Revisiting Hurricane Ike's Hit on Texas and It's Miss of the Florida Keys

Would a Florida Keys home such as this . . .

. . . have a chance against a Category 3, 4, or 5 storm with a 20 or 30 foot storm surge?

Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk.

I bring this up because as any reader of this blog knows, I sometimes feel as though I am lone Key West voice when talking about the real costs of socialized risk. Socialized risks in insurance levies a tax against prudent homeowners. If you bought a well built home in a non-flood prone area, part of your ever higher premiums goes to covering the asses of nearby homeowners who live more imprudently than yourself. You know what I'm talking about: your home took on no floodwater during Wilma, and yet these people you know all over New Town and Stock Island and up on Big Coppitt Key lost everything as floodwaters easily invaded their homes and destroyed all their motor vehicles . . . and yet they refuse to move. Instead, they stay in their just flooded homes, do a little remodel with the insurance payoff, and then bitch about insurance companies raising premiums and "ripping off" the little man.

Maintenance, taxes and fees assessed by condo and homeowner associations can really take a hunk out of your monthly income when added to your monthly mortgage payment. But because there are so many Capitalist-Socialists in Key West (who demand their gains be private and their risks be socialized) the largest cost of homeownership outside of a mortgage payment is usually insurance in the Florida Keys.

Free market insurance is (most of the time) and should be a mechanism where an actuary uses math and history to tell a new homebuyer whether a property he's looking to buy is worth the future trouble which the Insurance company is insuring you against.
Let me put that last sentence a bit differently: insurance is a red flag. If projected monthly insurance rates on a place you're wanting to buy are extremely high, you ought to give up any idea of buying it. The insurance company is giving you a free tip that something is not right with the area you're wanting to move to.

Socialized Insurance?

Which brings me to ask several very politically incorrect questions for Florida Keys residents who seek government intervention to "lower their insurance rates".

To those of you who want to buy homes such as the prefab on stilts overlooking water (pictured above on a canal) just blocks from "open" water, to those of you who live in better built homes on stilts which is on the water, to those of you living in homes not on stilts but which are only a few blocks from the beach or bayside and which are only one or two feet above mean tide level, I ask these questions:

Why should the state of Florida have to set up an insurer of last resort just so some of you can have your dream home view of the water?

Why should a taxpaying homeowner or landlord in safe zones be forced to support the moral hazard of people wanting to live with a view of the water?

Why should any business (Insurance companies) be forced to insure anyone who thinks it's their God given right to repeat the folly of building homes on stilts which are supposedly going to withstand the fury of one of Mother Nature's hurricanes?

Why should the State Insurance Commissioner pressure insurance companies to insure any home which floods during a minor Category 1 storm if that insurer realizes it is stupid to continue to enable a dumb ass homeowner to keep his flood prone home? Shouldn't we allow insurers to operate as any business would, e.g., you serve people you want to serve in your bar or restaurant, you rent out hotel rooms to people who are not rowdy and rude, you deejay weddings only for women who are not Bridezillas wanting you to do 100 hours of off the clock work for them? Thus, why should insurers be forced to insure mental gelding homeowners . . . at the insurers loss . . . who want to rebuild a home which just got wiped out by a storm, a kind of storm which comes around quite frequently these days?

I say let market forces dictate the real costs of insuring idiots who maintain their modular homes on stilts will stand up to a hurricane in which they plan . . . and often do in the Florida Keys . . . to ride out storms.

I say let market forces mark down the cost of flood prone homes in low lying areas and let those homeowners willing to gamble to do so without insurance. If no one wants to insure a cracker box on flood plane level, then no one will be able to get a mortgage as the banks require flood insurance. Therefore, free market forces will take the price of that cracker box house down to its real value, not its perceived value, and people signing contracts for such sucker bets will know up front, "Yo, you're on your own when this thing gets demolished."

A true Capitalist would not force insurers to insure homeowners at subsidized prices. When government forces insurers to insure bad properties, we take moral hazard to a new high. Such candy ass treatment of people who cannot accept real risks for their bad choices turns adults into children when it comes to a purchase of a home on the water: "Hey, I can afford this monthly payment. The insurance is not so high. It can't be all that bad to buy a home here. Look at that view!"

Which brings me back to the new affordable housing of Ed Swift's up on Stock Island at the old drive-in movie property. The insurance per year is only $1500. That's not a misprint. The reason is these modular homes on pilings are so well built with extra insulation, doubling up in places on county code, etc., that the county worked a deal to lower the insurance to where it was affordable . . . eventhough these houses are only a block away from Cow Key Channel.

After Ike did a recent number on Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula, I wonder if local developer and affordable housing builder, Ed Swift, or our county administrators ask themselves if Affordable Housing insurance priced to reality? That is, should a new buyer of Affordable Housing expect his $1,500 insurance rates to go up as Affordable Housing is being propped up by Moral Hazard schemes to help out working men and women who can't understand how real Capitalism works? Being brutally honest, I ask whether we should strap modular housing to 8 foot pilings a block or two from open water, and give new homeowners some sense of false security simply because we charge them only $1500 for insurance each year. I also ask, should the homeowners of such affordable housing continue to be subsidized with chearp insurance at the expense of those hard workers in free maket housing who must pay higher rates?

Regardless of Affordable Housing (which is built better than county code) there are plenty of homes on stilts up and down the Keys which are owned by people who think stilts will save them from the flood surge of a power hurricane. These homeowners, like county administrators, need to read a recent New York Times story which warns how bad a storm surge can be when a hurricane such as Ike comes ashore as a Category 2. . .

Revisiting Hurricane Ike's hit on the Bolivar Peninsula north of Galveston

In a previous post I used a headline which said "Key West plays Hurricane Lotto and wins this time." In that post I asked novice homebuyers of Key West Real Estate to consider the implications of a Category 3, 4 or 5 Hurricane hitting Key West stilt homes and what it could mean to our Florida Keys Archipelago connected by dozens of bridges built on slim spits of land. I showed you photos of what a small Category 1 hurricane, Wilma, did to Key West just three years ago.

In another post, I pointed out how all new home construction in the Keys has to be done on stilts. I talked about how people who buy stilt homes on or near the water, be it on a beach or on a canal, should not expect to stay safe in their homes . . . not after what Hurricane Ike's Category 2 surge and winds did to stilt homes on Bolivar Peninsula. This post also linked you to an incredible slide show from the Boston Globe showing devastation in Cuba, Haiti, Texas and Louisiana. It would be good to review this slide show now as I am about to repost an eyewitness account of a couple who lived through Ike in a stilt house on Bolivar Peninsula . . . but only because they were lucky.

. . . But before we get to that story, let's knock these views by Keys residents saying Bolivar is different than the Keys

As I've said in my recent posts, I would hate to be the mayors of either Key West or Monroe County because all they've heard since Ike missed our island is nothing but whining and complaining from Key West citizens and business owners.

Listening to people in bars, it seems everyone who did not evacuate feels the Keys will weather any and all hurricanes. When I argue that homes were wiped completely off their stilts on Bolivar Peninsula or on the back side of Galveston, Key Westers usually snort, "Yeah, but those stilts were built on sand, not coral rock like we have here."

I answer these bar critics by showing you another photo of that one Bolivar house left standing where hundreds used to be:

You can easily see Bolivar's sandy beaches and all its homes in this certain stretch are gone. All that is left behind is bedrock, some concrete pads, some utility poles, and pilings everywhere with no homes attached to the top of them any longer. Note too how many pilings were washed right out of the ground. What is more amazing is that about three blocks of homes, concrete pads, bedrock AND a former beach across a narrow inlet are all washed out to sea. (Coming up in a future blog, I'll post some photos of the before shot of this same area. For an even bigger and better shot of the above scene, click on last week's blog photo. That one will expand the photo to your computer monitor's screen.)

The main thing to consider is this: stilts did not keep the surge and wind (and remember Ike was only a Category 2 hurricane) from shearing one home after another off their stilts. Being above "mean" flood level was supposed to protect the homes from water damage. Unfortunately, one home after another was knocked off their stilt tees by Hurricane Ike's Big Bertha winds and storm surge.

Think about Bolivar Peninsula's bedrock underneath it's disappeared sand. Did that bedrock and the concrete pads on top of the bedrock help any of these homeowners?

Now I don't know the name of this stretch of Bolivar Peninsula. I do know that several homes on what is called "High Island" (similar to Key West's highest point, Solares Hill) survived while many others did not. But this area in the photo is as low as most of New Town in Key West, all of Stock Island (including Key Haven) and of course all the Keys from Rockland, Big Coppitt, and Shark Key up to Tavernier, Islamorada and Ocean Reef Club Key.

What makes Keys residents think 8 foot stilts on bayside, oceanside and canal front homes, some only a foot or two above mean tide level now, will save them in a storm? How could any Keys residents riding out a savage hurricane in one of these homes built on 8 foot stilts hope to be alive in storm surges of 20 or 30 feet high?

Ike's devastation in Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula are your FREE wake up call, Keys residents. Use that info to act accordingly next time.

Do you think it could not happen here?

I've got news for you: it already did.

The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, a Category 5, which sent a 30 foot wall of water over Lower Matecumbe Key swept a train off its tracks (several men lived by hanging on to the locomotive and the coal car, the only two pieces of the train not washed off the track.) The storm surge impaled bodies on a few utility poles which were not snapped off. Bodies from the Keys washed up to mainland of Florida. Cars were swept off the Ocean Seas Highway. Brick buildings fell. The doors of houses exploded outward and occupants were sucked out by tornadic force winds. One eyewitness still alive today remembers his family flying through the living room of their brick home and out the door way as though they were in a jet plane at 35,000 feet which suddenly lost a door.

So the Keys are not immune or protected by some icon at a grotto in a Catholic Church or always spared by the Mountains of Cuba. The Keys have been hit. And they will be hit again. It's only a matter of time when the Big One hits the overdeveloped Keys again. And evacuating on only one highway out will be an absolute nightmare. So if you stay behind, go to higher ground. Get into a solid concrete building like the La Concha Hotel or Las Salinas condos and go to the fourth floor level or higher. Or move in with a friend on Solares Hill for the hurricane. Don't take your chances in a supposed hurricane proof house on stilts near the water or in a second floor apartment with no escape through the ceiling or roof.

Eyewitness account of what it was like in a Bolivar House built on 16 feet tall pilings

When you read this story in the New York Times titled "On Peninsula in the Storm: No Way Out" printed September 15, 2008, I am asking all Florida Keys residents to think deeply about the harrowing escape of death this couple experienced in their Bolivar home. They tried to vacate early, but they were forced to go back . . . because of fast rising flood surge on the only road out. . . to their home high up off the ground and ride out the storm. Here's how this heart pounding, near-disaster played out for this couple:

HIGH ISLAND, Tex. — First three cages containing seven birds were unloaded from the rescue boat. Then two dogs. Then the figures of a man and a woman uncurled from their huddle at the bottom of the boat and stepped onto dry land.

“I’m a miracle standing here talking to you,” said the woman, Deeann Sherman, hovering over the bird cages. Full of shaky relief and gratitude, the couple told of their four-day ordeal on the Bolivar Peninsula, the fragile barrier beach community that was virtually destroyed by the storm surge of Hurricane Ike beginning on Friday.

Like several hundred other Bolivar residents, the Shermans were trapped by high water, praying that the boats of rescue crews would eventually find them.

Rescuers who finally made it on Monday to the peninsula, home to nearly 5,000 residents and a seasonal playground for thousands more college students and beach revelers, found row after row of concrete slabs where houses used to be. They said they made contact with at least 100 residents living there, but found no bodies. They expressed fears, though, that some of those who tried to ride out the storm may have been washed out to sea. The only way to account for them may be to determine every resident’s whereabouts.

The Shermans own a wrecker service on the peninsula, and so are usually among the last to leave before a storm, they said. As the surge that preceded the hurricane hit the peninsula Friday morning, they were busy rescuing stranded cars and trucks. By 9:30 a.m., well before the storm was supposed to make landfall, they were ready to leave. Then Ms. Sherman got a call. Rollover Pass, which separates much of the peninsula from the mainland, was already flooded.

There was no way out.

The couple, hurricane-ready after more than 30 years in Crystal Beach, the commercial hub of Bolivar, hunkered down in their house, which is perched on 16-foot pilings on the bay side of the thin finger of land.

Then the storm hit.

“This was the meanest — the meanest — ugliest, longest storm I’ve ever seen,” Ms. Sherman said. “I prayed and prayed for hours and hours and hours.”

The water soon covered the floor of the house, 16 feet off the ground, then rose even more. The house was buffeted up and down, lifting off its pilings then landing again, miraculously, upon them.

Unknown objects knocked against its underside as 10-foot waves surged past. The porch and bathroom broke away, crumpling into the surf. And then, as the couple fled to the attic with as many pets as they could rescue, one mighty wave knocked out the walls.

“The ocean rose up like a big hand and just went right through our house,” Ms. Sherman said. “Right through our house.”

Outside, the peninsula was under siege. Flooding and winds moved beach houses onto the highway, tore off awnings and walls, and rushed straight through houses and businesses, leaving their roofs intact but their insides tossed into a salad of clothing, furniture and debris.

For the second day in a row, rescuers gathered at the point where the road from the mainland to the peninsula disappeared under floodwater, knowing that there were not only people stranded on the peninsula, but also people missing and unaccounted for as well.

An elderly woman and her daughter were rescued by helicopter. A team of medics was sent to care for another group of victims. As the boats came and went, armed with a supply of bottled water, ranchers on horseback rounded up cattle stranded in salty, flooded fields. A helicopter landed on the highway and flew out again.

Ms. Sherman, 59, and her husband, Frank, 61, said they had tried again and again to signal to the helicopters flying overhead. On Saturday night, as the waters receded, Mr. Sherman used a flashlight to try to attract their attention. “They came and shone a spotlight on the house and flew away,” he said.

Mr. Sherman said he also saw three looters, running one off by threatening him with a gun. On Monday, finally, a medical team in a helicopter landed nearby and told the Shermans that help was on the way.

Question: Florida Keys residents, how and where will you ride out a storm surge of 20 or 30 feet?

What good are 150 MPH impact resistant windows going to do you in a well made Affordable Housing unit you decide to stay in during a hurricane which sweeps 20 foot floodwaters over your development? Those windows are not going to stop a surge going into the first and second floors above stilts.

What good is a house like the one pictured at the top of this blog where it's just one floor above 8 foot stilts with maybe a very small attic crawl space to use as last resort? If a surge goes over that roof line and you're in that crawl space it will be a horrible way to die in the dark.
Read that story again about how the Shermans only rode out of the Hurricane in their Peninsula home because they could not leave on the washed out road which was the only exit off their peninsula. Recently, the Key West Citizen had a front page story about the Overseas Highway being washed out by surges on Lower Matecumbe Key. That's the lowest stretch of the Overseas highway. Even during tropical storms, this stretch of the highways is swept over by seawater.

As this article's first paragraph stated:

The vulnerable section of the Overseas Highway along Sea Oats Beach was exposed anew when Hurricane Ike brushed the Florida Keys. Moderate tropical-storm force winds and a 2- to 3-foot sea-level rise were all it took to send water and debris over much of the roadway, prompting officials to close one lane for several hours.

The waves on Sept. 9 overtopped the beach, including a newly constructed dune line, leaving seaweed, lobster traps, logs and other debris on the roadway. High tide that evening also reached the shoulder of the roadway, forcing more cleanup the next morning.

The flooding was only the most recent in a series of storm-related events that have earned the Sea Oats Beach vicinity the reputation as the weakest link on the Overseas Highway.

In 1998, the roadway was drowned by Hurricane Georges, a Category 2 storm that made landfall in Key West. It was inundated again -- twice -- in 2005, the first time by Hurricane Dennis, then by Hurricane Rita, both of which brought only tropical-storm conditions to the Islamorada area.

Rita's inundation came in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the national media was on a hyper-hurricane alert.As debris and water closed the roadway -- cutting off Key West and Marathon from the mainland for several hours -- then-Islamorada Mayor Bob Johnson took to the scene, pleading before rolling CNN cameras for state funding to raise the road.

Hello. So let's fix that stretch of the highway . . . you know . . . raise it like the State recently did the dangerous stretch which used to run a foot or two above Lake Surprise .

Not so fast. As the Key West Citizen article further explains:

In the months that followed, FDOT officials talked about committing the resources for such a project. But anticipated costs and concerns that elevating the road would redirect water to low-lying homes on the bay side of thehighway eventually led the agency to abandon the idea. (Note: My highlight)

Sea Oats Beach is also a turtle nesting site, making permitting more complicated.

FDOT instead opted for a less sweeping fix, spending $6 million last year on an erosion-control project that involved laying a series of interconnected concrete blocks below the beach that were designed to hold the sand in place. The project also included shoulder-widening as well as construction of a dune line a few feet high.

The agency's goal was to protect the roadway from being undermined by a major storm. Keeping water off the top of the road surface was not the focus.

In the aftermath of Ike, Palenchar said there are no indications that FDOT has had a change of heart. "My sense is that, given all the constraints at this location, this is the best strategy," he said.

Wagner said more needs to be done."We have been dealing with the DOT since 2004 to let them know this is an enormous vulnerability to the county," he said.

It sounds to me the state will not raise that stretch because the homeowners of expensive houses on the other side of it . . . all built on stilts . . . don't want water from a surge trapped behind a raised highway. Were I them, I'd look at it differently: a raised highway would act as a seawall of last resort to keep pounding surges from knocking their homes right off their stilts . . . until, that is, the surge simply washed away the highway. They might have a few extra breaths of life if they stayed in their waterfront homes during a hurricane which had to breach a raised highway.

I mean, come on. A turtle nesting area of concern stops the raising of this highway which might save hundreds of lives during a quick evacuation of the Keys? Anybody here think turtle nests would survive a Hurricane which scours the Earth of all sand, concrete pads, homes, stilts and cars?

A raised highway might give Keys residents an extra few hours to evacuate. It's needed. It's needed now. It will save many hundreds of lives, especially slow evacuators who are caught out on that Highway as the outer bands of a dangerous Hurricane begin to hit.

Evacuation is only possible should that low lying stretch of the Overseas Highway at Sea Oats Beach not be already flooded. How short sighted can the FDOT be?

I direct those wealthy people living just one floor above stilts on Lower Matecumbe Key and who have driven by the Hurricane Monument on their Key without ever stopping to read the plaque to buy a certain book which will wake them up. Also, this book should be read by all Florida Keys residents who think the unthinkable could never happen.

Go out and purchase the National Geographic book written by William Drye titled "Storm of the Century: the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935". That will open your eyes wide as you read the stories of passenger train cars thrown off the tracks for a hundred yards or so, houses exploding with hurricane winds, bodies stacked like cordwood and burned in giant funeral pyres to halt the spread of disease, a huge cruiseliner miraculously dashed up onto a reef where it rocked and rolled during the storm, and many other harrowing stories of people who lived and died in the nastiest hurricane to ever hit the Keys in the past 100 years.

If you read this one book, and you continue to look over the photos of Galveston and Bolivar peninsula which this blog will supply you, then these reminders should make you understand why it's critical to evacuate if you live in a house or apartment close to the water at ground level or only one floor above on 8 foot stilts.

More ominous: Earth's sea level is rising more quickly

Last year I blogged how sea levels were rising more quickly as Global Warming increased. I had several readers write me private emails asking me what I was smoking. As one who has inhaled the occasional left handed cigarette, I confess I was completely sober the day this brain exercise was written.

Well, 13 months after my piece titled "The Fifth Stage of Key West Development?", the Key West Citizen prints a front page, above the fold, top headline on its Sunday paper of September 29, 2008 titled "Rising Seas a Greater Threat Than Storms".

Were I the editor, I would have assigned a story titled "Rising Seas AND More Intense Storms Mean Homes in the Keys Might Possibly Never Double In Price Again!"

I'll comment on this story later in this blog as I continue to cover events in the cleanup of Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston. And by the way, I'm wondering what the final death toll will be in Texas. Many of the former residents still aren't accounted for.

That said, I still feel it was right to evacuate visitors and residents eventhough Ike missed us.

As I've said before, all we need is one direct hit on the Keys by a Category 3, 4 or 5 storm to show the world how stupid the developers and county officials are for overbuilding the Keys with supposedly hurricane proof homes.

The hubris of people and developers who must build and rebuild on the water will once again cause needless death and destruction as it just did on Bolivar Peninsula and in Galveston. One good Category 4 or 5 hurricane is going demonstrate our folly when thousands of Keys residents can't evacuate a flooded out highway before the hurricane hits. And how will all these assuring voices of developers and politicians feel when hundreds or thousands die trying to ride out a once in a lifetime storm in a home which will be lifted of it's pilings like Dorothy's home in the Wizard of Oz?

Mother Nature has got our number on speed dial. She'll be calling sooner than you expect. So if you're buying a home in the Florida Keys, you'd better know your flood zones. You better have bought a well constructed home. And you better have an evacuation plan.

Lastly, if must move here and buy a house, you had better bone up on your taxes, maintenance and insurance costs on homeownership in the Florida Keys.

Caveat Emptor,
Rock Trueblood