Nobody was listening.

[FDR]

The problem is tha there's a concentration of refineries without substantial redundancy. But anyway, they still make money from jacking up the price.

[3rd eye]

Both of you are simply brilliant.

[Philip Lewis]

No, what is poor planning is not building things in a manner that allowed for floods to take them out.

If *I* wanted to build something near the ocean, and the ground was 9 feet below seal level, I'd seriously consider building on 13 foot stilts anchored in bedrock, or at least a honking big slab of concrete.

[Tom Miller]

What's your address? I'll send them right over. Please have money ready.

[Philip Lewis]

God: What more do you want, I sent two trucks, a canoe, rowboat, and a helicopter!

(google if you don't know the joke)

[Tom Miller]

We'll be sending them all to your town real soon.

2004.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per tomkanpa:

------------------------------------------------------------- After getting nailed by a daisy-cutter bomb, Osama makes his way to the pearly gates.

There, he is greeted by George Washington.

"How dare you attack the nation I helped conceive!" yells Mr. Washington, slapping Osama in the face.

Patrick Henry comes up from behind.

"You wanted to end the Americans' liberty, so they gave you death!" Henry punches Osama on the nose.

James Madison comes up next, and says "This is why I allowed the Federal government to provide for the common defense!" He drops a large weight on Osama's knee.

Osama is subject to similar beatings from John Randolph of Roanoke, James Monroe, and 65 other people who have the same love for liberty and America.

As he writhes on the ground, Thomas Jefferson picks him up to hurl him back toward the gate where he is to be judged.

As Osama awaits his journey to his final very hot destination, he screams "This is not what I was promised!"

An angel replies "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you. What did you think I said?"

-------------------------------------------------------------

[NapalmHeart]

Higher ground.

[Dean Hoffman]

There is a list here of the deadliest hurricanes that hit the U.S. I wonder what Galveston looked like in 1900.

Dean

[Ann]

The USGS does do some nifty wesites. Until Katrina delivered 4+ " of rain, I was a daily visitor to their stream flow data.

Wish now I'd have kept one link I found, and I don't remember the search terms. It was about a researcher who had used satellite images to help find a bunch of previously unrecognized faults around the Finger Lakes.

[Don Bruder]

In article , "Ann" wrote:

The Blizzard of '78 was murder on us in Michigan, too. I remember it all too clearly, despite being a youngster. The wind started blowing out of the north-northwest late in the afternoon of January 23rd, the day before my birthday, and by dark, was screaming through at 30+ sustained, with gusts to 60 and up. When it got "Almost but not entirely unlike daylight" out the next morning, you couldn't see the street from the front door, the snow was falling and blowing so fast. The radio stations were reporting gusts above 80, and warning anybody that didn't have a life-and-death emergency to stay under whatever shelter they were in 'cause the temp (41 below at our airport) and wind (officially, 51 MPH with gusts to 73) would freeze exposed flesh in seconds. My birthday party was cancelled, of course... The storm didn't end until the 28th. Lake-effect snow dumped - and I mean *REALLY* dumped - on the west side of the state. Speaking purely of "what I saw myself", when things died down enough to start poking heads out and looking around, it was a weird, white landscape. The 11-story Park Place hotel in Traverse City was drifted in so deep you could literally walk up the drift on the southeast side (which completely covered the TC Players' Theatre building next door, and ultimately collapsed its roof) and knock on the third floor windows. Downtown was basically a wash... 8th street, the main drag, was impassable for days because the whole "canyon" that the multi-story buildings on either side formed was drifted solid to between

15 and 18 feet deep. Several people (including us) in the neighborhood had to literally tunnel out the front door - The houses were buried completely in some places, with nothing but chimney-tops or TV antennas to show where they even *WERE*. A few blocks over from us, in the lee of a big warehouse-type structure, about 3 blocks worth of the entire street vanished - Looking across where you should see houses standing and cars parked, you saw absolutely nothing but flat snow with nothing but the ripple-marks the wind carved in it. Snow drifts across US-23 (just to name one major highway) ranged from 14-25 feet high, with some of them hundreds of feet long. Private folks who happened to have trucks carrying snow-blades nibbled away at the drifts to open up the roads until the county road commission could get its heavy-duty gear dug out of the completely drifted in county barn/storage lot to start plowing "for real". Things were shut down solid for at least three days after that one blew through, and still choked in some out-of-the-way places a month later. Us kids took advantage of it, of course... More than a few were seen sledding down the drifts from the tops of houses :)

On the bright side, we had two weeks of "no school - Nobody can FIND it for all the snow!" :)

[Gort]

That's the problem. Politicos think of them as people rather than taxpayers. They just don't realize where the money actually comes from. LA lost a lot of revenue, but they haven't figured that out yet.

[FDR]

Well, why don't you start telling us about highway accident fatalities and drug fatalities too. Yeah, there's danger everywhere. However, there are safer places to live than others. And this type of disaster parses the danger level really well. I'd take NH anyday compared to FL or LA when you see the intensity of the storms that hit.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

While you are technically correct, it just does not work that way in society. Many of the poor, uneducated, were born in the city and just don't know any better. Your simplistic answer will probably come true for tens of thousands with no place to go, but many will return if for no other reason than the fear of the unknown.

Of course there are others that know the danger and make the choice to live in an area because of the perceived rewards of life in that region. They are willing to take the risk. It has worked for a couple hundred years, but now that changed.

[Larry Caldwell]

Ah, but in New Hampshire you have to wear clothes in the winter, and houses cost twice as much as they do in LA.

[Larry Caldwell]

This is the first time the USA has ever been forced to evacuate a major city. I have been trying to think of comparable disasters. The Brits burned the capital in 1813, Sherman burned Atlanta in 1864, and there was the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, and the San Francisco Quake in 1906 but it has been a century since we had to face a disaster of this magnitude. In all the past disasters, the ruins of the city remained habitable, so the people who lived there could start the recovery. New Orleans has sunk like Atlantis. It will be months before basic sanitary services are restored.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Most of it is, but there are a few high spots.

[Larry Caldwell]

Do you know you are going to burn in hell for your pride and arrogance?

[Harry K]

Oh yeah, that makes sense. Pray that the vicious god who sent the storm will make it all o.k. again? I wonder just how that prayer would read.

Harry K

[Rich]

What's a virgin?