Saw an article yesterday interviewing a couple who says they’ll now have to rebuild their beachfront house for the third time, and that their second rebuild wasn’t even finished when Helene sent their house surfing down the street. That their insurance won’t cover it.
I’m flabbergasted that anyone would even consider rebuilding there. You’re lucky to even have insurance – most insurance companies have been fleeing the state.
Here’s a radical idea: don’t rebuild there. This is only going to get worse.
I built it all the same! Just to show em!
It sank into the swamp…
So, I built a second one! That sank into the swamp…
So I built a third one! That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp!
But the fourth one stayed up!
Same mentality…
Or more to the point. If you have the money to build a beachfront house, why are you not building it to be virtually indestructible? Like one of those indestructible monolithic dome homes.
We can build concrete structures that will laugh at hurricanes. We can build them with their living areas raised well above the ground so water can simply flow underneath and around them. Sure, it’s more expensive to build this way, but it can be done. And really, I would argue that if you can’t afford to build such a home, you simply cannot afford to live right on the beach.
I always wonder what’s going on in the heads of Americans when they go to an area notorious for being hit by hurricanes or tornadoes and then decide they should build their house out of basically toothpicks with some plaster. Here in Switzerland, pretty much everything except for maybe a garden shed is poured concrete, and I guarantee that if the folks in Florida or Oklahoma did the same the “devastation” would be comparatively tiny.
How arrogant of you.
Florida is a little different than Switzerland, not least due to weather and poverty. There indeed ARE fully concrete and hemp-crete type homes (many styles of homes), but they are unpopular (but becoming more popular) because they trap damp (Florida is extremely humid, unlike Switzerland), grow mold, don’t breathe, and cause sickness. Since 2005, all newly built homes are required to have concrete and rebar at certain areas including windows and doors.
https://www.etr-aw.com/full-concrete-homes/
They also are prone to cracking due to shifting. The lower blocks can absorb water, either through these cracks or cracks in waterproofing like paint, and then leak with every heavy rain. Cement (a component of concrete) is one of the largest CO2 emitters in its production, and cement dust is carcinogenic. Concrete houses that are flooded (eyewitnesses report up to 25-50feet of water height) will have to be gutted and possibly torn down anyway once flooded, since the flooding itself ruins everything and makes it unsafe. Since you’ll have to gut the whole thing anyway, may as well use wood which can be replaced more easily.
Tornados (since you mentioned Oklahoma) can punch a 2x4 board through a concrete wall. Concrete isn’t a Kevlar vest house against all weather types and it isn’t an ideal material either for building in every climate.
If the people who were flooded had stayed because they had concrete houses, even more would have died, but instead drowned in a concrete box. This was a storm that needed evacuation.
Florida is extremely humid, unlike Switzerland, grow mold, don’t breathe, and cause sickness.
Concrete houses are still being made in the humid regions near the equator and will still be made in the long future… As for the mold problem, the houses are made such that water seepage is minimised heavily.
Don’t wooden houses have the problem of termites making big joint families of their siblings?
And full concrete houses are made in Florida currently. But the original question was why do some people prefer wood houses to concrete in Florida - and I gave a long list. Yes there are pros and cons to many materials. That’s not really the original question though, which was asked pretty insensitively and condescendingly in a thread about a very recent, ongoing disaster where they are still finding bodies.
Maybe in proper houses they would be fixing broken windows instead of finding bodies.
“it’s not the time to discuss solutions to this” seems to be the American way of dealing with any disaster, from hurricanes to mass shootings.
A proper house won’t save people from fucking 25 FEET (7.6 meters) to 50 FEET of flooding in a hurricane. A ship can’t even save them because it’ll get knocked into houses. Same thing with a sub. There’s weather you can’t survive.
it’s not the time to discuss solutions to this
I never stated that. I am just unwilling to go over every building material pedantically when the problem - overwhelming climate events - isn’t going to be fixed with fucking concrete blocks.
Termite infestations are rare. And they can be easily eliminated through pesticide control if you should be that unfortunate.
they trap damp (Florida is extremely humid, unlike Switzerland), grow mold, don’t breathe, and cause sickness
Hi. Brazilian here. A very humid country where I live. Here, almost all houses are made of brick and concrete, even near the seashore. There are even entire concrete buildings near Brazilian beaches (such as Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Salvador, Recife, Porto Alegre, Florianópolis and so on) as well as near rivers (such as Manaus and even at the capital, Brasília). Indeed, mold is a thing, a thing that needs constant cleaning. Wall painting does a role in protecting from mold buildup.
We don’t exactly have hurricanes (because it’s scientifically a thing from the northern hemisphere) but we do have tornadoes and strong winds very often. We have hailstorms. However, there are very old houses and buildings still standing since 1800, centennial houses.
That’s fine and perfectly allowed, but constant mold cleaning fyi isn’t good for your health in general compared to minimal or no mold cleaning. The concrete holds moisture, and the paint is what keeps it at bay, sure. But there are likely other materials that can be developed that might not do this. And there’s also the impact to the environment to consider, as well as health impacts of what could be getting offgassed in our paints and walls, especially when mixed with cleaners because they are constantly being moldy.
It’s not that I personally think concrete houses are bad anyway. I personally think housing variety is important and that housing standards are also important as we learn more about civil engineering. I think concrete has limitations as a material, which is long established in material sciences, that no material is a “perfect” material for everything. There are risks and flaws and benefits to every choice. Therefore again, to answer the question of “well why not all full concrete houses?” It’s mainly the 25 FEET OF FLOODING that makes it irrelevant as a solution in this case.
I’ve lived in the Caribbean. Well-off people lived in reinforced concrete buildings not in flood areas. Worst that usually happened is some broken window.
No plaster except on drywall seams.
Yes I’m sure you know better than the engineers who write building codes for a living.
I used to live in Charleston SC and my boss owned a beach home on Folly Beach - one of two houses there that survived Hurricane Hugo in 1989. It survived because it was elevated on massive concrete pilings that extended 60’ down to bedrock. When it was built in the 1970s it was two streets back from the beach; after Hugo it was beachfront property.
My dumbass boss (a Rush Limbaugh fan, no surprise) had it torn down despite its being in perfect condition because it was too small (it was “just” a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, one-story layout). He built a much larger, conventional foundation house on the lot, which was apparently badly damaged by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, although it apparently survived and has been repaired. Just a matter of time …
Even in UK, houses are made of brick and concrete which have the ability to withstand flood and hurricane at a certain level
Good job y’all don’t have earthquakes.
That’s why earthquake was not mentioned ^… And no Ivan earthquake seems to hate the place so they don’t bother
I was just driving around the beaches of Pinellas County (Tampa Bay area) today. Entire neighborhoods are destroyed. Beach front condos, restaurants and stores, also destroyed. In many areas, anything ground level got flooded/wrecked by storm surge. I saw several boats in places there are not supposed to be boats.
If Tampa Bay takes a direct hit right now it’s going to be really fuckin bad for a lot of people.
What’s also scary is that right now everyone has been piling up debris, ruined appliances and all manor of belongings outside for disposal. Piles ten feet high along every street. All this shit is about to be flying around in hurricane force winds and storm surge. Is a recipe for disaster.
That’s terrifying… I hope you and your family are able to get somewhere safe for the time being
They also had sunk all their savings into that rebuild. How do you think about trying a third time when you have nothing to even work with?
this might be a shock, but: in florida there are a lot of stupid people with a lot of money but don’t know what the fuck they’re doing with money
these people likely also bought spray painted gold sneakers not too long ago
Yeah, I don’t get it, except the couple I saw (maybe you saw the same interview, there seem to be several of these) acted like this is just a bad year for weather and they ‘don’t want to think’ about climate change. They at least seem the type who don’t think it’s real.
I feel for rescue units who can’t leave, and who will likely be rescuing these stubborn cunts when the next massive storm of the year hits them.
Get more people to donate to your GoFundMe campaign, I guess?
literal sunk cost fallacy
Sunk Coast Fallacy
We’ve been using the sunk cost fallacy for too long to give up on it now.
Slow clap
I don’t know if this is the case for that couple, but a lot of insurance requires that you rebuild on the same location. We need to change laws so that this isn’t the case anymore. It is a massive problem.
I mean, you can probably build a house that can reliably survive the conditions there. It’s just gonna be really expensive and may not look all that pretty.
It’s gonna have to handle water up to a certain height and wind-blown debris smashing into it.
Like, think of a lighthouse or flak tower or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse
Sometimes a lighthouse needs to be constructed in the water itself. Wave-washed lighthouses are masonry structures constructed to withstand water impact, such as Eddystone Lighthouse in Britain and the St. George Reef Light of California. In shallower bays, Screw-pile lighthouse ironwork structures are screwed into the seabed and a low wooden structure is placed above the open framework, such as Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse. As screw piles can be disrupted by ice, steel caisson lighthouses such as Orient Point Light are used in cold climates. Orient Long Beach Bar Light (Bug Light) is a blend of a screw pile light that was converted to a caisson light because of the threat of ice damage. Skeletal iron towers with screw-pile foundations were built on the Florida Reef along the Florida Keys, beginning with the Carysfort Reef Light in 1852.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_tower
With concrete walls up to 3.5 m (11 ft) thick, their designers considered the towers to be invulnerable to attack by the standard ordnance carried by RAF heavy bombers at the time of their construction.
The Soviets, in their assault on Berlin, found it difficult to inflict significant damage on the flak towers, even with some of the largest Soviet guns, such as the 203 mm M1931 howitzers.
After the war, the demolition of the towers was often considered not feasible and many remain to this day, with some having been converted for alternative use.
Living in a lighthouse sounds great. If you open windows at the top it’ll pull air up through the whole structure for cooling.
I mean a flak tower could be pretty badass to live in. If shit ever hit the fan you’d already be fortified. It would probably look good to an insurer too.
I think I had seen this on lemmy first, that they turned one of the flak towers into a hotel.
Buy me a flak tower in Berlin daddy. Rescue me… and my wife and cats.
only if it comes with the original flak guns and a good supply of ammo.
Need something to keep those damn kids off my grass.
So listen, those flak guns don’t aim below the horizon, so you’re going to need to modify those. Don’t want you going in blind. Like as blind as you would quickly be shooting flak at close range.
Its not about being effective.
its about sending a message.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when an insurer has to come up with a policy for a veritable fortress with 11ft thick reinforced concrete walls.
I would love to be the local concrete supplier because it would be north of $5.8m in just concrete.
Good point, thanks!
You mean a house that looks like a cybertruck?
Ya know, if Musk was actually smart, he’d start a company building ugly, impenetrable fortresses. His fanbois would step over each other, since a fair amount of them are tinfoil hat conspiracists.
At least don’t fucking rebuild it the same way, with the same materials, as the last half dozen times.
Sink some footings down deep, cast the walls out of concrete (you can still put fancy shit up on the concrete to make it look nice, but the concrete will be a fuckton stronger against wind/water/etc)
I know some people from Clearwater and I think they’d just say “this is our community and our home”. It doesn’t make logical sense, but I’d say a lot about the town a person decides to live in is emotional over practical (unless you move somewhere for a job).
They are morons and refuse to do the smart thing no matter how much it costs the government and insurance company.
It’s not climate change. There is no mention of climate change anywhere in Florida law.
It was a pleasant surprise to hear the Meterologist on the video in that article specifically explain warming oceans from carbon are causing the increased frequency/intensity.
“Fake news.” - MAGA
It’s also the hotter atmosphere being able to hold more water and energy potential. That’s why Helene was able to drag so much water into the Appalachian Mountains.
This happened in 2005 as well, except with 3 hurricanes; Francis, Ivan, and Jeanne. I doubt climate change has gotten better since then.
It’s gotten WAY better. There is no longer any mention of climate change in Florida law. Ron DeathSentence solved climate change
Yup, just like cheeto in chief said. Stop testing and the cases go down!
Well fortunately most of Florida is about 3 feet above sea level, so this is a problem that will fix itself before long.
Too long, unfortunately.
as if you didn’t have enough reasons to get the fuck out of florida already. leaving that shithole state was the best thing i’ve ever done, not just for my mental health, but apparently physical safety also
My moving date was literally scheduled for this upcoming Friday… I pick up the u-haul on Tuesday, and my lease in Colorado starts on Tuesday of next week. This thing is trying to keep me here in hell.
Shit, it’s headed right for where I live.
Run! Be safe but Run!
I need $4200 to ditch this place and get back nyc (my home), but I just can’t seem to get it together. This place is like a black hole.
What a specific number.
I’ve had the last year to work it out.
$3k for the first month and deposit on a place in Brooklyn I already have planned, and $1200 for the drive up (I need a U-Haul to move stuff). This includes my calculations for how much gas I would need and food I would eat on the trip up.
It’s a 16 -20 hour drive, and I plan to do it all in one shot.
It might be worth it to sell or donate a lot of stuff and buy it after you move. You can ship books through media mail. If you can get rid of enough and ship other stuff, then you could possibly avoid having to rent a truck.
If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t have a problem moving
It’s probably cheaper to donate things like plates and coffee mugs than it is to move them. You can find very nice plates and other items at thrift stores for a few bucks. You can sell your tv instead of risking it breaking. Anything that’s heavy or bulky is likely easy enough to replace secondhand unless it has great sentimental value to you. The most expensive thing to replace would be a mattress. Even if you could downsize to a regular van instead of a full truck you would save a lot of money.
That’s how I moved back when I was poor, and I moved a lot. I would buy used furniture in whatever new place I was in. Saves a lot of money if you don’t ship your stuff with you. And media mail is fantastic.
Username related. Don’t wait until the last minute.
You are living in one of the wrongest parts of the world then.
Not on purpose. Just because I can’t afford to leave.
Well, can you afford to stay, then?
Only by the skin of my teeth
Take your whiskeys wid u 2
Always. I store it in my stomach.
U will survive everywhere
Time to reconsider where you live.
It’s a lot harder than you think to leave
I know. But I’d do everything in my power to get out of there. This is only going to get worse. Stay safe.
The last time I tried to escape Florida, it took me 6 years, and I just barely made it out.
I’m already a year in this time, and I’m mostly trying not to kill myself.
I’m working on it
Originally they thought that Helene would be a cat 3, too.
But the Democrats aim with the Hurricane machine proclaimed by MTG is getting better. Maybe the third try actually turns Mar-a-Lago into a pile of rubble.
I’m on the team running the weather machine this time. We are very excited for this run!
After gathering so much data from the last several storms, we finally have the power to call hurricanes and tornadoes exactly where we want them to go!
We’ll be feasting on the fetuses Boden personally hands us after this run, fellas!
Just gotta concentrate a bunch of gays in one place, and the hurricanes follow. It’s science!
I just put 3,000 Soros bucks into the Jade Helmet system with instructions to level the homes of any florida lemmygrad commenters in this post. You’re doing “there is no god”’s work, friend.
Great, you just gave maga all the fully verified truth they need to confirm their insanity…
But then we would have to charge the hurricane with destruction of evidence.
Top Secret papers all over Florida!
deleted by creator
Yo this guy is awesome, whole ass sailor
deleted by creator
Ay, stay safe out there. I’m not expecting it to be too bad for me, just hoping we don’t lose power for an extended period of time.
Best wishes from 239.
deleted by creator
Did you make it through alright?
deleted by creator
Great to hear! I got power back about 3 hours ago myself
I know this isn’t a great thing to say due to housing costs, but I think you really need to find a different place to live than a boat because hurricanes are only going to get worse.
At least boats can move
And sink.
You can’t really be claiming that houses are no safer than boats in a hurricane.
You can when the boat is half way up the coast in the Chesapeake bay.
Exactly how fast do you think a sailboat someone lives on goes?
Depends on the hurricane and how close it is. Boats can be better in flood conditions but there’s the potential to capsize them. There’s going to be a bit of risk calculus going on.
Then why have we invented houseboats? It’s clearly the best of both worlds
Oh gods no. I’m saying get the fuck out of the southeast US while you still can!
And float.
As I understand it, mangrove swamps are a great place to ride out storms in a boat. They naturally reduce waves, and should help cut down on some of the wind. There’s a whole demonstration of how they work in the Keys. Can’t remember where I saw it.
Obviously it would be better to not be in the path of the storm, but if you have to be, there are much worse places than around mangroves.
deleted by creator
Beautiful! Hope you stay safe!
I’m pretty sure they know what they’re doing better than you. I imagine the mangroves will protect them fairly well from damage, and as long as they have power and their bilge pump is working they shouldn’t sink. The water is probably pretty shallow anyway, so that might not even be possible.
I was recently looking at printed tiny houses. Some are pretty sturdy, and 0 carbon. They are pricier than tiny prefab but with no energy bills to speak of and sturdier construction, I’m wondering how they will fare in our area.
People who end up moving into tiny houses often regret it because they don’t really consider what ‘tiny’ means (things like not being able to cook a really nice meal because your kitchen is so small or just the inconvenience of having to go up and down a ladder at night if you need to use the bathroom).
The online real estate resource polled more than 2,264 U.S. adults about what they wish they had done differently with their current housing. A whopping 44 percent of participants had housing regrets, and the biggest regret among homeowners had to do with size. One in three homeowners said they wish they had chosen a larger home, compared to only nine percent who wished they had downsized.
https://www.countryliving.com/real-estate/news/a44021/tiny-house-regret/
Thanks for your reply. Meals wouldn’t be an issue. I’d be cooking dinner for my child and their partner at their place, so they wouldn’t have to worry about dinner and washing up, after work, and the model I’m looking at is single floor. I was more wondering about sturdiness in bad weather.
It would have to be better attached to its foundations than your average trailer park trailer.
I was thinking about that. 3/8x10 rebar?
That is more than I would be able to tell you, sorry. I know a little about a lot of things.
Steel frame construction with tstud sub structure and full insulation envelope clad in brick.
Or do a monolithic dome tiny house.
Both would be sturdy as hell and very energy efficient, which addresses climate change better than insulating a Home Depot shed.
Use all-thread set in drilled holes with epoxy if you didn’t plan for that with a slab
deleted by creator
Well that sounds lovely. Good luck to you!
FWIW, The Weather Channel says something slightly different:
Most of the new computer guidance suggests that a Category 3 hurricane will develop, though some models have a stronger storm than this. Residents should prepare as if a Category 4 or 5 hurricane is anticipated.
Oof
Well it’s now already a category 4 hurricane so this was quickly outdated.
At the time you posted this they were actually upgrading it to a category 5. It’s the fastest developing storm in recorded history.
Yup:
Data from NOAA and Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that the maximum sustained winds have increased to near 155 mph (250 km/h) with higher gusts. Milton is a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Milton is forecast to become a category 5 hurricane later today and become a large hurricane over the eastern Gulf of Mexico
Source: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT4+shtml/071453.shtml
Maybe if they stopped voting for fucking Republicans and start fixing the climate they wouldn’t be all kinds of fucked as climate change causes insurance companies to say fuck these southern states.
Im from Florida and it’s so frustrating that we are always just 1 or 2 percent away from voting out these morons but we all have to suffer because the old people vote their shriveled asses off.
Yeah, it seems like the only reasonable (in their mind) explanations should be it’s either climate change or the wrath of God. Either way, it should indicate they need to do something different.
Are you saying Democrats aren’t being lobbied?
Of course they are, it’s why they are using their weather control powers to cause all of these storms. Duh.
They’re clearing out the coast so they can more easily mine lithium.
This is legitimately a conspiracy theory being pushed and parroted by
fucking moronspeople who voted red
Okay there strawman bothsider.
Lol, ok. It’s not hard to look at their records.
Okay there, go ahead and provide your evidence that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans then.
I’m not playing the “do the research” bullshit that you hear from MAGA morons.
We have a choice between 2 main groups. One believes there’s a climate problem of human making. The other does not.
I understand that. I just also believe that they will ultimately do nothing about it in a meaningful way. I hope I’m wrong.
Demoncrats worship the same demons the Republicans do, Capitali$m with a capital $.
Exactly, they just use prettier words. Their boot is still pushing our necks down.
Climate change is a removed, huh, Republicans who’ve spent thirty years denying it? (My heart goes out to all the people in the southeast who actually didn’t spend decades denying its existence and hampering efforts to slow it.)
Please do not pretend climate change is any one groups responsibility.
You ever have a group project and a couple of the other kids refuse to do their part?
Wow that GOP rep that said democrats created the hurricane is going to have to start working overtime to sell the argument again. At some point the people in the red states must start to wonder why it’s so coincidental that the predictions from the left (science) keep coming true.
Well, at least their aim is much closer to Mar-a-Lago this time. Maybe the next major hurricane gets the direction right, and then the Democrats will dial it up to a cat5 or better! /s
No one has bigger hurricanes than me!
Or they’ll march on the capital again and demand the weather machine controls.
If we make this ILLEGAL to Talk about then we’ll be Fine!
Don’t look up… or out, in this case!
Maybe if all those sinful woke communist homosexuals would leave Florida, God wouldn’t have to keep sending hurricanes to punish all the good God-fearing patriots for tolerating their iniquities! /s
Mother Nature is speedbaggin’ North America’s penis.
Bet it’s gonna be a 4 because of how hot the water is.
Its cat 5 now
Oh wow it was literally just a cat 4 like a couple hour ago.
So this is now one of the fastest developing storms ever now and it hasn’t even gotten moving. And halved the time needed for “rapid development” as a tag.
We are gonna need some new terms for these mega hurricanes.
According to WaPo it is literally the fastest developing storm in recorded history. The second fastest was Beryl, and Helene was also in the top ten. The entire top ten is occupied by hurricanes from 2021 on.
Finally, something we can be proud of!
Hermancanes
Someone needs to upgrade it’s cable runs, it’s throughput is being limited.
this is so scary for everyone in the path. I hope the president calls a special session so they can get more relief funding.
And the ground is still saturated from Helene, so it’s not going to be absorbing much of the water. The flooding will be far worse than a cat 5 on dry ground.
