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Post by sonic on Aug 28, 2020 1:34:34 GMT -6
I see nothing wrong with living on the coast per se, millions of people do quite happily, but if I was going to live there it would have to be on a rocky coastline not a sandy beach or estuary type area. Its these folks who keep building water level propertys on the beaches or estuaries I dont get. In parts of the UK and partts of NE America there are seaside homes that are hundreds of years old because they are built on ROCK at least 30 ft about the high tide level. Well that totally eliminates living ANYWHERE on the Gulf Coast. There are NO rocky coasts on the gulf coast. It is a geological impossibility. You have to go 40 or 50 miles inland to find a low hill that is 50 feet above sea level. the closest thing to a rocky coast is where people have built sea walls to limit the damage from the waves of a storm but even those won't hold back a storm surge from a strong hurricane.
Quick geology lesson. The Northern parts of the east and west coast are coasts formed from from ocean waves. They are very often rocky because over millions of years the oceans eroded way any land that was not rocky. These are continental coasts with thousands and thousands of miles of open ocean between then and the next land mass.
The Gulf of Mexico is the remainder of a once huge inland SEA that divided the North American Continent up to the Canadian border. The last Ice age lowered the sea level and the basin of that sea filled up with silt as it slowly withdrew. When the ice age ended the inland sea just never reformed. the shores of the Gulf of Mexico are what was once under hundreds of feet of water and so are fairly flat and like the edges of a puddle. I live almost a hundred miles from the Gulf now. I was raised 3 feet above sea level 20 miles in from the coast. Now i live almst a hundred miles inland and the low areas where I live now are probably 70 to 100 feet above sea level. In west Texas and New Mexico a thousand mile from the coast you have the Guadeloupe Mountains. Tall beautiful mountains...this mountain range though is not made of rock. it is a huge fossel reef left over from the times then that was a salt water sea hundreds of feet deep.
If you want to have your home above the smallers floods from storms you build your home up on piers. Think telephone poles. The good news is that the mud we live on is STABLE. Many places built up on rocks have earthquakes. They also are prone to mud slides when it rains and the thin layer of soil setting on those rocks shakes loose. the ocean based coasts also are regularly inundated by tsunomies or have volcanoes that blow up. You don't have those problems on the Gulf Coast there is nothing on any coast that is high enough to fall andcause a tsunomi and volcanoes don't seem to form in deep mud very well.
If you move far away from any coast you run into blizzards and in the middle of the US you will need a concrete hole in the ground in your yard to shelter from tornadoes.
That's it exactly Dan, wherever you live, there is a danger of something. The thing is to know what the risk is and have a plan to mitigate it. Which brings us nicely back to the scenario. In the lead up, I would check the go bags and start getting things together and if there were a chance of evacuation I would start phoning hotels and motels from my list to make a reservation outside of the evacuation zone. I would make sure we had everything needed to see us through a week or so and also make sure we had a good amount of cash to buy anything needed over and above that and to pay for any repairs that may be needed on our return or extra time in local hotels/motels if the property is uninhabitable. See that the phones and any other electronic equipment we needed was charged and the battery banks were at full capacity. As I don't drive, I would go the rail station and find out how services would be affected and if necessary book tickets there and then. This being the case, it may be that I would probably leave earlier than suggested. Before leaving, turn off utilities, secure the property and head out.
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Post by drhenley on Aug 28, 2020 9:27:52 GMT -6
There is no bedrock anywhere in the Mississippi Embayment, which is an extension of the Mississippi River Delta stretching all the way to Illinois. It was all an inland sea at one time until it silted up. It's some of the most fertile soil in the world. The land east of the Mississippi Embayment, composed of loess, was also part of the inland sea but formed by wind blown dust from the west. Because it was wind blown and not water borne, the particles didn't get rounded off and the loess hills are very stable, able to form vertical cliffs of soil called loess bluffs. It has no bedrock either. Loess bluff at Vicksburg
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Post by dirtdiva on Aug 28, 2020 10:18:23 GMT -6
As opposed to where I live in Appalachia where you have 6 to 12 inches of soil and then hit bedrock.
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Post by texdanm on Aug 29, 2020 22:07:19 GMT -6
The thing that I like about hurricanes now is there is NO way for them to sneak up on me. Living on the coast for most of my life, I picked up a lot of habits. My must-have important papers are all together and in one grab and go box. I always have food for several months and water for a couple of weeks. After Hurricane Rita some people were without power or water for almost three months. They eventually called for an evacuation of the city on the coast where I grew up when the sewage system was overwhelmed.
I am a long way inland now and was without power for 9 days. We had a GREAT time. We like to camp and just camped out in the yard. We ran a generator enough to keep the freezers frozen but everything else was camping. BBQs, Fish Frys, and a lot of parties. Nobody was working so we just had a lot of fun. THAT is what staying prepared can do for you. The stores were closed and Gasoline got hard to find. We were ready. Something that we always had in or load up and haul out of there kits was a tent and bedding. If worse comes to worst you can ride it out in the car and then camp for a few days. The motels fill up FAST and reservations are not always honored. They get lost when a ton of people show up cash in hand.
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Post by billmasen on Aug 30, 2020 2:45:08 GMT -6
I found the reports of the after effects of H Andrew very informative, people waiting for up to 17 days for federal / Local / FEMA assistance, many areas seeing no help at all for weeks. Then when " Federal" help eventually arrived it was in the form of Private Security companies like Blackwater who went around trying to disarm the survivors. I think being as self suffient as possible for folks living in these vulnerable areas is an absolute essential. But I still would never live at sea level or below sea level as seen in parts of NOLA.
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Post by dirtdiva on Aug 30, 2020 6:52:13 GMT -6
I found the reports of the after effects of H Andrew very informative, people waiting for up to 17 days for federal / Local / FEMA assistance, many areas seeing no help at all for weeks. Then when " Federal" help eventually arrived it was in the form of Private Security companies like Blackwater who went around trying to disarm the survivors. I think being as self suffient as possible for folks living in these vulnerable areas is an absolute essential. But I still would never live at sea level or below sea level as seen in parts of NOLA. Bill many of the most vulnerable areas won't be there for the next generation. I can remember camping in Grand Isle (far south just about as you can go) when my kids were little. Campfire and tents on the beach, kids running around in diapers in the surf. The place where we camped is gone now literally. That coast line and the marshes that protect it are disappearing at an alarming rate in just my lifetime. For whatever reasons in the decades to come many of those areas will be gone.
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Post by billmasen on Aug 31, 2020 5:16:28 GMT -6
I found the reports of the after effects of H Andrew very informative, people waiting for up to 17 days for federal / Local / FEMA assistance, many areas seeing no help at all for weeks. Then when " Federal" help eventually arrived it was in the form of Private Security companies like Blackwater who went around trying to disarm the survivors. I think being as self suffient as possible for folks living in these vulnerable areas is an absolute essential. But I still would never live at sea level or below sea level as seen in parts of NOLA. Bill many of the most vulnerable areas won't be there for the next generation. I can remember camping in Grand Isle (far south just about as you can go) when my kids were little. Campfire and tents on the beach, kids running around in diapers in the surf. The place where we camped is gone now literally. That coast line and the marshes that protect it are disappearing at an alarming rate in just my lifetime. For whatever reasons in the decades to come many of those areas will be gone. So very true coastal erosion is affecting huge parts of the world, as a child i used to play on a point of land that trailed out to sea bout 3/4 of a mile, mainly grassy sand dunes, all gone now.
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