Sometimes you have to ask, "What were they thinking?"

Hawaii's big island isn't a place I know well; however, given the Kilauea eruption we've witnessed for weeks now, and because I know the whole Hawaiian island chain is the result of a piece of the crust moving over a "hot spot," I wondered how many volcanoes are on that island. Turns out there are several, and Kilauea isn't the only one that's active.



In addition to Kilauea, Mona Loa and Hualalai are also active. The island is about half the size of the DFW Metroplex.

I have to ask, "Why does anyone live around any of the three active volcanoes there?" Yes, I realize that the area around Kilauea is, besides the Kona Coast area between the other four peaks, about the only fairly flat-ish place on which to build. But it's flat land on top of a volcano! Just because it's a flat space doesn't mean it is or ever was a good idea to "put down roots" there.

I'm not ragging on the people who are there. I'm saying that certain places just aren't good places to build.

• Volcano --> That it's a shield or fissure volcano doesn't matter; it's still a volcano! It just doesn't make sense to build a house on it.
  
  
• Fault line --> The earth moving under one's feet is best left to amusement parks, sex and songs. Until building homes from rubber is perfected, it's just not a good idea to live where the earth quakes.
• Floodplains --> What is there to say? When it rains enough, rivers flood. You can't stop the rain. Remember New Orleans and Katrina? What part of NoLa was fared okay, all things considered? The Quarter. Why? Because it's above the floodplain. The folks who founded the city had the sense to build on high ground, but the people who came after apparently forgot that high ground is dry ground.
  
  Remember The Great Flood of 1993?
  
  
  
  
  
  Remember the 2008 Flood?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Assessing the Midwest Floods of 2008 (and 1993)

I'm not saying don't build in those kinds of places. I'm saying that if you choose to live there, it's AYOR don't expect too much sympathy when lots of rain falls, the volcano erupts or the earth moves. No, one doesn't know when those kinds of calamities will happen, but one knows damn well that sooner or later they will happen; thus one is not obligated to put oneself in the way of them. The reality is all one had to do is ask one's realtor for geological info before deciding to buy.

Xelor said:

Hawaii's big island isn't a place I know well; however, given the Kilauea eruption we've witnessed for weeks now, and because I know the whole Hawaiian island chain is the result of a piece of the crust moving over a "hot spot," I wondered how many volcanoes are on that island. Turns out there are several, and Kilauea isn't the only one that's active.

​

In addition to Kilauea, Mona Loa and Hualalai are also active. The island is about half the size of the DFW Metroplex.

I have to ask, "Why does anyone live around any of the three active volcanoes there?" Yes, I realize that the area around Kilauea is, besides the Kona Coast area between the other four peaks, about the only fairly flat-ish place on which to build. But it's flat land on top of a volcano! Just because it's a flat space doesn't mean it is or ever was a good idea to "put down roots" there.

I'm not ragging on the people who are there. I'm saying that certain places just aren't good places to build.

• Volcano --> That it's a shield or fissure volcano doesn't matter; it's still a volcano! It just doesn't make sense to build a house on it.
  
  
• Fault line --> The earth moving under one's feet is best left to amusement parks, sex and songs. Until building homes from rubber is perfected, it's just not a good idea to live where the earth quakes.
• Floodplains --> What is there to say? When it rains enough, rivers flood. You can't stop the rain. Remember New Orleans and Katrina? What part of NoLa was fared okay, all things considered? The Quarter. Why? Because it's above the floodplain. The folks who founded the city had the sense to build on high ground, but the people who came after apparently forgot that high ground is dry ground.
  
  Remember The Great Flood of 1993?
  
  
  
  
  
  Remember the 2008 Flood?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Assessing the Midwest Floods of 2008 (and 1993)

I'm not saying don't build in those kinds of places. I'm saying that if you choose to live there, it's AYOR don't expect too much sympathy when lots of rain falls, the volcano erupts or the earth moves. No, one doesn't know when those kinds of calamities will happen, but one knows damn well that sooner or later they will happen; thus one is not obligated to put oneself in the way of them. The reality is all one had to do is ask one's realtor for geological info before deciding to buy.

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The practice of the Federal government bailing out those who set up shop in disaster prone areas, sometimes over and over again, needs to stop.

You ask a good question, but I don't think people will ever stop building. People build million dollar houses on ocean front, and are surprised when the hurricanes damage their property. I read today that they are already rebuilding in flood plains in Houston. I guess people just hope for the best.

Hawkeye10 said:

The practice of the Federal government bailing out those who set up shop in disaster prone areas, sometimes over and over again, needs to stop.

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I couldn't agree more.

Xelor said:

I couldn't agree more.

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I am a big believer in statistically placed cliffs for people to fall off of...as my daughter said at a family bonfire one night years ago "We cant save everyone, the stupid ones can go first".

Hawkeye10 said:

I am a big believer in statistically placed cliffs for people to fall off of...as my daughter said at a family bonfire one night years ago "We cant save everyone, the stupid ones can go first".

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You and she will get no countervailing argument from me. To wit, I'm not misanthropic, but if one comes to me talking about suicide, the conversation will be about whether one's plan is well enough developed to ensure one succeeds.

Xelor said:

You and she will get no countervailing argument from me. To wit, I'm not misanthropic, but if one comes to me talking about suicide, the conversation will be about whether one's plan is well enough developed to ensure one succeeds.

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You are certainly more interesting than you seemed at first blush....

Hawkeye10 said:

The practice of the Federal government bailing out those who set up shop in disaster prone areas, sometimes over and over again, needs to stop.

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Xelor said:

I couldn't agree more.

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What part of our country is safe? Close to water it floods. Close to forestry you get fires. Plains have tornado alley. North get ice and snow. Droughts in sections, fault lines and good old volcanos.


Where is a none disaster prone area?

Hawkeye10 said:

You are certainly more interesting than you seemed at first blush....

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Thank you.

Hawkeye10 said:

The practice of the Federal government bailing out those who set up shop in disaster prone areas, sometimes over and over again, needs to stop.

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Any idea of how much of the Earth that would include???? Every where there is something adverse at one time or another, if you think your area is free from disasters wait awhile. I have lived through killer freezing, white out, storms, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes and floods from over flowing rivers and then there are the hundreds of homes lost in wildfires, the last ones came within a block of my daughters house in an area where the last thing she thought would be that fires would be a problem, but....... - like I said there is something everywhere.

Don't worry about government bailouts, ask the people in New Orleans how that worked out..... they put up a good show at first then when the media coverage cools down they a forget you.

Hell, there could be a meteor out there right now with a bulls-eye painted on us, live your life where you want if you can, I for one would move to the Big Island in a heartbeat if I could afford it.

Pretty much everybody gets hit with the "what were they thinking?" treatment sooner or later.

What were they thinking living on a flood plain?
What were they thinking living in Tornado Alley?
What were they thinking living in an earthquake zone?
What were they thinking living in a drought zone?
What were they thinking living on the coast where there's hurricanes?
What were they thinking living within 1000 miles of Yellowstone?

Et cetera...

Chillfolks said:

What part of our country is safe? Close to water it floods. Close to forestry you get fires. Plains have tornado alley. North get ice and snow. Droughts in sections, fault lines and good old volcanos.


Where is a none disaster prone area?

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Perhaps you didn't read the final paragraph of the OP?

I'm not saying don't build in those kinds of places. I'm saying that if you choose to live there, it's AYOR, [so] don't expect too much sympathy when lots of rain falls, the volcano erupts or the earth moves.

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Perhaps, however, you did in which case maybe I shouldn't have utilized understatement in writing the emboldened phrase....

Of course there is no place that is 100% free of the risk of natural disasters. It doesn't make sense that you even offered the examples you did.

• Close to water it floods --> By all means, live/build close to the water if one wants, just not in a floodplain. Or, if one chooses to live in a floodplain, don't expect others to cover one's losses when it floods.
• Tornado Alley --> Same sentiment/principle as choosing to live in a floodplain.
• Ice and snow --> For the most part, people don't build on glaciers or in front of advancing ones. If the time comes that it's clear that glaciers are moving south, I'd say move, but one has several years, perhaps decades, in which to do so. Alternatively, don't build in front of advancing glaciers in the first place. That said, there's a key difference between ice and liquid water: ice moves very slowly and doesn't penetrate things as water does.
  • Snow fall: In the 19th and first 3/4ths of the 20th centuries, sure a few snow storms were really disastrous. These days, they're not so much calamitous as inconvenient. To wit, it always snows in Alaska and Maine and so on, and the recovery (if any is needed) is, for the most part, completed a week or two after the event. Your house is still standing. The power's back on. The streets are cleared. Etc., etc. etc.
    • As for building on the side of or beneath an avalanche prone mountain, well, that too is somewhat imprudent; however, really devastating avalanches are, for the most part, preventable.
    • Heavy snowfall in the U.S. isn't something that a good steep roof can't handle. Unless it never thaws, one will be okay.
• Drought --> If one is trying to be a farmer in a drought prone area, I'd ask one, "What were you thinking." Otherwise, for Americans, drought doesn't register as a natural disaster of the sort a volcano or earthquake is. One can irrigate. One can got to the store and buy water. Just ask people who live in Phoenix how to handle the lack of rain.

Sabre said:

Any idea of how much of the Earth that would include???? Every where there is something adverse at one time or another, if you think your area is free from disasters wait awhile. I have lived through killer freezing, white out, storms, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes and floods from over flowing rivers and then there are the hundreds of homes lost in wildfires, the last ones came within a block of my daughters house in an area where the last thing she thought would be that fires would be a problem, but....... - like I said there is something everywhere.

Don't worry about government bailouts, ask the people in New Orleans how that worked out..... they put up a good show at first then when the media coverage cools down they a forget you.

Hell, there could be a meteor out there right now with a bulls-eye painted on us, live your life where you want if you can, I for one would move to the Big Island in a heartbeat if I could afford it.

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Let's start with the worst and see how it goes....As for New Orleans the next Katrina style loss has to be the last time, and I dont care if it happened because the levees failed, sometimes cities have to die.

Chillfolks said:

What part of our country is safe? Close to water it floods. Close to forestry you get fires. Plains have tornado alley. North get ice and snow. Droughts in sections, fault lines and good old volcanos.


Where is a none disaster prone area?

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Any place that floods more than once a decade, and beaches low and/or eroding, and Puerto Rico (What a dump, we need to off load it ASAP!).....let's start there shall we...

Because, “it can’t happen here” syndrome.

Cardinal said:

Pretty much everybody gets hit with the "what were they thinking?" treatment sooner or later.

What were they thinking living on a flood plain?
What were they thinking living in Tornado Alley?
What were they thinking living in an earthquake zone?
What were they thinking living in a drought zone?
What were they thinking living on the coast where there's hurricanes?
What were they thinking living within 1000 miles of Yellowstone?

Et cetera...

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I'd tend mostly to agree with you:

• Drought --> Farmers of things other than cacti and desert creatures and who chose to farm a drought prone area...yes, I'd be asking, "What were you thinking."
• Coastal areas and hurricanes --> Yes, maybe and no. Hurricanes need warm water to persist and/or grow.
  • Yes:
    • Building in warm water coastal areas --> "What were you thinking?"
    • Building where hurricanes can strike and one didn't even so much as buy flood insurance --> "What were you thinking?"
  • Maybe
    • Building in cool water coastal areas --> With global warming happening, maybe, but one should at least have flood insurance.
      
      For instance, my beach house is in New England, but make no mistake, I've been paying attention to the fact that the ocean's warming. I've definitely had passing thoughts about trading for one farther north, on higher ground, and/or a bit more inland. Once I begin to have grandkids, I probably will do just that so they grow up with an attachment to the new place rather than the current one.
      
      So, , as go hurricanes and the hazard they present, if folks just "sits there" and waits for catastrophe to strike, yes, "what were they thinking?"
  • No:
    • Building where the water is just too cold for hurricanes to happen --> I wouldn't wonder what they were thinking unless they didn't have flood insurance.

There are places in the U.S. where natural disasters are all but unheard of and where there's no basis for thinking one's going to have a particularly bad geological/weather event beyond heavy rain or snow. Oddly, many of them haven't evolved into heavily populated places.

I understand why some of the places that are heavily populated became so: they were (many still are) port towns/cities, and when they were first developed/founded it was, as it is today, economic and convenient to build near a port. That said, when most of those port towns and surrounding areas were settled, people settled away from the obviously imprudent places to build. They built docks and warehouses down by the water, for example, but they built their homes on the hills above the water.

Now, as for other places, non-floodplain places, I can't say why they came to be so developed. Sure, they were probably good places to build a port, and perhaps there are some surrounding areas that might have been high enough, but it's clear there wasn't a lot of adjacent high ground, and the settlers of those places knew it, so they didn't build there. Modern-ish "settlers," unlike our forebears, disregarded the natural situation of the land in which they sought to build.

Why'd they do that? I really don't know. I don't know why anyone saw fit to keep building on a volcano, in tornado alley, on/around faults, etc. after it became known that is the way of those places.

What were they thinking?

JMR said:

You ask a good question, but I don't think people will ever stop building. People build million dollar houses on ocean front, and are surprised when the hurricanes damage their property. I read today that they are already rebuilding in flood plains in Houston. I guess people just hope for the best.

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I can assure you that most folks owing million dollar beach houses at the shore -- Cape Cod, The Hamptons, Newport, Rehoboth, Jupiter, etc. -- aren't the one's who're surprised. They're the one's who are prepared. If they're there at the time, or had plans to be there, they leave the area and/or change their plans, when they're told the 'cane is coming. They return when the storm has passed, assess the damage and commence to have repairs made. In other words, they deal with it.

The value of the property or the owner's financial position, however isn't the point. The point is that if one is going to build in high risk areas, it's incumbent on one to accept the risk and deal with it, not bemoan one's misfortune and expect someone else to do something about it. If the cost (financial or otherwise) of "dealing with it" is more than one can or is willing to bear if/when the time comes to bear it, then don't assume the risk attendant to "putting down roots" (whatever that means to one) in that place.

At the end of the day, this thread is about folks' imprudent sensibilities with regard to assuming and managing risk the consequences of an existential risk coming to fruition. My beef is with folks who assume risks they could have, should have and likely did know about beforehand, yet, for whatever reason, should not have assumed that risk.

Sabre said:

Any idea of how much of the Earth that would include???? Every where there is something adverse at one time or another, if you think your area is free from disasters wait awhile. I have lived through killer freezing, white out, storms, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes and floods from over flowing rivers and then there are the hundreds of homes lost in wildfires, the last ones came within a block of my daughters house in an area where the last thing she thought would be that fires would be a problem, but....... - like I said there is something everywhere.

Don't worry about government bailouts, ask the people in New Orleans how that worked out..... they put up a good show at first then when the media coverage cools down they a forget you.

Hell, there could be a meteor out there right now with a bulls-eye painted on us, live your life where you want if you can, I for one would move to the Big Island in a heartbeat if I could afford it.

Click to expand...

Seriously? A meteor?

• Does a person building in a floodplain have a reasonable basis for expecting that the spot where they build will flood? Yes.
• Does a person building on a fault have a reasonable basis for expecting the earth will quake under them? Yes.
• Does a person building in tornado alley have a reasonable basis for expecting a tornado will strike their home? Yes.
• Does a person building on/around an active volcano have a reasonable basis for expecting the thing will erupt? Yes.
• Does a person building anywhere on the planet have a reasonable basis for expecting a meteor will strike there? Hell, no.

The issue isn't that disaster can strike anywhere. The issue is that it's absurd to "put down roots" in places where known types of disasters routinely -- multiple times in the course of a typical human lifespan -- strike, yet people do exactly that and want the rest of us to bail them out, as it were, when there was/is plenty of evidence militating for not having put down roots there in the first place.