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Sandy

I've got some downtime on the pipeline and was reading through some of this to kill time. I feel NJ residents are rather under-represented on this board and am pretty surprised at what I read (especially the earlier posts).

It as always easier to blame the victim than to take a critical look at the society, of which we each are a part, when trying to explain an unfortunate event. Whether it is a motorcycle crash, a rape, a windstorm, or a flood.

I fully understand and support the notion of individual responsibility I hear so much about, but in most any culture, going back to the Paleoindians, and maybe the caveman, it is always been the manner in which a group interacts and supports one another that has determined how well that culture survived. The Texas Big Bend is dotted with early signs of community, and is also dotted with the skeletal remains of lone travelers who lacked just such community.
 
There was an interesting special "NOVA" on PBS tonight about Sandy.. most of the show concentrated on NY and it's immediate suburbs, but what it pointed out was no one planned for a 35 foot tidal surge (including wave action) in lower Manhattan, or any of the other areas that were hit. Luckily the surge was less "down the shore" (you have to be from NJ to know that phrase..) - I've seen about 12-20 feet depending on where you were. Even that is not something that has been seen in any recorded history, so chances of anticipating it, or planning for it beforehand are really quite slim. Some communities that built large tall-wide dunes survived with very little damage (although a lot of the dunes were found on the streets running along the ocean.) Towns with simple lower dunes or no dunes at all suffered from unimpeded ocean action hitting their communities. I suspect a lesson is being learned from this - at least I hope so. Apparently the flood-authorities and several government agencies are doing quite detailed recording of the pre-storm beach condition and the post-storm beach condition and damages to the area.

Some towns are simply in the wrong place - and not much can be done to save them. One - Sea Bright relies on a stone sea-wall about 12' high - but a lot of the town lies just above the normal high tide line, and it's got the ocean on one side and a bay/river on the other side. It was heavily damaged (almost destroyed actually) but part of the fault was the town itself - it's planning officials allowed the building of large beach-club buildings on the ocean side of the sea-wall, which were toppled off their pilings, rolled over the wall and in some cases washed into homes and businesses on the other side of Ocean Avenue. It didn't require any genius to predict this would happen (I did when they were built), but bet the beach clubs try to rebuild in exactly the same spot.

I've done my own rides up along the ocean - dodging boards with nails sticking out - and have some photos on my Facebook account of what I've seen. Despite the local feelings of "We have to rebuild" - I'd hope that the officials in the towns hardest hit take some pause and think of the future - and storms that could be just as bad or worse before allowing the same thing to be rebuilt in the same spot.

Our family owned a waterfront home on Barnegat Bay for many decades. After the passing of my in-laws we finally decided to sell it (they had made it their year round residence for retirement) a few years ago. We are thanking whatever deity you prefer that we made that decision when we did. We heard from the woman who lives across the street that her house had 8 foot of water in it. That would mean ours would have had 9 feet. I can't imagine anything that can be saved with that sort of soaking, and to build a new home on the lot will require many difficult to obtain permits and variances.

It's hard to tell someone they can't rebuild, but given the choice of offering a one time buyout for what had been fair market value, vs repeatedly subsidizing rebuilding it after any major storm, I think the one time buyout (perhaps with a right of tenancy until the family passes or the home is destroyed) is the wiser and less expensive course of action. It's been done in other parts of NJ that are prone to river flooding, I'm hopeful it will be looked at for the damaged properties from Sandy. FWIW - most of the people it's been offered to gladly take the offer. There have been very few holdouts.
 
Two towns here in wisconsin picked up and moved because of constant flooding.Soldiers grove,site of the great river road rally(Madison Wi. Bmw Club)moved to high ground, so has Gay Mills Wis. These should be examples to cut down on loss'es.This could be done out east.

That's fine and I get your point, my point is that there are plenty of areas in NJ affected that don't get constant flooding. Both Don and myself pointed out how big of a factor the storm surge had on the damage to NJ. Many of the homes that were destroyed (including up by me) had been in place for over 100 years and survived to this point
 
That's fine and I get your point, my point is that there are plenty of areas in NJ affected that don't get constant flooding. Both Don and myself pointed out how big of a factor the storm surge had on the damage to NJ. Many of the homes that were destroyed (including up by me) had been in place for over 100 years and survived to this point

It's true that many of the flooded areas were ones that existed for over a century with no history of flooding. But others - well - they've flooded or washed out in just my memory of the shore (which goes back to around 1956 or so, and more intensely since around 1965..) some of them multiple times. In Sea-Bright, I always used to joke you could spot the points where break-through (between ocean-bay/river) had previously occurred by looking for the newer construction. And sure enough - Sandy made break-throughs at exactly the same points.

An interesting viewpoint by a knowledgeable person: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/13/opinion/safina-rebuild-sandy/index.html?hpt=op_t1#

I've never seen the idea that Federal Flood Insurance can cause deaths, but as with many unintended consequences - it becomes somewhat obvious once described and thought about. I think his proposal for how to handle the issue are well thought out and reasonable.

In today's local papers - there are a number of articles on rebuilding, including one that mentioned that the state (Governor mostly) has approved a rule allowing for rebuilding of many public structures (roads, bridges, etc.) without having to go through an approval process. The intent is to speed up rebuilding - the unintended, but recognized consequence is - the rebuilt structures are very likely to have the same risk factors and hazards as the structures they will replace.. in other words - nothing will be made better and we can expect that if another storm like this occurs - the same catastrophic damage will occur. Pretty much what Paul Glaves expected would happen I think.

The areas that never flooded before? Well - the risk there is if there is a changing weather pattern (which the NOVA special suggested there could be) that will make this sort of storm (size, intensity, where it makes landfall) a more likely occurrence. If so (and they admitted they don't "know" for sure) - we'll have repeats of the same sort of damage we saw this time in the future, and all the US will end up paying for it.
 
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