:lol2:

The rebuilding and perhaps new development rules will be interesting to watch in the Houston metroplex. The combination of climate change and aggressive real estate development (such as no zoning laws) without much thought given to drainage issues made an event like Harvey/Houston almost inevitable.

Should conditions be provided for FEMA aid? Are homes that are now flooded exempt from any future compensation? I am not for giving money without conditions and changes in future behavior such as building in flood zones or next to a river or bayou system.

I think high-rise apartments will be making a come back of sorts given the added layer of safety from flooding....

...for those living in Meyerland in Houston, why would you want to rebuild in the same area?

RB
 
Interesting questions, Red. Years ago, John Stossel questioned the wisdom of low cost gov't flood insurance, particularly for homes built out on islands that are hurricane barriers. The problem with insurance, and with FEMA aid, is how you handle people who bought homes in good conscience well back from the coast, having no idea that they were in a potential risk zone.

Honestly, there's a common sense balance here. If you build a house on Galveston Island facing the Gulf, you're kind of asking for it. If you build a house in Houston, 15 miles off the coast and 110' above sea level, you shouldn't have to worry about flooding from a Hurricane. The homes that were flooded in NW Houston were as the result of water released from a dam, and that is going to be very much second-guessed. Should they have started lowering the water level BEFORE the storm, as they've been doing north of Miami this week? This was statistically a low-risk situation, and there may be ways to further mitigate that risk, going forward.

I don't want to get into a political argument about whether the climate is warming, or whose fault that is. But for sure, all climatologists I know of agree that we will continue to see more dramatic weather events. That could be cold winters, hot summers, hurricanes, tornadoes, or forest fires in the west and northwest. Every time there's a major news story, people start questioning the wisdom of building near the coast, in Tornado Alley, near the San Andreas Fault Line, near forests that burn, etc. The reality is that, while we shouldn't build houses on barrier islands, we also can't live in a safety bubble. And we have to live somewhere.
 
A little thread drift perhaps? Oh well, I'm still hoping and praying for a good recovery for a lot of nice families I've met and raced with over the years.
 
Interesting questions, Red.

Honestly, there's a common sense balance here. If you build a house on Galveston Island facing the Gulf, you're kind of asking for it. If you build a house in Houston, 15 miles off the coast and 110' above sea level, you shouldn't have to worry about flooding from a Hurricane. The homes that were flooded in NW Houston were as the result of water released from a dam, and that is going to be very much second-guessed.

But for sure, all climatologists I know of agree that we will continue to see more dramatic weather events. That could be cold winters, hot summers, hurricanes, tornadoes, or forest fires in the west and northwest.

Yes I agree.

The lack of proper drainage with only two main dams created in the 1940s, no real zoning code and rapid unregulated Libertarian growth had a hand in damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Coupled with climate change, it was a recipe for disaster. I think going forward many of flooded areas should not be rebuilt. Quite a few people will probably take a FEMA check, etc. and move to a more suitable location.

Houston's big problem was not just water from the rain but the inability of water to drain properly. What's happened with Houston is that its growth has outpaced the capacity of the environment. So to be specific about that, flooding, which has always been endemic to Houston, has been getting worse.

More and more of the land is paved over. So when rain hits, you already have a clay-like soil which doesn't retain water well. And now it comes flushing off all the pavement and concrete and so on, and it just goes right into the streets...including the sewer which lacks capacity from all the new growth of subdivisions around Houston.

The streets fill up with water. And then as we see now, in a severe flooding, the whole city fills up. And, OK, any city in the U.S., no matter how careful, would have suffered severe damage from Harvey. What we're talking about here is Houston probably made matters worse than they needed to be.

We shall see what important zoning changes come to Houston as a result of the flooding from Harvey.

RB
 
Coulda been worse. Imagine if Houston were managed by NO's city government.
 
FCBH, you might have hit on something. You mentioned GOVT SERVICES, what a novel idea.....TAXES as LIKE an insurance policy.....money and assistance when needed...of course the adjuster would be a govt employee.....ahhh nevermind. Be kinda like the monkey wiping his butt on a wagon wheel...no end to it.
 
40 years ago there was a lot of rice grown out west of Houston , I remember seeing rice fields with no levees in them , one square mile fields perfectly flat . They were very easy to flood and drain to raise a rice crop every year . They are gone now , houses as far as you can see . 30 years ago they started building houses inside the levee of Barker reservoir . That levee is there for a reason , it is supposed to hold excess water so it can drain thru Houston at a controlled rate . And you wonder why some houses were flooded ? It is impossible to control drainage of 40 inches of rain on flat land in a few days . That's more than normal rain fall for a year . I looked very carefully at my property 40 years ago when I bought , I also had no idea I would be a city dweller in such a short time , with developers taking the cheap way out and pushing water uphill because it would cost them more to build channels to drain the water in the direction of natural flow even though the little channel they pushed 40 acres of development toward was dugout in the 50 s im gussing and hasn't been cleaned out or enlarged since . I waded water from my house to shop for three days . Getting close to time for me to move on .
 
Rice fields served essentially the same function as the marshlands that are largely gone. They were easy drainage. Moreover, marshlands were the great natural "shock absorber" that took the brunt of a hurricane and forced the storm to expend some of its energy. As all riders know, if you remove the shock absorber, the bump really hurts!
 
I don't care if you build in a high risk coastal/flood plain area, just don't expect/demand the govt, ins co or me to pay for it. Take your own risk,,,absorb your own risk.
 
The problem in Houston is that much of the flooding was not in what would traditionally be considered high risk. A 500-year flood plain? They had about as much likelihood of being flooded as my Arlington neighborhood, sheltered by a ridgeline to the southwest, has of being hit by a tornado. Oh wait.....:doh:

36996694660_fb193744f5_c.jpg
IMG_0761 by Tim Shelfer, on Flickr
 
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