[sdiy] OT: Hurricane Frances

[john mahoney]

  PS. I posted a message about Florida and hurricanes a couple nights ago, and later thought it insensitive. I hope everyone in Florida is OK, and watch out for this new bad-boy, Ivan.

Karl,
Apology accepted. I must admit that your post did aggravate me, although you raised a valid issue about insurance companies. Most Floridians are okay, thanks, though some are not. Many are also still without power -- I know of 3 families who got theirs back today.

As far as *you* paying for it, well, we're paying quite a bit for it! Storm insurance for our house costs over $3000 a year, and this house is valued at under $300K (i.e. it's no palace). We paid good money for wind-resistant windows with impact-resistant, laminated glass, too. Floridians also pay higher construction costs because of our building codes, as do, say, Californians for theirs.

By the way, everybody in the country is probably subsidized in some way. Is Ohio habitable without heat? No. Does the govt subsidize heating oil in the winter so that people won't freeze to death? Yes. There you go. It's a big country, with some unique problems everywhere.

Meanwhile, Jamaica's gonna get SLAMMED by Ivan. Heaven help the people there.

Thanks for the bandwidth, folks.
--
john

P.S. Our storm shutters are still up, just in case Ivan turns north sooner rather than later -- and we don't even *need* them since we got the windows laminated, so you can see that we're pretty gun-shy down here. The same laminate is supposedly used on U.S. warships and government buildings, including The White House.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/attachments/20040909/aa3e511f/attachment.htm>