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Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

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Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#211

Post by tpmoney »

softcactus wrote: post #45
SoftTalker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hurricanes are a fact of life in the gulf and southeastern atlantic coasts. There is no area that has not have been hit twice already in the past century. So all this coastline should be dunes and park spaces?

Human brains are funny. Obviously the absurd part of all of this is people (literally) building their houses on the edge of the ocean and expecting this to not happen. However because it's all we know, it seems that the real absurdity would be the government designating these sites as 'no-build' zones-- or at least FEMA washing their hands of any damage that should happen to these sites. This should be a wakeup call…

I would wager a majority of the final costs are from damages to houses not "on the edge of the ocean". Hurricane damages stretch for miles inland. Heck pick any east coast state and check out the areas covered by flood warnings and watches. They're hours from the coast in places. If it was only the houses on the edge of the ocean, this would be relatively cheap.

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#212

Post by resoluteteeth »

mrguyorama wrote: post #163
sokoloff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the conclusion that housing should not be built where Sandy’s damages occurred? That seems... unreasonable .

A significant portion of Texas and Florida need to realize that these damaging events aren't going to stop happening, and they need to either build stronger, or leave if that's not possible. If I built a house that could not manage a foot of snow on it's roof in Maine without collapsing, and every year it collapsed got a big check from the feds to rebuild the exact same structure in the exact same place, surely someo…

> It's literally Einstein's definition of "insanity"

That definition of insanity was not invented by Einstein, nor did he ever say it.

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#213

Post by [deleted] »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #173
toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kin Insurance covers my Florida property at ~$400k of replacement coverage with reasonable deductibles for $1800/year. I am not on the water, the property is significantly above sea level with a new roof, and I have done every mitigation recommended by the insurer (wall to roof strapping, water barrier between shingles and decking, shutter supports, etc).

That sounds affordable as long as you have a decent job. As a point of comparison, however, up here in northern Illinois, you can get 2-3x the replacement coverage from a name-brand national insurance company for that price. And we do have tornado risk. Which is to say that your insurance is expensive, but I wouldn't call it a barrier to living there. Much like property taxes - if you saw my bill, you'd probably fall…

[deleted]

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#214

Post by softcactus »

tpmoney wrote: post #211
softcactus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human brains are funny. Obviously the absurd part of all of this is people (literally) building their houses on the edge of the ocean and expecting this to not happen. However because it's all we know, it seems that the real absurdity would be the government designating these sites as 'no-build' zones-- or at least FEMA washing their hands of any damage that should happen to these sites. This should be a wakeup call…

I would wager a majority of the final costs are from damages to houses not "on the edge of the ocean". Hurricane damages stretch for miles inland. Heck pick any east coast state and check out the areas covered by flood warnings and watches. They're hours from the coast in places. If it was only the houses on the edge of the ocean, this would be relatively cheap.

That's a good point, I decided to do some napkin math:

Sanibel Island has 7,821 housing units at an average density of 454.6 per square mile.

Median sales price of the homes in 2021 was $1.64M, average price was similar.

So a rough approximation of the value of the homes on the island alone is $12Bn. I am not sure how you would translate that into damage costs, but in a scenario of total destruction then $12B would be lost.

I have no real evidence other than visiting Ft Myers and Naples a few times, but I can tell you there is (was) a lot of very valuable property right next to the ocean. I don't doubt that if you look at the total distribution of damages that there is a long tail of less severe damage as you go inland, but the conservative estimates from my napkin math shows that it's likely a significant number (over ten billion) occurred just from properties on the small stretch of coastline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanibel,_Florida https://sanibelrealestateguide.com/average-price-homes/

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#215

Post by collegeburner »

snarf21 wrote: post #4

I can only assume it will go higher. We need to push FEMA to have a 2 and done rule. After that the property must be returned back to dunes/parks/public spaces.

no. you cant seize land without compensation, see the constitution. literally just don't insure it any more, or require much stronger buildings (like concrete). oh and quit bailing out insurers.

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#216

Post by tpmoney »

mrguyorama wrote: post #161
adventured wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That goes for severe blizzards for NYC as well, because I say so. Public funds must no longer be allocated to clearing snow from roads every year just because selfish people decide to live in NYC.

"Public funds" AREN'T used to clear the snow. People in NYC pay to clear the snow. The problem in this instance is that the federal government backstops a "flood insurance" program that is intrinsically not insurance, because the only people who buy into it are the ones that get flooded every year. Everyone in the risk pool is tied together. That's why there is no private flood insurance for the area, because it's li…

I don't know that it's necessarily used for "clearing the snow", but FEMA funds on the order of millions of dollars have been used in NY for snow storms and blizzards in 2017, 2014, 2007, 2006, 2004, 2003, 2001, 2000, and 1999 per their website[1]. While it doesn't list funding numbers, FEMA disasters were also declared in 1998, 1996, 1993, 1991, 1987, 1985 and 1977.

This is in addition to hurricane funds, the most recent of which was just last year in 2021.

And while FL has received significantly more FEMA funds than NY[2] (6.8B vs 405M), NY likewise receives significantly more than say their neighbor VT (56M) or far away MT (a mere 11M). Is all the money spent in NY likewise a "straight up handout to allow some specific people to keep getting a high value lifestyle on someone else's dime"?

[1]: https://www.fema.gov/locations/new%20york#declared-disasters [2]: https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-preparednes...

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#217

Post by random42_ »

jdhn wrote: post #202
lotsofpulp wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a cat 4 is a cat 5 in all but name? And a cat 5 is a cat 6 in all but name?

Don't be obtuse. This was 2 MPH away from being a "weak" Cat 5.

Or we can say that this was a strong cat 4 instead.

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#218

Post by tpmoney »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #101
systemvoltage wrote: post #88

Apalled at the comments here, can we please just have some empathy for a second and put politics aside?

People aren't overflowing vessels of infinite empathy and sympathy. They can't be faulted for running dry once in a while.

Seems like then the old adage of not saying anything at all if you have nothing nice to say might apply?

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#219

Post by tpmoney »

softcactus wrote: post #214
tpmoney wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager a majority of the final costs are from damages to houses not "on the edge of the ocean". Hurricane damages stretch for miles inland. Heck pick any east coast state and check out the areas covered by flood warnings and watches. They're hours from the coast in places. If it was only the houses on the edge of the ocean, this would be relatively cheap.

That's a good point, I decided to do some napkin math: Sanibel Island has 7,821 housing units at an average density of 454.6 per square mile. Median sales price of the homes in 2021 was $1.64M, average price was similar. So a rough approximation of the value of the homes on the island alone is $12Bn. I am not sure how you would translate that into damage costs, but in a scenario of total destruction then $12B would b…

Insurance isn't going to pay out on value though, it's going to pay out on replacement costs. A home that's $5M because it sits on the waterfront would be $750K 5 miles inland, but they will cost roughly the same to replace.

For example, here is one house for sale on the water in Naples (https://www.trulia.com/p/fl/naples/2331-crayton-rd-naples-fl...). 3 beds, 2 baths, 2k sqft on a little over 0.25 acres. $3.5M

Just 7 miles away is this house (https://www.trulia.com/p/fl/naples/5241-hunter-blvd-naples-f...), 4 beds, 2 baths, 2.25k sqft on 0.25 acres. $625K.

I sincerely doubt the cost to replace the first home is 6x the second. And then there's this one (https://www.trulia.com/p/fl/sebring/2124-gardenview-rd-sebri...), which is about as far from the coast as you can reasonably be in that part of florida, going for a mere $240k, and I doubt it's significantly more or less to replace than either of the previous two.

Re: Hurricane Ian damages in Southeast estimated at $100B to $120B

#220

Post by cycrutchfield »

coryrc wrote: post #208
cycrutchfield wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. How do you decide who is an economic migrant?

If they traveled through another country (Mexico) which could grant asylum, but chose not to stay there.

If it were that easy, why aren’t they doing that?
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