by Alycia Keating

Created on: May 26, 2007

I do not believe the Federal Government should support communities built in areas prone to natural disasters. If those communities want to ante up the money to continually bail themselves out, then let them have at it.

I believe that if people are informed and choose to live in an area that is prone to natural disaster, they do so with open eyes and knowledge of the risk. I do not believe that a part of the decision-making process should include the surety that they will be bailed out, should disaster occur.

We are ALL paying for the natural disasters that have occurred in recent history. In one way or another, through taxes or insurance rates, we are ALL bailing out the survivors of Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Katrina and Rita, the San Francisco and Los Angeles Earthquakes, the tornadoes and floods (which do tend to happen in a flood plain, by the way).

I would make exceptions for areas which theoretically *could* suffer a natural disaster, but have not actually experienced one in recent history. In fact one could say that no location is immune from the occurence of a flood, earthquake, tornado, ice storm or other serious act of nature.

What I object to is paying with my tax dollars for repeated rebuilding in areas that are repeatedly destroyed.

Lets take some contrasting situations:

There is a fault line running through New York City. There has not been a significant earthquake that I could name, although there have been minor tremors. This is not an area I would deem "prone to natural disaster." Could a severe earthquake strike Manhattan or Westchester County? Absolutely. Is it likely? Not very.

I'd even go farther and say that "tornadoes happen"; they happen pretty much anywhere, even in New England, and that it would be fair to allow communities the federal government support for rebuilding in the wake of a tornado. It's a sustainable cost, and I believe it would be unreasonable to expect the entire midwest, southwest and southeastern portions of our population to suddenly vacate the premises or go without any support.

Rebuilding the lower 9th ward of New Orleans, however, is a completely different story. To me that's building a house on the train tracks. It's suicidal. And if the people living there are swept up in the effects of another hurricane, my sentiment is "you're not going to do this to us again." I strongly protest the sheer insanity of the act.

And don't get me started on the failure of responsibility, from the individual level right on up to the Federal level, that compounded the problems of the inhabitants and foisted an internal refugee population upon overloaded social services systems around the country.

Building homes on the Outer Banks of the Carolinas, waterfront homes along the Atlantic coast everywhere, or even the stupidity of building a large city in a forest (see wildfires, southern California and Arizona, 2002) is stupid, costly and dangerous.

I don't want to bail you out for your idiocy. The insurance companies are not going to pay; they're going to do what every business does and pass its costs along to the consumer. The Federal Government....why, have you forgotten? that's YOU and ME...the money has to come from somewhere.

I'm tired of seeing New Orleans and Coastal Florida and Malibu Beach and Big Sur with their hands in my paycheck.

I think if communities and individuals knew there would be no bailout, they'd think twice before creating an accident waiting to happen.

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