trap, I disagree with many of your points, too many to itemize. Let me just say that you are overreacting. I grew up on the southeast Virginia coast, the Norfolk/Va Beach area (and only a couple of hundred miles north of Cape Hatteras). We had hurricanes hit, though never a cat 4 or 5, but mostly lower category hurricanes or strong tropical storms. In a flat area, it doesn't matter what you do, there is simply no place for all that water to go (sometimes for a long while and sometimes for forever [until the next late season superstorm comes barrelling through]; the isthmus in northwest Norfolk, Willoughby Spit, was created by a hurricane three hundred or so years ago, now with a thriving population as in some places it's over a mile wide /!). You have to understand hurricanes, and hurricane season, to understand how rare this type of storm is.
First off, it's real late in the season for a hurricane to be crawling up the Atlantic coastline as the water turns noticeably cooler rather quick, and these babies do not like cold water. Still, Sandy was a massive hurricane in size, though with only Cat 1 winds, a godsend. Now I've been watching hurricanes for a long time, getting serious for the rest of my life with Camille, that Cat 5 Grand Dame, but more about her later. Even being late in the season, this hurricane did that true rarity: It zigzagged. Most hurricanes curl and curve until slamming into land. This girl skimmed past Cape Hatteras well out to sea. Now if there was not this low system coming down from Canada, and a stalled high toward New England and the North Atlantic, Sandy would have been a nothing burger. Hurricanes take the path of least resistance. She started out looking like she'd sail away into oblivion like many hurricanes do. But that zigging out into the North Atlantic was blocked, so she zagged. She zagged as that large Canadian low sucked her in, combining her rains with the front's cold creating those huge blizzard totals in the WV/MD mountains, again a rarity for this time of year (these aren't the Rockies, they don't go that high). Sandy found a convenient body of water to follow in her run toward that cold front, The Delaware Bay. The friggin' Delaware Bay! Again, hurricanes rarely get this far north as their are much more interesting and friendly targets south of here. But nature happens. There were three fronts that combined at a point in time. There's not a whole lot you can do, no matter if it happens near a coast or in the mountains or on the plains.
With Sandy, the main problem is the storm surge coupled with full moon high tides (another of those little things that make a big whole) creating lakes where they shouldn't be. The land is flat on the east coast, until you get into the rocky glacier coast of New England. Being so flat, the flooding can be devastating for miles inland. If there are heavy rains, so much the worse. And then the wind. We need trees along the coast, so please, enough of that. The forests around NY have been thickly deciduous for quite some time and seem to thrive, even going so far as to make pretty leaves in the fall for the tourists. A thunderstorm can do some serious damage to trees, and there is much less warning. We don't do tornadoes here very often, but they are the same: They pop up out of nowhere. A hurricane is always a well-documented somewhere. It doesn't take a friggin' genius to know to leave low-lying areas when a storm like this is predicted to hit you, it doesn't matter how long it's been since one hit. Gov. Christie was right, and I would have added that those who stayed on the Jersey Shore were too stupid to breathe. Because of all the natural events that can occur, forest fire, earthquake, tornado, flooding, a hurricane you know is coming; you also know most times a blizzard is coming, but digging out of a blizzard and digging out of a hurricane are difficult only by their degree (pun intended), but a blizzrd does not have those high sustained winds of a hurricane. With a hurricane, you have days to get the f*ck out. Sure property will be destroyed, just as you say you have forest fires which also destroy property. But for some reason, and this I cannot explain even as I grew up around these formerly ladies only blowhards, people like to have 'ride out the hurricane' parties. Don't ask me why, I really don't know. But it wouldn't matter if Virginia Beach was built with nothing more than two stories and shrubs, once a 15 to 20 foot storm surge hits with the high tide, there is simply nothing you can do -- for miles inland.
Now back to Camille for a second. This was the grandmomma of a hurricane from my youth. 1969. Gulf Coast. Cat 5. 150 mile an hour sustained winds. She slammed into the Gulf Coast, Alabama/Mississippi. (Wiki: Camille and unofficially the Labor Day Hurricane were the only Atlantic hurricanes to exhibit recorded sustained wind speeds of at least 190 miles per hour (310 km/h) until Allen joined them in 1980, and remains the only confirmed Atlantic hurricane in recorded history to make landfall with wind speeds at or above such a level. The actual windspeed of Hurricane Camille will never be known, however, as it destroyed all of the wind recording instruments upon making landfall.) There was a condo there where the whoever they were decided to have a hurricane party and drink the storm away. Bad choice. Once the storm passed, that condo was only the foundation, and everybody died. Now while that was pretty spectacular in its own right, and became seared, seared in my memory, there was also the fact that while Camille did extensive coastal damage with all her charms, she went inland and quickly downgraded to a severe tropical bitch. She dumpled a ton of water in the mountainous KY/TN/WV/VA/NC area, starting points for many rivers. The flooding from Camille was severe. In fact, more people died inland from the flooding than along the coast from the direct effects of the hurricane. If you've ever driven I-95 south through Richmond, VA, as you leave the City proper, you cross the James River on a bridge that is well above the placid James. With Camile, the James River flooded, with the water lapping over that bridge. My brother bought the book, The Great James River Flood, and the photographs are mind-boggling. Camille hit the Gulf Coast, but a week later, Richmond was flooded like no time in its history. Richmond's about a hundred miles inland from the Atlantic coast. The city didn't get hit directly by Camille, Richmond got hit by the aftereffects, the incredibly heavy rain. Sh*t happens. Nowhere on a birth certificate does it say life is fair. I will add that nowhere does it say in the Constitution that if an idiot builds a house near the ocean and it gets damaged or destroyed multiple times, the government should create a program/handout for such stupidity. But people are gonna live where people are gonna live. I have family who could never leave the mountains of West Virginia. I have a hard time being away from the coast, missing that salty muskiness. I'm a coast guy, and on this coast we have hurricanes. On the left coast, they have California. Like I said, people are gonna live where people are gonna live. So all things considered, I'd rather have the threat of hurricanes than the reality of California.
