"John" wrote in message
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Ed Huntress wrote:
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Ed Huntress wrote:
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On Sep 3, 6:09 am, "Ed wrote:
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On Sep 2, 3:09 pm, "Ed wrote:





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On 2011-09-02, Ed wrote:

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On Sep 2, 6:37 am, "Ed wrote:
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"Ed wrote:

Is anyone starting to plan evacuation out there? The latest
models
show
the
eye going right over my garage.g I'm only 6 miles from salt
water,
but
I'm at 115 feet of altitude, so I'm going to ride it out. The
storm
surge
*could* wind up re-shaping the barrier islands of NJ, like one
did
just
under a century ago.

It doesn't look good.

Did you come out okay?

Wes

Oh, yeah. But I got a new wading pool in my basement. d8-)

All is well, thanks. Everything is drying out pretty well.

A question...how does one recover from flooding when you have no
power
like so many affected by Irene?

No pumps, no vacuums, no lights.

How are you and your neighbors coping with the cleanup when one
does
not have power?

We have power. My house lost power at 2:00 AM during the hurricane,
when
a
tree branch fell on our pole drops from across the street. My
neighbors
did
not lose power, so, early the next morning, I ran an extension cord
from
my
neighbor's garage to my house.

Meantime, the water in the basement had risen to almost 7 inches.
The
sump
pump didn't actually pump it all out. After the rain stopped, the
level
went
down 4 inches without the pump running. It just ran down the sump
hole
and
out under our slab. Very strange.

Why was not the pump pumping? Did it break or something?

The pump stopped at 2:00 AM when my power went out. I started it
again
the
next morning by running an extension cord from my neighbor's garage.

One other house and mine were the only two on the street that lost
power.
The other guy's house was on "Good Morning America" the next morning,
because he had a photogenic mess of downed wires and a big tree right
across
the street. Mine was too dull for them.g

--
Ed Huntress

i- Hide quoted text -

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FYI...I just heard that 900,000 people still don't have power.

TMT

They can't even get to some of them yet in Vermont. Connecticut had to
essentially rebuild 4/5 of their power distribution system. Some folks
got
off a lot worse than we did.

--
Ed Huntress- Hide quoted text -

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I am impressed how quickly they have been able to react under very
tough condiions

And I am amazed as to how conservatives can think that this was an
insignificant weather event when it placed in the top ten of economic
disasters that have struck the Country...and the final price tag is
not in yet.

TMT

Well, that was their typical knee-jerk stupidity, which is the entire
basis
of many of their lives. They live in a fantasyland that exists only
between
their ears, fed by rightard garbage from the Internet and talk radio.

Not that much of the left doesn't feed themselves the same way. It's
just
that there's so much more of it on the right.



It depends on what yardstick you measure disasters with. As far as
human
life toll it was not much of a disaster, and the toll included people
falling off ladders getting ready for the storm not really a direct
result
of the storm but rather poor use of a ladder. As far as economic cost
the numbers are not in yet but since the money given to the states and
counties is based on the estimate of damage it will sure be set at a
high
value, remember that eventually it will all dribble out of our pockets
in
taxes.

People all over the East have lost their homes, their businesses, and
their
property, much of which is uninsured because most homeowners don't have
flood insurance, and some have lost loved ones, and you're talking about
the
effect on your taxes.

I can't relate to that attitude at all.

Ed,

You should reread what I said. I commented on on the fact that it was
said that this is one of the 10 worst disasters in this country and that
that is not a legitimate statement of fact.

Ok. If you confine "disasters" to loss of human life, it was not a big one.
If you include property damage, it was.

I also commented that the politicians push up the numbers so they can rake
in more money from the government by embellishing the cost of the damage.
I guess I am a little cynical about politicians and money since they
convicted over 37 including at least three judges in this county in the
last year and still have more coming up for trial.

I don't know how they audit those claims, or if they do, so I can't judge
it.

It is a shame that the people didn't have flood insurance but government
flood insurance is one of the cheapest insurance policy s you can buy but
in spite of that many people don't get it. They even let you renew it
after you get flooded out several times.

I'm guessing that a lot of the dollar value of flood damage was done to
homes and businesses that are not on flood plains, but which became
inundated with the heavy rain. That's how I got flooded -- I'm 115 feet
above sea level, and probably 90 feet above the Raritan River. But I got
whacked by two rainfalls, the first almost 6 inches and the second one 10
inches. I have no idea if I'm even eligible for flood insurance.


The thing that I cannot comprehend is that the news comments on a small
number of people that died in the hurricane but never says much about the
thousands of people that get killed on the highways, home accidents and
other ways but expounds on the victims of the hurricane. Not that one
life is more or less value than another but the news has become
sensationalism.

That's news. If it bleeds, it leads, but only locally. A guy getting killed
in a car accident in Nevada is not news in NY. And 40,000 deaths is a
chronic tragedy. Chronic things don't make the news. Hurricanes, tornadoes,
and so on, do. That's just the way it's always been.

No one in PA wants to read about a house fire in Cleveland.


As far as the government helping peoples losses, I do have somewhat of a
problem with it.
Why shouldn't the government help anyone that has a loss, not in the flood
or hurricane but the person whose house burned down and has no insurance.
Where is the dividing line where the government makes a decision to help
the individual?

I think it has to do with the correlative economic and service effect on an
area. One house can be dealt with in a town. A wiped-out town cannot. It
needs big-time help to recover.

In my estimation is is unfair to help one group without helping everyone
that has a non insured loss. So what do you think the policy should be?

Well, first off, I agree with much of your basic premise. I'm still furious
that we subsidize homeowner's insurance for people who build on barrier
islands, which is a big issue in NJ. My feeling is that doing something that
stupid and self-indulgent should not be covered by the rest of us, except
regarding protecting human life to the extent possible. (They tell me that I
have it all wrong, that we don't really subsidize it, but I haven't explored
it enough to know for sure.)

A region that's nearly wiped out by a flood or other disaster is not
something that can be easily judged, IMO. I do feel we have a responsibility
to each other to try to ameliorate acts of nature that cause severe regional
hardship. But I don't think we should subsidize stupidity or selfish
indulgence.

Living on a barrier island, for example, is like heaven for some people. My
parents did it during the last years of their lives. But it costs the rest
of us somehow. On a barrier island, a hurricane raises real hell with the
roads, the beaches, and so on, even when it doesn't kill people. I'd let
them return to nature, like Island Beach State Park in NJ, or Assateague
Island off the Delmarva Peninsula.

On the other hand, the people in Vermont had no reason to expect the
disaster they faced. Who would have guessed that a hurricane would flood out
all those inland towns? What's the chance, 1:100,000?

They need help. The state can't handle it alone. So I believe the rest of us
should pitch in. It's part of the cost of living in a civilized society.

--
Ed Huntress



John








I can think of a number of disasters that have killed a lot more people.
The steamboat sultana blowing up killed more than a thousand. The
triangle shirtwaist fire. a passenger boat sunk in the east river in NYC
killed quite a few not to mention a bunch of train wrecks over the last
century as well as airline crashes.

John

Great. And then there was the Civil War, which makes them all look like a
sore thumb by comparison.