Why can politicians not fix the problem

[Magnets]

I don't understand why the politicians can not fix the problem. I just read the following and I must agree.

http://www.iinotia.com/iinotia/index.php?topic=Hurricanes

Something needs to be done.

[opera ghost]

Because the people living in those trailer homes bring millions of dollars of bussiness into Florida. Outlawing them alienates a significant portion of the population.

While it makes sense, scientifically, to only build strong structures near the beaches- the politicians have millions of reasons not to help- and only thier conciences to prod them towards helping.

[WeatherEmperor]

I agree with such. The folks in Tallahasee(how ever you spell that lol) should have learned the first time from hurricane Andrew that these kinds of home structures cannot work in Florida. But keep in mind that tougher building codes make the costs of homes much higher. People who live in these mobile homes and weaker homes just might not be able to afford to higher stander homes. At least that is what I was told.

<RICKY>

[EmeraldCoast1]

I disagree. This is a free country and if all you can afford is a mobile home so that you don't have to live in an apartment building, then the government has no business to say you can't do that.

I don't believe that problems are solved by the government dictating what you can and cannot buy and live in.

Besides, there are millions of mobile homes in this country and most people live for years in them without major damage. It's only after hurricanes and tornadoes that we see how vulnerable they are. If you live in one and you take a direct hit from one of these forces of nature, then you may lose it. I think most mobile home owners know this and accept it. That is why we see the video footage of dozens and dozens of these mobile homes destroyed but less than 20 people dead. The owners know how dangerous they are. It would be simply wrong for the gov. to say "no more mobile homes".

[frankthetank]

I agree. I commented on this in another posting. You could also have campers (don't laugh, there are some very nice campers out there) they have wheels and could be moved. Question here, WHO ends up paying for this disaster? Taxpayers, People who pay home insurance (Florida or the entire US?) everyone? Can't just pick on Florida, however. LA, SANFRAN, ANCHorage....Mexico City sits right next to a volcano....humans will never learn.....

[mascpa]

I think they'd look better as beer cans.

[alicia-w]

Not everyone can afford a $250K home. If you're living on a pension or making minimum wage trying to raise a family, sometimes that's all you can afford. They're not always cheap either, by the way. What the government can do is try to regulate and/or improve the standards that these manufactured homes are built by. (Egad, ending a sentence with a preposition...). If you improve the quality and amend zoning laws, then you have at least a foot forward in the process. As an American citizen, the LAST thing we need is another policitician telling us what we can and cant do, what's good for us and what isnt. There's enough of that crap going on already.

[Patrick99]

If people want to live in mobile homes in hurricane country, is that not their right? Likewise, if they do not want to evacuate their own property, I think it's their right not to.

[azsnowman]

I disagree. This is a free country and if all you can afford is a mobile home so that you don't have to live in an apartment building, then the government has no business to say you can't do that.

I don't believe that problems are solved by the government dictating what you can and cannot buy and live in.

Besides, there are millions of mobile homes in this country and most people live for years in them without major damage. It's only after hurricanes and tornadoes that we see how vulnerable they are. If you live in one and you take a direct hit from one of these forces of nature, then you may lose it. I think most mobile home owners know this and accept it. That is why we see the video footage of dozens and dozens of these mobile homes destroyed but less than 20 people dead. The owners know how dangerous they are. It would be simply wrong for the gov. to say "no more mobile homes".

"BRAVO!" I "used" to live in an OLD mobile home, that was ALL I could afford back then raising a family, todays newer "Modular Homes"....you can't even TELL what they are.

Dennis

[EmeraldCoast1]

As an American citizen, the LAST thing we need is another policitician telling us what we can and cant do, what's good for us and what isnt. There's enough of that crap going on already.

Exactly. What's next? Do we want the government to tell us that compact cars that weigh less than 2200 lbs. will be outlawed in Florida since they will flip over during a cat. 3 TC or higher?

We must retain some reasonable freedom and be free enough to make our own calculated decisions and accept the risks and rewards that come with those decisions. We also must take responsibility for our own actions and be willing to accept the results and not look to someone or something to blame when our actions have negative results.

[opera ghost]

I don't think the question is whether we should allow people to live in mobile homes- but whether we should allow mobile homes in such dangerous areas.

I'm inclined to say now- but at the same time I know that it won't be changed.

Mobile/Modular/Trailer homes are dangerous in storms- we all know this. They shouldn't be in places where hurricanes/tropical storms wander through. I have no problem with them inland- but you put them up on the beach and even IF you evacuate and are okay with losing your home- they're just that much more schrapnel and debris blowing down the streets damaging other substancial structures. You bring in your lawn chairs to keep them from blowing away (and, in theroy, to also prevent them from smashing through a neighbors window giving the air a strong enough foothold that it lifts the roof) but there's nowhere to "bring in" a mobile/trailer/modular home.

I don't have an inherent right to build a house that's against building regulations.... this would be one more building regulation- that all buildings must be permanant and safe in winds to a certain speed.

It makes sense. It's not nice or even kind. There are a lot of people who can't afford anything mroe than a mobile home- but mobile homes Are.NOT.Safe. in the tropics.... for the residents AND for the people living around the mobile home who have to worry about it breaking apart and damaging thier home. We wouldn't let people build on top of a lava flow- why we let people move trailers into the path of tropical storms is beyond me.

The government will not fix it though- until a massive tragedy occurs.... and maybe not even then. Too many people live in those little communities. Too many people would scream that they have a right to endanger themselves and everyone aroudn them. Politicians don't want that kind of bad publicity... The people who live in those trailers vote and they pay taxes and they buy goods and they are members of society. It's a major rock to a boat that's already in stormy weather. It's bad enough that the insurance people are raising rates and that the hurricane demolished entire communities- but telling people to pack up and move out... not going to happen. Even if it's a safety concern.

[chrisnnavarre]

a Mobile Home, but the government should make sure that there are adequate shelters available for people to take refuge in when a storm comes. I understand that states are receiving millions of dollars in Homeland Security Grants. Some of that money should be spent on additional shelters here in Florida. i.e. Disaster Preparedness should be part of the state wide homeland security program.

No what else, why can't military bases be opened to the public in times of danger??? During our initial years as a country, Forts where opened to the settlers when enemies attacked. Am I right or not? This wouldn't coast a cent, just a swipe of the President's pen.

[hial2]

Mobile homes should be outlawed in Florida and Gulf coast states because of the hurricanes, in the Midwest because they float away in floods, in the heartland because they can fly in tornados and in California because they can roll in earthquakes..

Listen, if mobile homes are ever banned, LA and MS would become one big Walmart parking lot!!

Just kidding!!

[CaluWxBill]

I disagree. This is a free country and if all you can afford is a mobile home so that you don't have to live in an apartment building, then the government has no business to say you can't do that.

I don't believe that problems are solved by the government dictating what you can and cannot buy and live in.

Besides, there are millions of mobile homes in this country and most people live for years in them without major damage. It's only after hurricanes and tornadoes that we see how vulnerable they are. If you live in one and you take a direct hit from one of these forces of nature, then you may lose it. I think most mobile home owners know this and accept it. That is why we see the video footage of dozens and dozens of these mobile homes destroyed but less than 20 people dead. The owners know how dangerous they are. It would be simply wrong for the gov. to say "no more mobile homes".

Eloquently stated. People must get by. I mean maybe Oklahoma should make people live in structures that can withstand 350 MPH winds. We can't try to regulate peoples live. The only thing to me that the government should be able to do is evacuate people, with ample warning (12 hours atleast).

[WeatherEmperor]

I see both sides really. I understand that alot of these people who live in these mobile homes simply cannot afford to live in a house with a tough standard code that can cost over $300,000!! Those people just cannot afford it. I understand that. However I also understand(and others should too) that if you as a mobile home owner decide to live in Florida of all states, that you are moving into a very very hurricane prone state. I know "people have the right to choose how they live". That is absolutely true. No matter how many rights people have, there are also laws. Rights and Laws will always be in this country no matter what state you move into. Another poing to consider is that nobody is forcing these people to live in Florida. Why not move to elsewhere? Another point to consider is that if you choose to stay here and God forbid another Cat 4 hurricane slams into Florida and then we are gonna have the same story over and over and over again with all the devestation and we will just never learn.

So what is my true opinion about this all? If you decide to live in Florida you can live in mobile homes all you want. That is your choice and that is your power. But REMEMBER when hurricane season comes by you better be damn prepared for whatever comes. Living in a mobile home doesnt exempt you from taking hurricanes seriously. No matter what house or mobile home you live in, EVERYBODY needs to prepare for a major hurricane.

<RICKY>

[alicia-w]

I cant imagine that they will ever open a military base for the public to use as a shelter. The security risks are just too great. As it is, the shelters are for folks living on base and those employees who choose to come on base during a storm. Here at Eglin, I wouldnt stay on base during a storm no matter what. The base is on the water for crying out loud.

[Persepone]

I've been reading this with great interest because it is a complex question...

Most people would do the sane and prudent thing if they saw it as a realistic possibility! Although I've never personally lived in a trailer, I've lived in some pretty "close to the wire" situations and I think I can understand why some of the people who stay during storms do so. First, evacuation depends upon your having reliable transportation, a place to go, gas money to get there, and nothing holding you in the area too long. If you are going to evacuate, you need to do so ahead of the storm--and if you work and eating regularly and living indoors (trailer, apartment, or million dollar house, for that matter) is dependant upon that job--or if you have a job in healthcare, security services, or perhaps work at home depot selling the plywood people buy to board up their houses, by the time you can leave (if, indeed you can leave) it is too late. I guess if you are a hospital employee, work for the fire dept., etc. you can stay at work during the emergency--but you can't exactly bring your kids, your elderly parents, etc. to work with you, can you? So you have to send them off with someone else or they hunker down... I'm older now--and my job pays better and there are no kids at home, etc.--and my "emergency kit" is always ready--but I do know that I spend money replenishing it and I also know that just going out and filling up the gas tanks, etc. in advance of a forecast storm takes MONEY out of the budget that may well not be in most people's budget (20 years ago, it was not in mine). And even today, I would have a real problem scraping up cash for hotel stay. And I cannot think of anyone we could go and stay with for a few weeks...

Shelters are not always the answer because there are populations they don't serve. I am aware of that because in the past 30 odd years, I've carefully chosen my housing to be relatively "safe" in bad weather and a lot of people have evacuated to our house instead of to shelters. We've always been on relatively high ground, well away from the shoreline, we've always had homes that were structurally "sound" (even if we did much of the work to make them that way) and we've always insisted on a full cellar and we've always had a sort of "safe room" within the house. Why do people show up on our doorstep? Well, they bring their animals, etc. We're more tolerant of friends' and acquaintances' idiosyncracies than shelters. Granted, we've probably violated some health code with the quantity of cats/dogs, etc. we've hosted and we do "expect" (and plan for in terms of bottled water, etc.) the overload... Surprisingly, it's often been elderly people who have sought shelter with us--not young people. Young people do okay in shelters. Old people don't. Especially crotchety ones--the elderly women with 6 cats, etc. We've gone through storms with 15-16 cats and a few dogs, as well as their owners. None of these people would have been allowed into the shelters with their pets and none were physically capable of getting to the shelters by the time they were actually ordered into the shelters--we had to go and get them! (This often meant physically carrying them out like a child--and carrying their animals out in carriers, etc. as well). And yes, they needed to be evacuated--we sat hunkered down in our cellar and watched TV (our power was still on) while the house next door to one of the women in our cellar with us washed into the water! Politics can't handle this! Laws can't handle this! Some sort of person-to-person network of people who watch out for each other (church groups, neighborhood groups, etc. ) is required.

If there are language barriers this problem is exacerbated. We had a lot of people who did not speak English well enough to understand what was going on who we brought to our house and they were absolutely amazed! If you were in Japan or Thailand or some other country where you did not speak the language, what would you do about weather warnings? How much would you understand? In this country, we forget about how much English you have to understand to truly understand what is going on.

Having said that, how much of the problem we saw in Florida is due to the gap between "hearing" and "understanding"? People move to Florida from other places. Unless they moved from one vulnerable spot to another, the warnings may truly not be understood. I understand the warnings because of two things: first, I'm old and second, my mother was a "danger junkie" who went to, rather than away from, dangerous situations. I've seen hurricanes, tornadoes and floods from much closer than I ever should have because of her bad behavior. I actually was in a building that collapsed around me as a child. My daughter, and my grandchildren have no clue about what I'm talking about. Yes, my daughter has come out of our "shelter" to see trees down and in the neighbor's bedroom, etc. but she still does not know about the utterly flattened house that is just a pile of kindling and junk. People on the New England seacoast say, "well, I've lived through Nor'easters so I know..." but they have no clue...

As for trailer parks specifically, perhaps there should be some requirement that each trailer park build some type of "shelter" for its residents that they can go to on short notice and that offers some measure of safety. If you have 500 residents, then you need shelters to accommodate 500 people. If you have 100 residents, then you need shelter to accommodate 100 people, etc. It does not have to be (and probably should not be) one huge space--but some small properly built shelters.

I'm also sort of amazed, by the way, at all the slab construction in "Tornado Alley." If this is standard construction, then why don't these people have "storm cellars" at least? I can't quite understand why it is not possible/practical to build "storm shelters." I'm thinking of the "Anderson Shelters" people put in their yards in London in World War II. Not exactly wonderful--but offering some shelter, nevertheless. Why can't someone figure out how to design low-cost, low-tech, hurricane/tornado shelters that people can stay alive in without evacuating if they live in "vulnerable" construction, trailers, etc.? In tornado-prone areas, these holes in the ground would keep people alive; in hurricane areas, the challenge would be to protect from the wind and collapsing buildings, etc. but also making sure that they did not flood enough to drown people in them...

I agree with the other writers who point out that outlawing trailer parks is not the answer. For one thing, lots of people can't afford "better/different" housing! What happens when you raise the cost of housing in an area is that you have people living in much more substandard housing because you have people living in "illegal" apartments, etc. because they can't afford what is available, permitted by law, etc. You actually make the situation worse instead of better!

As for "better construction techniques" I believe that Florida has passed all sorts of laws... But there are things a homeowner can do, I think, to see that things are "better." Installing those strap things on a roof can help to see that a roof stays on, and there are ugly but serviceable things you can do with plywood and 2x4s to secure garage doors, patio doors, etc. These don't work for trailers, of course. But it should not be beyond the pale to build little Anderson shelters for trailer park residents...

Perhaps a combination of outreach networks to see that people take care of each other and some plans for little, local, bare bones shelters would help a lot. Sure, 20 people stuffed into a small (e.g. 10x10 or so) shelter for a few hours (especially if there are cats and dogs, etc. in there as well) is less than wonderful--but actually it is no more awful than a long car trip with a bunch of kids in the back seat (and by the way, the games that work on those car trips work well in shelter situations).

I don't think laws will work. And I agree that it is unlikely that they will open military bases--and if they did, by and large, the buildings on base would probably be unsuitable as hurricane shelters! It would be like thinking that you were safe in a WalMart--the roof is far more likely to come down on your head in that type of large structure than in smaller shelters. (I actually think the shelters that use school gymnasiums, etc. are unsafe because of the large roof spans over these spaces...) I'd rather hunker down in the basement of something with a honeycomb of little rooms, I think.

[stormchazer]

Politicians (i.e. Government) create problems, they do not fix them.

Why do I live in a mobile home? I live in a mobile home because I can have 1700 sq. feet of space, a huge kitchen, a great whirlpool bath, all for the price of renting a small duplex.

The government cannot tell people where and what they are going to live in. You might just as well do away with people living on the beach. Have you seen Sanibel? Why do we allow people to live in Miami? Its right on the coast in Hurricane alley.

This is not a problem for some "politician" to fix.

[alicia-w]

I was thinking that it might even be more basic than we imagine. We have a roster at work where people have to announce their intentions to evacuate (when, where, etc) or to stay at a local shelter or on base. ALMOST ALL (and these are lieutenant colonels for the most part) put down, evacuate at Cat 4 or 5, only because the guy above them on the list did. Wow. absolutely amazing....

we fixed that today. i got on my soap box and basically told them to rethink their plan. That Montgomery Alabama may not be far enough away for a cat 4 or 5 storm...

i told them they needed to think of contingency plans. several of us go north to TN, but what if a storm decides to go NE and through the Appalachians?

It takes a lot of thought, not just filling the car with gas and following the guy in front of you.

I agree with the comment that there are not enough shelters. In Okaloosa County, home of the largest AF Base in the free world, there are TWO shelters, one in Baker FL (nice place, but hardly more than a mere burg) and Crestview (again, not exactly a thriving metropolis and not immune to its own problems during a storm).

[Guest]

I agree. I commented on this in another posting. You could also have campers (don't laugh, there are some very nice campers out there) they have wheels and could be moved. Question here, WHO ends up paying for this disaster? Taxpayers, People who pay home insurance (Florida or the entire US?) everyone? Can't just pick on Florida, however. LA, SANFRAN, ANCHorage....Mexico City sits right next to a volcano....humans will never learn.....

what are you talking about. People make choices and these choices people have to live by. Hurricanes move and people living in mobile homes or what not make this choice. However, volcanoes are not moveable, again people make that choice. As humans spread like viruses, there is no other choice to go except where danger lingers. In regards to mobile homes, sometimes people just can't afford a house, but don't want to pay rent. I see nothing wrong with this..