On Wed, 13 Sep 2017 08:32:00 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 9/13/2017 8:22 AM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 9/13/17 7:58 AM, justan wrote:


Governor Rick Scott has been getting high marks for his efforts to
Â* prepare Florida for the disaster.


Does that make up for the huge criminal enterprise Scott ran prior to
being governor? You know, the one that earned a $1.7 billion fine for
Medicare fraud?

Florida is not prepared. If Scott really were concerned about Florida,
he'd be spearheading a statewide effort to stop development in low-lying
coastal areas, and begin a process of condemning and tearing down
susceptible structures in those areas, outlawing mobile homes, and
slowing growth generally. Florida is going to get hit again and again
and again by these large summer and fall hurricanes, and everyone is
going to pace the price for them.

We have a low-lying area a few miles north of here, called Chesapeake
Beach, a quaint little nameplace full of old cottages and a growing
amount of new construction. Nice place, except when Chesapeake Bay
overflows and floods homes and businesses for four blocks up from the
high water line. That area is a foot or two above sea level. Maybe. Why
construction in these places is allowed is beyond my comprehension.

I think the national flood insurance program ought to be dropped and
replaced by a state-by-state funded program for those states that want
it. Let Floridians, Texas, Louisianians, et cetera, pay the price for
their folly of never-ending construction along low-lying waterfronts,
typically built on "reclaimed" land. Alternately, if the states won't
provide flood insurance and mortage companies won't finance homes
without flood insurance, well, that eventually will solve the problem.

Oh, we're close to the Bay, but...we're about 115' above sea level here.
If the Bay floods us, it is the end of the world.


You won't flood but a direct hit of a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane would do some
serious damage to your famous red barn.


The northern building code would not even protect most houses from a
strong Cat 1 or a 2.
When I was there they built to 80 mph but I assume they may have upped
that a little. Even so there are plenty of 30+ year old buildings
built to that code. There was absolutely zero uplift protection beyond
gravity. You were not even required to put nuts on the J bolts in
block headers when you mounted the sill plate for the stick built
parts. There is also no tie beam and no steel in the block. They
didn't even have steel in the footer. The J bolt is just mortared into
one of the block cores.
We have 4 #5 rebars in the tie beam and the top 16" is solid concrete,
that tie beam is doweled with a #5 every 4 feet and at every opening
in a grouted cell and the "hooks", top and bottom get tied to the tie
beam steel and the footer steel.