Bad News from Punta Gorda FL

That's awful news, Harper. I can barely believe that people running a mobile home park wouldn't evacuate during the warning period, especially when there was so much forewarning. It would be expensive, perhaps, to host those people somewhere else, but not more expensive than this loss, at all.

Horrible. And if you see the pics that are coming out of there, those people really had a rough time of it. The devastation in the area has been liked to that of hurricane Andrew, especially in some mobile home parks.

Sometimes, older people are stubborn and don't want to be herded into a shelter. Some will want to stay with their pet! I am still hoping that this a rumor, the same rumors circulated after Andrew. It still turned out that 23 died.

I don't know if it is always stubbornness. For some elderly, they are into denial. For others, it would be too traumatic to pick up and go somewhere.
I don't think that some of them can reallly conceptualize the possible consequences of staying!

Harper and Phoenix, I saw a brief interview with one man who seemed to imply that life was not easy for them anyway, and that the hurricane held no bigger threat than life already had. That's the very, very sad part to me

60 body bags? This is really sad news.

Still haven't heard any confirmation of dead, so let's hope, and, for those inclined, pray.

This is simply awful, everything the forecasters wanted to prevent.

The worst part is the admission that with even the best of today's technology, we cannot predict the slip and slide nor the trajectory of a Hurricane.

Condolences to all.

and the evac plan in and around tampa St Pete is very advanced. everyone on high gound getsto host evacuees. When Andrew hit I was down in the Phosphate district and the whole company volunteered to help with cleanup and recovery. Many of the homes that were ripped apart were stick constructed and "double wides" None of the older "Art Deco" style homes were damaged besides minor cosmetics. I always wondered why

1 In California, people are allowed to build homes cantilevered over steep gorges prone to slides and quakes

2 people in Florida can have trailers and double wides with little safety amenities

3 people build on barrier islands at all

Im a little cynical when my taxes wind up paying for someones stilted mickeymansion that gets swept away in a NEer.
Dont get me wrong, Im sorry as hell for any loss of life but its PREVENTABLE BY ZONING

Just prior to the storm making landfall in Florida there was an elderly lady on one of the cable news channels that said she was just gonna stay... "Shelters don't take dogs, so what am I supposed to do?" Many may have felt that way. How sad that a hotel inland wasn't a choice.

I sat on a local wetlands commission for four years. After four years of garbage science, slick lawyers implying law suits if they did not get their way, and threatening phone call; I'd had enough. That's why it happens.

Now THAT is a sad statement....it makes me feel bad.....

Farmer, aren't those california houses built on cassons to bedrock? Not that I understand how that holds given that a major shelf of mud flows, as the steel doesn't go into the bedrock, does it?

I am betwixt, in that I consider it a philosophy of mine to live lightly on the land, and consider cantilevering - while occasionally sort of beautiful as in FLW's famous Falling Water house - as not living lightly on it, in the sense of not interfering with land unnecessarily, not imposing on it. I once turned down a landscape project when the architect went on about the pool they planned to cantilever. So in that way, I have kind of liked mobile homes. They are sometimes what I think of as unattractive, but they do fulfill my wish for light presence.

And yet you are probably right about lack of safeguards for them..

On zoning, I'm surely a fan of McHarg's type of landuse overlays and thoughtful locating of buildings and communities. Hard though to say where to put light housing when a storm has such potential for turns and twists.

I have confusion also in my thinking re fire. So much land isn't let-burned with small fires because of so many more people building in forest areas, and this changes the natural fire ecology. I say that, but do I really no want people to be able to have a small cabin? Which brings up, there is an interesting Barton Phelps house, with a pond roof... designed to be neat looking but also fire-wise.

I see I have wandered off of Punta Gorda and it's beset people. I feel badly for those people. I would be torn about leaving too. It is not all so easy, I don't think, to just get out. Some may not drive.. and it would be horrid to leave a pet. Absolutely it would be best to get a hotel inland (or wherever), but some don't have ready money.

Farmer, you're damn straight its bull$hit. All the money we pay to underwrite federal flood insurance for mansions on the beaches. Double wides in Florida are dangerous but affordable. It's a crying shame.

I wll NEVER understand why mobile homes and double wides are NOT OUTLAWED in places like Florida where the weather is so contrary.

If you want to get an idea of how bad it was, there are a number of horrible pics and videos on this site:

http://www.news-press.com/news/weather/hurricane/index.html

Wow. I see what you all mean by about not allowing mobile homes.

In California, we have a big ongoing effort to do what is called earthquake retrofitting, which is to some extent a matter of adding steel connectors to various beams and joists, and tying homes to foundations more securely. And building and safety/planning requirements are getting stricter on ways to minimize fire damage. I am wondering if there is anything people can do to improve safety in mobile homes from wind gusts..

All the retrofitting in the world won't keep a M.Home from going airborne.

Do they ever hold them down by building foundations and bolting them to them? (to make immobile homes?)