www.americanthinker.com By Ted Noel
I live in Florida, home to numerous hurricane hits. I was without grid power for eight days when Hurricane Charlie came within a mile of my house in 2004. Later on, Frances and Jeanne were nearly as impressive, and I live in Central Florida, over a hundred miles from the coast where they came ashore. When Hurricane Ian hit, we were prepared. Our permanently installed generator kicked on fifteen seconds after Duke Energy went down and ran beautifully for five days. If only Spectrum could have gotten their internet service up that fast…
One of my friends lived in Fort Myers, and he didn’t fare quite so well. The weather forecasters thought Ian would strike Tampa, then the panhandle, then Tampa, and at the last minute Fort Myers. He rode out the storm surge on a plastic-wrapped mattress in his living room where the water had been about four feet deep. His house and cars were totaled, and they were about twenty miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, but only five hundred feet from the Caloosahatchee River. He’s actually in pretty good shape compared to residents of Sanibel Island, where some structures may still stand, but the damage is nearly total. The causeway and bridge connecting the barrier island to the mainland were destroyed.
All of this raises a simple question. What is the best way to deal with this sort of natural disaster? Where I live, it’s an inconvenience from which I can easily recover. That’s a lot like Tornado Alley where some people die each year, but most are unaffected. And even though California gets a lot of earthquakes, most people aren’t seriously affected and, contrary to Red State fever dreams, California won’t slide into the Pacific Ocean with the next temblor, thus favorably altering the political balance of the country. In short, there are natural challenges everywhere. But a few places are more challenged than others.
