Thoughts after another Hurricane passes by

After Hurricane Debbie damaged our home and we spent several weeks recovering, Hurricane Helene showed up and luckily passed us by without any major damage. Looks like towns like St. Marys, Perry, Valdosta, and Atlanta have more headaches to deal with than we do right now. Images of flooding, trees fallen on wires, cars submerged in water havoc, were shown on the news and are not new to my eyes. They have me recalling the same damages that were shown in Homestead, Florida when Category 5 Hurricane Andrew showed up. Or when Katrina hit New Orleans. I've been watching people survive these devastations for a long time. It's just another reason that I don't particularly like living this far south or so close to the ocean or Gulf. Floridians are used to it the way that Californians are used to earthquakes. Still, when the damage hits your home, it's traumatizing.

Back in the 80's when Ethiopia and other third world nations were crying about starvation, many countries especially the USA joined forces to send food, missionaries, and Peace Corp assistants to educate and save people who had much less. My mother (God rest her soul) would make jokes at the time like this: If people are starving in the desert, why don't they move out of the desert? It was so obvious it was funny. I suppose my logic is similar to my mother's. If we know that hurricanes happen around any beachfront location, why do we continue to build and sell property there? Regardless what Category classification a hurricane gets, it usually causes the most damage at landfall. Yet, greedy real estate moguls continue to build, buy, and sell right where the danger is the most imminent. Long ago, I envied those millionares who could afford to buy a mansion or condo with a beachfront view. Now I laugh. Fools. How's the view when the hurricane comes? Do you like all that flooding? Do you like being stranded or having to evacuate every month?

When I graduated from the University of South Florida in 2001, I was in a small school of educators. The most graduates that year from our college were from the school of Engineering. I was happy about that. I thought our future was going to be smarter and safer and better planned and built with all these Engineering graduates entering the workforce. What the heck happened? Two hundred years ago Lady Liberty was shipped and erected on Ellis Island and still stands today. 100 years ago Christ the Redeemer statue was erected on top of a mountain in Brazil. But today we have to spend our tax money, resources, and people on saving our people from their own stupidity because good city planning and smart engineering were not as important as beachfront property? Something is wrong.

Florida isn't the only state. We know that Texas, Louisiana, and the Carolinas have been hit with hurricanes also. Some people thought that northern states like Virginia or New Jersey were exempt from these types of problems, but ask the Sandy Hook residents how they felt after Superstorm Sandy caused destruction there. And while I was residing in Keansburg (a small beach town not too far from Sandy Hook) in 2020, I saw some greedy real estate moguls eyeballing the town with their big hotel considerations and I just rolled my eyes thinking "When will they ever learn?"

What's the point of a good college producing physicists and engineers that know better, when they can't assist the city with planning and safety if real estate law and financial gain is more important than people? Do I have to make some sour jokes about the phrase "human resources" before we start waking up from the idiocy of some of our past city plans? Perhaps there's no going back for some cities that are already established on a coastline, but that doesn't mean we have to keep making the same mistakes.

If there's a state or a land area that still has untouched forests and untouched beach, leave it the hell alone. You want to make money with your real estate endeavors? Fine. Learn how to fix what you've already built. Stop destroying what God made to fill your pockets. Fix what you've already made and line your greedy pockets with that know how.