The Houston flood evacuations are just the tip of the iceberg as still waters destroy homes, furnishings, personal items, and memories. In order for these costs to be covered, resident’s would have to have a flood insurance policy. But even then, there are caps, $250,000 for structure and $100,000 for contents. Anything over and beyond would require a homeowner to foot the bill themselves. In the meantime, waiting for waters to recede, the reality is residents will be waiting in long lines as government scrambles, insurance adjusters scramble and construction workers scramble – and most likely relocate where business will be booming.
Beaumont and Port Arthur have a 67% homeownership rate, for a total population of about 408,000. The total number of housing units in the area is roughly 175,000 of which about 20,000 have flood insurance policies. The reason? Policy rates can cost anywhere from $450 to $8000 per year, over and above a typical homeowner policy.
Harris and Galveston counties are even less insured with over 4 million residents and only 300,000 flood policies.
But it isn’t just residences, business insurance policies are also limited as to what they cover in the event of a flood. Financial losses and loss of use of property are not covered. Limitations apply to the amount of loss, $500,000 building and $500,000 inventory unless excess coverage is in place. All of this assuming flood insurance was purchased.
In the meantime, it would appear that the money handlers in Hollywood are forking over ‘prayers’ instead of ‘help’, much to the chagrin of residents. Exceptions to the rule include some businesses and the CEO for the Titans who appear to understand the enormity of the need.
Looking back at the Katrina cleanup bill hopefully we will have learned a few lessons. While Harry Reid made the outspoken statement that it would cost between $200 and $250 billion, the tab included some odd costs, such as; mental health and substance abuse services – $400 million, rebuild early childhood ‘programs’ – $600 million, and $25.5 million for sugar cane ‘research’. While it is not politically correct to question these costs in the wake of the suffering, money wasted is still, money wasted.
The other impact that Katrina and Harvey will tally is our gas prices. After Katrina gas prices nearly reached $5 gallon, and the economy plummeted from 3.8% to 1.3% before jacking up to 4.8%! A positive.
Agenda’s abound whenever the opportunity arises, and the Harvey hurricane has cockroaches streaming out of the woodwork claiming “It’s Global Warming! It’s Global Warming!” Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, what they don’t know can fill an ocean compared to a thimble of water of what they do know.
Of course the obvious question would be, if it is Global Warming, then why haven’t the residents all moved inland, away from the gulf coast which will surely be battered again? Nor does this address the consensus of Global Warming/Climate Change/Man Made.
If you can’t control the cause, then you mitigate or avoid the circumstance.
In other words, weather patterns have parlayed their destruction for thousands of years. And although scientists can’t tell us with 100% accuracy what the weather will be tomorrow, they believe they can tell us what it will be in a hundred years. And if they’re wrong, they will give us hindsight as to how being right was beyond their – control.
Apparently, scientists claim to have created very fancy algorithms that they can apply to determine if a particular weather event was a result of climate change. However, it does take months to complete before it is submitted for peer review and more months of analysis. Therefore at this juncture – they DON’T KNOW.
Therefore, at this point NO scientist can make a claim one way or the other without that claim being based on theory and false doctrine. And such a scientist would be considered quite remiss, unprofessional and unorthodox in making any claim or statement.
What the weather scientists did state some months ago was the fact that the Atlantic would experience an increase in hurricanes. This increase could simply be a result of El Nino, a pattern that has existed for thousands of years and causes unusually warm temperatures in the ocean. Between 1970 and 2015, there were 17 El Nino years, according to NASA. In fact, the climatologists were stating that El Nino would wreak havoc the second half of 2017 and this was reported according to Insurance Journal, NOAA, the Climate Prediction Center, Global Weather Oscillations, Accuweather, Forbes, Weather Trends, etc… etc… etc…
Of course it isn’t nearly as fun for the media to report common cyclical events as the cause. Inciting hysteria and Chicken Little panic claiming ‘the sky is falling’ sells more advertising. And promotes an agenda… Hollywood? I think I hear the beat of a tom-tom, get ready for the rhetoric – not the wallets.