If you choose to live in Florida, you can count on rebuilding your destroyed house at least once, if not more. Count on it. Either the hurricane force winds will flatten you, or the ensuing flood/storm surge will swamp you. Or both.
And yet people living in 'America's Friendliest Home Town', 'The Villages,' all live in cheap double-wides, which can't even stand up to a 75 mph gust, much less stronger hurricane force winds. What's up with these people?
With the latest hurricane (Irma) predicted to tear through the middle of Florida, starting at Miami and heading north, the news media can hardly wait to film the carnage this latest maelstrom will bring. These vultures will glom onto the many sob stories of poor schmucks losing everything, the tears rolling down their cheeks, clutching to their wedding photo album; the only thing they could save when the Cajun Navy comes by in their air boats to save them from drowning.
I don't get it. Live in Florida, and get hammered by a hurricane. It's like the sun coming up in the east and setting in the west. It occurs so often, you can set your watch by these monster storms' arrivals. And yet these poor fools are shocked...SHOCKED!!!...that their lives have been devastated by Mother Nature.
Recommendation to people who insist on living in Florida despite the well known hazards of constant hurricanes: don't live in double-wides. Build your home above the flood plain, probably 'stilts' are in order. Frame your stick-built homes using steel studs, not southern yellow pine studs. Use masonry (bricks) for the siding, not vinyl. Build your roofs with ceramic slate or metal, not flimsy asphalt shingles. Don't plant big trees near your house that can get blown into your bedroom.
In other words, use your brain. Don't be an idiot who makes the 6 o'clock news, getting interviewed by Matt Gutman wearing virtually everything you now own: a wife-beater T-shirt, camo shorts and flip flops, with tears flowing down your face.
Duh.
.jpg)
