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freedomdwarf1 -> RE: Individual Responsibilities for Storm Preparedness (11/9/2012 7:46:46 AM)
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Thanks for that vincent.
I did have a read but I still don't understand the logic.
That article states at the end "To sum it up, on average people no matter what country they live in will do what is the most convenient and cost effective to do. In the US that includes that houses are framed-in with wood.".
Persistently persuing a philosophy which is doomed to failure is still beyond my comprehension.
There are places around the world, such as the scandinavian areas, that do build wooden constructions. They do that because there aren't many natural resources for brick or concrete, the landscape is dense with woodland and their building designs are much sturdier than those that I've seen in the US. They also don't suffer such raging storms and floods like a lot of other places so in that regard, it makes sense for them to build wooden homes in the style that they do.
As I said before, we have ample resources to build wooden homes if we wanted to, but we don't. Why? Because they fail miserably in extremely bad weather. So the author of that piece saying it is illogical to compare the older buildings of typical Europe to newer (and in my opinion, very inferior) wooden homes just doesn't ring true. We still choose to build new homes with brick and concrete rather than thrown-up glorified garden sheds.
And of course there is the insurance payouts for loss of home as well as 99% of total loss of posessions - and that puts the price of insurance up.
Add that to the cost of clearing the debris and completely rebuilding the home (and it really isn't much cheaper than brick or concrete), it does seem a futile waste. Given that the US has more raw brick and concrete resources per person than anything like our small island has, it does seriously beg the question.
I've seen wooden houses being constructed in the US both on TV and in RL and sure, they can throw a house together in a matter of weeks compared to months if made from brick. From that PoV it rehouses more people in a shorter time frame after a disaster. But.... it's all a waste of time and resources if you have to start from square one all over again fairly quickly when the next nasty comes along. And, FWIW, you can repair a roof or a chimney stack in a few days and make the home habitable - without some herculean effort and a lot of people, you can't do that if you have to clear debris and completely rebuild from the ground up. Also, most non-wooden constructions don't get washed away with storm surges and floods. You might have to re-plaster the walls to make them look pretty again but that doesn't detract from whether they are habitable or not.
Over here, in recent years where certain areas are prone to constantly flooding, most of the insurance companies won't insure your home against flood damage unless you have taken some quite extensive (and often very expensive) steps to prevent it and even then there's no guarantee you can get insurance.
The only thing I can think of is that the US, where they continually rebuild these garden sheds, take a much shorter view than playing the long game. I guess it also keeps the lumber yards and house-erectors busy perpetually having to rebuild homes. Brick/concrete homes just need to dry out and most of the electrics are just fine. Wooden houses that have been raised to the ground or hurled into the air by strong winds have often ripped out the cables and need to be re-wired safely back into the grid - that also takes time and money. And whilst there are houses (or destroyed plots) that are in this unsafe state, the power companies can't restore power to those that survived so even more people are without power for a longer period.
I don't envy those that have lost their home though - it's very sad and frustrating for those involved.
The bottom lines is - I'm still very perplexed as to why many areas of the US still persue this short-sighted way of doing things.
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