Oh, noes! Teh Feds told us we didn’t need flood insurance, so we didn’t buy any, and now our houses are part of the Mississippi River!
I hate to sound callous here, folks, but if you live in a town that has the word “Gulf-” in its name, and you live within sight of the second-biggest river in the United States, you buy some fucking flood insurance, regardless of what the Feds have to say on the matter.
(And don’t get me started on the morons who owned un-flood-insured houses located on terrain below sea level…a giant geographic soup bowl that is bordered by Lake Pontchartrain on one side, and the Gulf of Mexico on the other side.)
But hey, now they get to scream for the Feds to bail them out with our money. In a good and just world, the bill would have to be picked up by the same Feds who told those people not to buy flood insurance, not by Joe and Jane Taxpayer.
8 Comments
June 24, 2008 at 3:07 pm
You’d think those people can’t read a newspaper. Didn’t they get to see how totally ineffective and useless FEMA was during Katrina? Did they think the COE just built F’d up levees in New Orleans? Don’t they have a brain? Why do they listen to every government “hat” that opens his mouth? They probably believe Obama, too.
June 24, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Why Marko…It sounds to me like you have a touch of Empathy Deficit Disorder… Heh.
June 24, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Actually, NO is bordered by the Mississippi River, not the Gulf. But if you lived around the NO area, you would know that the city is full of welfare ghetto trash. These are the type of people who sit on their asses all day and blame everyone else for their troubles. Look at the people who got hit by Rita by comparison. It hit Western Louisiana a hell of a lot harder the Katrina hit NO. But did you see any whining? No, they got their asses in gear and did not sit around waiting for someone to bail em out, and started rebuilding.
June 24, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Missy and I were discussing Gulfport just the other day. We went to college near that area, and I can’t imagine looking at a house there and not getting flood insurance just from seeing the land. It makes zero sense. Besides, they were supposedly told that the levees could fail (duh) but it would take a “historic flood.” This was right after the Great Flood of ‘93, which was . . . . A HISTORIC FLOOD. That’s like telling people in Manhattan that they won’t need their insurance unless there’s a terrorist attack, and what are the odds of that happening?
Every place has some geographic issue. My house sits on land over old coal mines, just like the rest of my little town (which never would have been located here in the first place if there hadn’t been a rich vein of coal under it.) Therefore I carry mine subsidence insurance. The mine company could come out and say “We’ve determined that the following blocks definitely do not have shafts below them” but would I cancel the insurance? I spend a lot more on things much more frivolous than that.
June 25, 2008 at 7:00 am
The most frightening thing I’ve heard about this flood were the words, “The President has gone out to look at the flooding.”
“You’re doing a great job Brownie!”
(Yah, I know he’s gone. But the sentiment is STILL ALIVE! WOOHOO!)
Turkish Prawn
June 25, 2008 at 8:22 am
I just re-read my handy-dandy pocket Constitution (such a concise document!) and I can’t find out where “flooding” is any of the Federal government’s business whatso-effing-ever…
June 25, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I’ve just returned from New Orleans. My wife and I took a vacation there for a week. We ate like kings. But…
The ratio of homeless people to help wanted signs is telling. Two people tried to step in front of our airport shuttle with cardboard signs begging for money. Our shuttle, I kid you not, had a help wanted sign. Our cajun driver (nearly unintelligible to me) started swearing and threw the sign at them. An argument ensued. Our driver got back in the van and I could have sworn she was going to try and run over the homeless people. Never were the two words ‘Ragin’ Cajun’ so appropriate. She swore the entire way to our hotel. She works seven days a week because they have a skeleton crew.
People would lay out on the streets and ask for money while you would go into a restaurant and the owner would greet you, thank you for choosing his establishment, and then apologize that the service will be slow because he can’t hire enough help with beggars right outside of his door.
The Military Police are still patrolling large sections of the greater NO area. The crime is that bad.
I saw a con man try a scam on another tourist. He was trying to con him out of his money by telling him he couldn’t finda job (right near many signs, of course) and he’d clean his shoes for twenty dollars. (the con is, he then says he can give change for a hundred. He short changes him with a little sleight of hand. In return for the man’s generosity/gullibility he gets only twenty dollars back) I spoke up and a hell of an argument ensued. Besides being called all sorts of names, I was called heartless and selfish.
Over all of this, there is a smug bitterness. Everywhere you go, “No one told us we were in a flood zone. It’s not our fault.”
Like I said, we ate like kings and saw some great sites. But I won’t go back there for a long, long time, if ever.
June 26, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Locally, there’s a Developer that has, after an 18 month effort (and a few well placed campaign donations, no doubt!), succeeded in getting the COR to move their “100 year flood” line on the map……. with the blessing of State and Local gubmint- “we NEED that ec’nomic DEvelupmunt, doncha’ see?” ……… Now….. I’ve been here a scant 12 years, but I have seen carp swimming OVER the real estate involved during TWO different years……….. Guess who gets to subsidize the Flood Insurance for those Summer Homes that no for profit insurance companyin their right mind will ensure? Yep……. You.