I missed today’s Sun Herald editorial in my rush to get out the door early this morning. I’ve traveled to Madison County and back with a brief stop over at Nowdy’s so far today. She is a visual learner and mouse dependant. I’m a keyboard shortcut type of guy. Since I’ve immediately detoured away from the subject matter of my post title I’ll also share something publically about Bellesouth.
Nowdy shared an email with me today from Belle that I appreciated. I like Belle and though we have not yet met in person we certainly enjoy having her around Slabbed. She helps us on and offline and frankly she deserves a chunk of the credit for the blog itself.
She is also made fun of a good bit on other less tolerant weblogs. We at slabbed, just like Sid Salter, are happy she reads and contributes to the blogosphere (ummm sometimes I bet Sid wants to strangle Belle but to his credit he won’t ban her). Belle is 100% genuine southern Mississippi Belle and being from the diverse gulf coast I like that. We don’t have enough Belles down here.
We also note the points she made were not refuted on Rossmiller’s blog yesterday. However Mr Rossmiller did admit to being a yes man to Belle in a rare moment of personal honesty. I like that too. All in all I’m 100% pro-Bellesouth and wouldn’t change a thing about her cyber persona. We’re going to meet in person sometime soon and hopefully she’ll join us writing posts here at slabbed.
Speaking of the Insurance Coverage Blog I enjoyed seeing the Risk Professor out and about and disclose I read his blog on occasion. For some reason I could envision him giggling while he was typing out the short textbook dissertation on Mutual Insurance Companies. I personally don’t remember ever getting a dividend from State Farm despite my many years of loyal policy holding. I personally favor demutualization and would abolish that form of organization. Let them go private or public. The written record indicates Mr Claimsguy and I agree on that too. Imagine that….
Finally and back to the point of this post I do not think Sen Wicker’s amendment will pass. It will be nice to see which way the three presidential candidates break on the issue (provided they show up to vote). The politicking is not over in any event no matter which way the vote goes. Here is today’s editiorial:
The U.S. Senate is expected to vote this week on legislation making changes to the National Flood Insurance Program. Unfortunately, those changes do not now include expanding the program to cover wind as well as water damage.
So Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., plans to offer an amendment to the legislation incorporating changes approved by the House of Representatives last year at the urging of Rep. Gene. Taylor, D-Miss.
We continue to support this effort to expand the National Flood Insurance Program into a multi-peril insurance program, even as we lament the necessity to do so.
There ought to be a way for the private sector to insure homeowners from the threat of hurricane-force winds without either the insurance industry or the homeowners risking bankruptcy.
More than half of the nation’s population lives within 50 miles of a coastline, and 50 miles is well within harm’s way when a major storm makes landfall.
That is too large a slice of the nation’s households to be written off as uninsurable. Yet from Texas to New England, that is what one major private insurance company after another is doing.
This is a national dilemma and it demands a national response.
We again urge senators to join their colleagues in the House in providing some degree of security to homeowners abandoned by the private sector.
I’m with you, Sop, when it comes to bellesouth – and Wicker on the proposed amendment.
Hey, if the government wants to put together a national Catastrophe insurance program, I say go for it. It needs to rate the risks properly and charge the right premiums, though, or it will result in underinsurance (perhaps this is stating the obvious). I think that we as a society may have been underestimating the risks of building on the coastline. NOLA is a rather extreme example, of course. Anyway, it seems likely to me that the upshot of such a program would be that we, as a society (whether through individual premium payments, taxes, or a mixture thereof) will pay more for insurance. And that probably isn’t a bad thing.
I too read Rossmiller’s blog, and the guy seems quite reasonable to me. As for Belle, hey, just calling ’em as I see ’em. Could be wrong.
NOLA is not a rather extreme example of building on the coastline. As a matter of fact, it is not on the coast. And matter of fact, the levees didn’t fail but the poorly constructed flood walls put in by the Army Corps of Engineers is what caused the flooding in New Orleans. New Orleans is one of the oldest cities in the nation as are a lot of coastal town and cities are as well. Where did I read (here?) that something like 50% of the people in the US live on the coast. Give me a break!
Welcome to slabbed Rob and thanks for your support of the multi peril concept. You’re correct as to the upshot plus there is the added benefit of prepaying disaster expenses. If this program works as advertised the taxpayer should bear less of the costs of the disaster. Also there are stricter building code standards as part of the package which I think we can all agree needs to be a large part of the solution.
With regard to Rossmiller I imagine the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’d personally respect him more had he been honest about himself. That said I think we all agree his analysis of the anti-concurrent causation clause is excellent.
sop
Adding my welcome and thanks, Rob, to that expressed by Sop – as well as my agreement with belle’s call on the situation in NOLA.
In fact, after I posted the Sher decision, I did a little research and later added a comment about the 5th decision relying on a partial definition of flooding – one that ignored the portion explaining it wasn’t “flooding” if water was in previously dry places because of broken pipes.
Thanks for the welcomes.
Woah, hang on a minute there, Belle. I’m aware it’s not technically on the coast – the delta extends beyond it. That doesn’t really speak to its vulnerability to a catastrophe, though. The Delta doesn’t provide much protection (and I’ve read that its protection is weakening year by year due to erosion patterns caused by the levees!).
I see it as an extreme case because it’s (partly) below sea level, on the water (if not technically the coast) and it’s in an area subject to powerful storms. It’s got the sea, a lake and a huge river to contend with. To paraphrase the great Crash Davis, it’s dealing with a lot of shit. And that’s not even discussing anything political.
You make a big deal of the flood walls failing instead of the levees. To me that’s a distinction without a difference. Why did the city need the flood walls and levees in the first place? Because without them, the city will flood (in the event of a storm, anyway). Needing to rely on such things is a negative, because they can always been poorly designed, badly built, wear down, etc. I know much of our population is coastal, but most of it is not below sea level. That’s a pretty big difference when discussing risk.
Other cities have other risks, of course. The Pacific NW could be hit by a tsnuami, and that could be vewy vewy bad, no doubt. There are scenarios involving NYC.
Sop – he’s got a good analytical mind, which I appreciate. YMMV (and obviously does).
New Orleans grew to the east in the 1970’s on filled in marsh. There is no question in my mind that America needs New Orleans the city but not necessarily on it’s old footprint. For better or worse the marketplace is re-shaping the city just like those here on the post katrina coast.
That said it is also true that we as a nation helped destroy thousands of square miles of Louisiana wetlands because of our thirst for oil. Once upon a time New Orleans was not on the coast but today that is a very different story.
When it comes to finding solutions for New Orleans because as Rob points out it is unique I tend to think “green’ in that we should make a national commitment to restoring the tidal marshes of south Louisiana. Those same marshes also help protect the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
We now know Wicker’s amendment failed but the politics continue. Chip Merlin wrote an excellent post to his blog on the subject Rob. I highly encourage our readers to check him out.
sop
I said nothing about whether or not we as a nation, need New Orleans. I simply said it was a risky place (as presently constituted). That was all. It was not some sort of attack on the city.
It does seem that delta restoration should be part of a protection plan for New Orleans. I’m not an engineer, so I don’t know what it would take. I also think that new construction needs to be mindful of risk (avoiding or minimizing it as much as is feasible). The extent to which that needs to be a national priority is obviously debateable. I figure that the city, state and feds should all put in money towards the effort. The exact percentages, I’m sure, will be a matter of politics.
Please don’t misunderstand my reply Rob as I did not interpret your remarks as an attack on the City.
My point as you picked up is that building on marshes is a long term fools game but having the marshes is vital. The issues surrounding the ecology are complex but generally involve man made canals where they didn’t belong ecologically and restricting the flow of the Mississippi river in it’s delta. I suspect the solutions will be expensive as the tidal marshes require fresh water to be viable ecosystems.
The issue is far bigger than the City of New Orleans itself. The results of us trashing the environment are global in their implications. Mitigation, including environmental mitigation, is generally well spent money IMHO.
“Mitigation, including environmental mitigation, is generally well spent money IMHO”
I couldn’t agree more. I handle (part of) long-tail environmental claims. It’s turned me into more of an environmentalist than I otherwise would’ve been. Even setting aside the bruhaha over global warming, we’re doing damage in lots of other ways, and it always seems horrifically expensive to fix it after the fact.