South Florida
What a dump! Sure the weather is fantastic, and the ocean nice and warm, but it is unbelievably ugly. And there is still trash everywhere from the passage of Wilma. Tons of trees still lying around. The devastation must have been unreal. Still, the trash and the insane crowding has destroyed this part of the country.
As little at 20 years ago when I first started visiting this area, there was still some feel of a tropical paradise. That feeling is long gone. Developers have simply run amok and fill up every vacant lot, raze every older house ... build, build, build. Downtown Fort Lauderdale is not recognizable to someone who was last here 5 years ago. There must be 50 new high rise buildings. Which brings me inevitably to folly: one of these buildings showed the risk of building inappropriately in a hurricane zone ... about half its windows are still missing. Apparently, the whole of the inside of the building was demolished as the 120 mile per hour wind gusts tore through it. And that was not even a strong strike. So what happens when the Cat 5 storm roars through here? Katrina that caused the floods in New Orleans was an indirect Cat 3 strike. What happens when a truly big one hits a city? Miami, say? All these houses on the canals, the huge high-rises, what happens? It is sort of a crap shoot: buy and make your money as an investor or developer and get the heck out of Dodge before it happens. But for people living here, this would be different: Wilma was far more damaging than anyone thought it would be, and it was only 13 years after Andrew slammed Homestead with a Cat 5 storm (that just missed Miami -- where we might have learned the lessons so desperately needed now).
There are traffic lights still out in Fort Lauderdale some 6 months after Wilma. Trailer parks still totally ripped up, but we only hear about Katrina because of the flooding. There are tons of canals lined with houses all over the region and the mean high tide is only feet below the houses. A good storm surge of say 18 feet would put all of this under water. Damage from flooding? It can happen here too. Of course, as soon as the storm passes the water would flow out of its own accord, but it really wouldn't matter much. The damage would be out of this world.
On a different tack, the population seems to have changed too. I have rarely seen such aggressive driving outside of Boston. The freeways are insane -- much worse than anywhere I have ever driven. On the streets, only Boston and Cairo put South Florida to shame. And why does everyone here have an SUV -- OK, not everyone, but a whole lot of people anyway. Huge, chromed-out, tinted window (darkest allowable and darker) barges screaming and weaving through traffic. And motorcyclists without helmets(!). And gum-chewing teens with one hand on top of the wheel and the other resolutely clamped to the side of their heads sporting the newest Razor cell phone. Not a healthy environment.
But, I need to go outside, get into the boat and go fishing. Ciao.
As little at 20 years ago when I first started visiting this area, there was still some feel of a tropical paradise. That feeling is long gone. Developers have simply run amok and fill up every vacant lot, raze every older house ... build, build, build. Downtown Fort Lauderdale is not recognizable to someone who was last here 5 years ago. There must be 50 new high rise buildings. Which brings me inevitably to folly: one of these buildings showed the risk of building inappropriately in a hurricane zone ... about half its windows are still missing. Apparently, the whole of the inside of the building was demolished as the 120 mile per hour wind gusts tore through it. And that was not even a strong strike. So what happens when the Cat 5 storm roars through here? Katrina that caused the floods in New Orleans was an indirect Cat 3 strike. What happens when a truly big one hits a city? Miami, say? All these houses on the canals, the huge high-rises, what happens? It is sort of a crap shoot: buy and make your money as an investor or developer and get the heck out of Dodge before it happens. But for people living here, this would be different: Wilma was far more damaging than anyone thought it would be, and it was only 13 years after Andrew slammed Homestead with a Cat 5 storm (that just missed Miami -- where we might have learned the lessons so desperately needed now).
There are traffic lights still out in Fort Lauderdale some 6 months after Wilma. Trailer parks still totally ripped up, but we only hear about Katrina because of the flooding. There are tons of canals lined with houses all over the region and the mean high tide is only feet below the houses. A good storm surge of say 18 feet would put all of this under water. Damage from flooding? It can happen here too. Of course, as soon as the storm passes the water would flow out of its own accord, but it really wouldn't matter much. The damage would be out of this world.
On a different tack, the population seems to have changed too. I have rarely seen such aggressive driving outside of Boston. The freeways are insane -- much worse than anywhere I have ever driven. On the streets, only Boston and Cairo put South Florida to shame. And why does everyone here have an SUV -- OK, not everyone, but a whole lot of people anyway. Huge, chromed-out, tinted window (darkest allowable and darker) barges screaming and weaving through traffic. And motorcyclists without helmets(!). And gum-chewing teens with one hand on top of the wheel and the other resolutely clamped to the side of their heads sporting the newest Razor cell phone. Not a healthy environment.
But, I need to go outside, get into the boat and go fishing. Ciao.
posted by Zaphod at Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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