Bugster2 wrote: UNCLE JIMMY wrote: Bugster2 wrote:The fires have always been a problem in California. This is nothing new or unexpected. Every year we have a major fire that wipes out areas. What we have here is a deadly combination: wind, low humidity, and brush. Up north in Paradise it is forest, wind, low humidity. Down here we have brush on the hillsides. It is needed to keep much of the land from sliding and impossible to eradicate unless you bring in the goats. They are man's best friend when it comes to clearing brush. So, you keep the brush but it dies and dries out and becomes a fire hazard. It burns. Then when rain comes you get deadly mudslides because the brush is gone. I think it is what is called a Catch-22 situation. Laguna Beach rents goats to keep the brush under control. Good idea. They should really do that everywhere. Those goats can climb even the steepest hillsides. What is so sad is that Thousand Oaks (where the shootings took place) not only has to deal with the tragedy of losing someone but they also have to run for their lives. Pepperdine University has the right idea: most of their buildings were built with fire in mind. They are at least fire-resistant. Faculty and students are hunkered down in the library. I saw cars and clumps of bicycles burning on the campus but the buildings are not. At least not yet. The fire is getting closer.
What a scary ass situation to live in. To put it bluntly!
No worse than hurricanes and tornados. Chit happens.
It's true that every area has its catastrophes and we all learn to deal with them as best we can. It's just that those fires come up so quickly, grow so quickly, move so quickly and leave nothing but scorched earth. I cry every night watching the news at those poor people who aren't even able to salvage a photograph from the ruins of their home. It's tough on all, of course, but we feel SO sorry for the elderly victimes as we just cannot imagine how you come back from such devastation; it's difficult for anyone but when you're elderly, EVERYTHING seems to be more difficult. We often hear of people who haven't been able to afford their homeowners' coverage, too, and have let it lapse. And of course when that happens, you've REALLY lost everything. I pray to God we're never in that type of financial situation but if we were, rather than cancel our homeowners' coverage, we would raise the deductible -- even as high as $50k or $100k -- so we'd at least get SOMETHING if our house was lost in a catastrophe.
When we first bought this house 20 years ago, there was a hail storm (a first in my lifetime here) in N.O. about a year and a half later which hit Algiers Point particularly hard. It did $35k in damage to our home and totaled both of our cars. When our insurance adjuster was inspecting our roof for damage (it needed to be replaced in TOTAL, all the way down to the wood), I asked him why my neighbor's roof, which I could see from our upstairs windows, looked undamaged (we had an asbestos roof and the neighbor had a sealtab roof). He told me ALL the roofs in our neighborhood needed replacing. He pointed out how the sidewalk in front of the neighbor's roof was full of what looked like dark grey soot; he said THAT "soot" was the neighbor's roof and that it would no longer keep out the elements. And he was right as he had to replace his, too, just not all the way down like we had to do. (We were on a waiting list for about 10 months to get our roof done due to the sheer number of people needing roof work. We had to wait even longer to get the siding done because it was a small job and there were big jobs getting the bids rather than the little jobs. We waited even longer to get the paint job!
We were extremely lucky as we'd purchased replacement value insurance on our home and the inspection prior to our purchase showed we would probably need a new roof in "5 to 10 years" -- so we figured it we'd have to replace it in probably 3 years. I got several estimates but one roofer, referred to me by a coworker who'd grown up with him, told me that since I had replacement value insurance, I shoudn't go with 25-year sealtab bids people were giving me due to the fact that asbestos roofs in their day were very expensive and were 50-year roofs! He said to simply tell our insurance adjuster that and he also volunteered to speak to him directly, which he did. So we were able to replace it with a faux slate roof which was very pricey and all we had to pay was our $1000 deductible. We had also just finished having our house painted and the insurance company paid for us to get it repainted. We have a wood house but the sides and back were covered with vinyl siding when it was renovated shortly before we purchased it and that had to be replaced as well but only on one side and a few pieces on the back of the house near the roofline. The siding guy, who also did painting, tried to talk me into taking off the siding rather than replacing it; he said it would increase the value of our home. I laughed, told him we hoped to die here so I really had no desire to increase its value at that time. Though it might increase the value of the house minimally to remove the siding, it would also substantially increase the price of a paint job to extremely expensive! (Our house is two-story but we have an attic on top of the house, so we have a third floor bedroom that we use as air-conditioned storage while the rest of the third floor remains a regular attic (has on the central air units and some of the AC ductwork, too). So a paint job for the whole house would mean the price of painting a three-story home -- not cheap no matter where you live -- versus just painting the front of the house, the balcony on the front and the windows and trim on all sides of the house. I tried to get the insurance company to replace ALL the siding but it wasn't that old so it hadn't faded enough to require all of the siding to be replaced -- the new stuff matched perfectly.
Our roof wasn't damaged at all in Katrina except for a few tiles coming off and some of the terra cotta ridge tiles needed replacing. But no leaks. The Corps of Engineers went all over N.O. while the City was draining (it took 2 weeks for the water to drain out but keep in mind we're mostly below sea level and in some areas the water was 20 feet deep; our pumping system could not operate until electricity had been restored to all areas where pumps were) and blue-tarped all the damaged roofs so more damage wouldn't occur when it rained. We laughed when we came home from Houston after 7 weeks in exile, we had a notice tacked to our front door from the Corps of Engineers saying they hadn't tarped our roof because nailing the tarp on would have damaged our "slate roof." I said, wow, that faux slate really did its job as it fooled the Corps of Engineers.
Brian of course reminded me that the Corps of Engineers was the entity that built the substandard levees that had failed in many areas causing 80% of the City of N.O. to flood, and is still considered the worst civil engineering disaster in U.S. history! Not only did they use substandard materials but they lied on their documentation and did not follow their own design, which was also poor, about how far down they used the proper structural material when building the levees. Experts examining the levees in N.O. after the storm equated their work to be like putting bricks on top of jello! And their "annual inspection" of all the levees each year was criminally negligent. The Corps tried to blame the Orleans Levee District did not do the federally mandated maintenance on the levees which was more of their crapola. The Corps ended up with yet more egg on their face when testimony post-Katrina showed the Corps' certificates given to the OLD from 1959 to 2004 showed the OLD did an outstanding job in maintaining the levees. The "drive-by levee inspections" reported by the media in 2005 were offered up as proof of malfeasance by the Orleans Levee District. But then the facts came out that 1) these annual inspections were conducted by the Corps, not the levee district, and 2) they were little more than ceremonial. The Corps' official audit of the levee district's year-round maintenance activities was completed well PRIOR to their drive-by inspection of over a hundred miles of levee! Testimony and records showed their "inspections" took less than two days and more attention was given to which highly-rated N.O. restaurants they were going to have lunch at each of the two-days. The lunches also lasted from 2 to 3 hours each day so their "inspections" lasted an average of 4 hours a day for two days! But, of course, the government is immune from lawsuits so the Corps wasn't punished.
Forgive me for going on so long about this but New Orleanians often find people STILL think the levees here were OVERTOPPED in Katrina and they were not -- they failed in more than 90 places. Even some of our "esteemed" U.S. Senators still make remarks to that effect after other states suffer weather-related tragedies.
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