Posted On: April 18, 2006, 2:46 am CDT

Posted By: Mrs. L. B.

Yet more crisis' we are facing here now One is that even those with money or -gasp- insurance settlements big enough to cover rebuild are facing:
The City/County officials, Insurances big wigs, state insurance officials, FEMA, etc have all decided we need to rebuild our homes and make them HIGHER. How high? No one knows yet, so almost no one can rebuild. I can understand homes in flood plains or those that flood on a regular basis might need to go up a tad higher than 8 feet, but why are we ALL possibly being forced to incur yet another cost we can't afford over an issue that is not likely to come up again for many, many years-if ever????
I mean, after you go so high with a house on pilings, it's gonna tip over or fly off in a hurricane even if water doesn't come anywhere near it.
Now, my BIG question is this: If we on the Mississippi Gulf Coast are required to build higher, buy perpetual flood insurance (not an issue with me-I will have it even if I think a sink is going to overflow!), restructure our entire lives, infrastructure, reorganize and combine city governments, etc, they why isn't the entire US COASTLINE from Brownsville, Texas and all Gulf of Mexico coastal areas, and Atlantic regions from Key West all the way up to the Northernmost tip in Maine, going to be required to do the same? They are all as prone to a Catagory 5 hurricane as we are. Could this possibly be discrimination? (And please do remember I am talking about Coastal Mississippi, not New Orleans, which is just a big bowl of filled-in marsh surrounded by water on all sides and obviously weakened levees.)
The stupidity of this jump-start band aid approach is unbelievable. And because FEMA funds will play into helping rebuild our schools (let's face it-the gov't is financially responsible for building about 99% of USA public schools anyway), our less than 3 year old schools will have to be torn down simply because they received approx. 2 feet of water from this freak tidal wave. They also are trying to take, by eminant domain, the one remaining green parcel 50 acre plot left in city limits to build a new school complex. This land is closer to the Gulf by over 1 mile, has very little road access-none of it safe, is next to a major railroad crossing, and would invade an entirely residential area. The schools were all refurbished in the last 8 years, 1 is less than 3 years old, and are on a land tract that will allow them to spread for years. So my dumb idea of the day is...instead of building new schools in a more flood prone and dangerous area at the cost of BILLIONS, why not just put up an 8 foot waterproof wall all around the current area? The schools are cleaned and being phased back into use, the money's been spent, the current site is in a great central location to the area it serves, and we, the dumb butts who just pay taxes and insurance premiums, are broke already.
As I have warned before, if you don't tend to this problem NOW while you have opportunity to do so, the next big storm will wreak so much havoc Katrina will seem like a puff of wind.
Even though I am a bit off track on this issue, I thought it was something that you, as taxpayers and insurance premium payers and sellers, should think about.
God Bless!