When It Floods, It Pours Money.

Hi Everyone:

It is spring...... finally! With spring comes warmer weather and rain. Combine those two and you get mountain snow melt, swollen creeks and tributaries that then drain into rivers. Then as expected, the rivers overflow their banks and land gets flooded. Some flooding is good, depending on the time it occurs, for farmers, since flooding adds nutrients back into the land. But flooding is terrible news for homes and businesses in the way of the surging and rising waters.

Some of the major rivers that flood the most seem to be the: Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri. Every year like clock work we see and hear about those rivers flooding and the millions and billions of dollars of damage that the flood waters cause. What's wrong with this picture? When I hear and see on TV about so many people affected and then they say that it is their second or third or even the fourth time that they have been flooded out, it makes my blood boil. Why? To me, it would make sense that if you are flooded due to some waterway over flowing, its time to get out of Dodge or at very least, move to higher ground. But what really gets my goat is that if you have flood insurance, whether a Federal or private plan, the company will pay you to rebuild on the same location. Then unfortunately, insurance companies increase all of their policy holders rates, to cover their losses due to floods. All bets are off if people don't carry flood insurance, for whatever reason.

In order to minimize loss of life, damage to homes and businesses and to save both taxpayers and policy holders money, my common sense says they should not be allowed to rebuild at the same location. The bottom line here should be, if you live in a flood zone and you get flooded out once, the insurance policy should mandate that you have to move. Mother nature will always win and the flooded zones will eventually be turned back into their naturalness. Then when the yearly flooding occurs and you know it will, there will be no loss of life or damaged buildings and everyone will save money in the long run. I just don't get why people want to live in a situation where they put their own families in harms way. Think about it.

On a side note, it is a very interesting fact that the Hudson river does not flood like the other above mentioned rivers. I just don't know why.

Til next week.

Peter