For many individuals evacuated (tens f thousands as of this writing) due to flooding during Harvey the decision to evacuate their home carried grim economic consequences. In the US about the only way of getting flood insurance is to live in what is called a flood prone area. These areas are designated on maps made by NOAA and the FPA back in the 1960s. Reality is urban sprawl incorporating paving, roofs which changed the reflectivity and block rain from soaking the ground, storm sewers, etc. have rendered many of the maps both obsolete and wrong. Irregardless, banks issuing mortgages to homeowners check the maps and if the house is in what is called a flood plain (prone to flooding) area, the bank will require the owner to purchase an insurance policy against flood damage. These insurance policies, although offered by several vendors, are basically underwritten by the government. Although many folks not living on designated flood plains recognize their home is inside a non-designated probable flood plain, purchasing flood insurance is not offered them because the area has not been so designated on a map created in the 1960s. Almost all homeowner's insurance policies contain an exclusion prohibiting any coverage for earthquake damage, flood damage, and acts of God.
The concept is that if you need earthquake or flood insurance, then you should get one of those policies. That the law may prohibit you from being eligible for that is irrelevant to the insurance companies issuing homeowner policies. The second concept is that when you owe a bank mortgage money and your house is damaged, the insurance company will provide the money to either fix the property or pay the bank the balance of the mortgage if your home is destroyed.
The various news media have been interviewing folks evacuated to shelters as the flooding continues today. Many have been asked why they didn't evacuate earlier. Only a small portion blame the Houston Mayor's statement made last week about since the storm would pass them, there was no need to order an evacuaton. Rather instead many indicate they knew they should evacuate, but economics prevented it. The Houson economy is problematic, with some folks barely hanging on and others doing very well. Some lacked the money to buy enough gasoline to leave an area affected by the storm or pay for rooms in motels in other cities. Others stated they were gambling their area would not flood as it had never flooded before. This storm is being classified as a 1,000 year storm. The hurricane passed nearbye, then stopped, then did a U turn and made a second pass before returning to the water, then today came back ashore and made a just East of the city of Houston dropping another 8 inches of water as it passed before heading upstream to deliver more water.
Many homeowners postponed an evacutation decision until there truly was no other option. An insurance industry spokesman today announced that about 85% of the cities homes do not have Flood insurance. Some homes went completely under water. Some only have a few inches of water on the first floor. Most evacuated homes lay somewhere in between the two extremes.
Regardless of the destruction of your home by a flood, under US Civil law you are still liable to tbe bank for the mortgage. Most possesions inside the home do not react well to water immersion. It may be several weeks before the homeowners are permitted to, or capable of, return to areas currently under water. Most literally now own no possesions other than those they wear or were permitted to bring with them in the crowded shelters.
At this writing Houston officials report about 30,000 displaced persons and 8 known flooding deaths. The area has received about 50 inches of rain in 3 days and rain is expected to continue through Wednesday when the storm returns to Houston (it did a U turn and is lingering just off shore) with another 14 to 50 inches possible. As a result of the rain several dams have been forced to relieve pressure by opening their spillways. That water is adding to the flooding downstream, but is considered preferable to having a dam actually collapse. Numerous homes have gone completely under water. Other homes on small hills and knolls are surrounded by water which is slowly rising.
An interesting and worrisome for officials problem developed. Residents were asked to shelter in place and stay off the roads. The expectation was the storm would pass and break up, instead it stalled and came back. Now that the flooding has become severe and many roads are already deep underwater, because the waters are rising in many neighborhoods, mandatory evacuations have been ordered. With no roads, how?
Residents are being advised to hang a towel or sheets out a window if they wish to be evacuated. The number of small boats owned by local governments is woefully inadequate for the numbers of folks wishing evacuation as the waters rise. Accordingly, those owning small boats, rafts, kayaks, etc. have been asked to assist (shades of Dunkirk) and pick up residents at any home displaying a sheet or towel and bring them to shelters. At least 8,000 were boat lifted out of their homes by Houston Police today. This number does not include evacuations by privately owned boats, or evacuations in suburbs or Galveston (which is also being hard hit by floods). Attempting to wade is being discouraged as both alligators and water moccasins (a poisonous water snake native to the Southern US) have been observed swimming the flooded streets.
The entire National Guard of Texas has been mobilized for disaster response and rescue and aid and supply convoys from around the US have begun to arrive. Anheuser Busch Breweries has temporarily halted the production of Budweiser ibeer n order to produce instead cans and bottles of drinking water for the effected areas.
I am not so sure humans will always be at the top of the food chain. If spiders were the size of cats we would be mostly extinct as a species. Keep on playing with DNA and retrieving probes from deep space. We will eventually be at the lower end of the chain.
Yeah, nothing like the experience of sitting next to a loved one and watching the pulse rate slowly drop once the IV pump is disconnected. Also lots of fun is holding your shirt over a leaking chest wound and knowing you are totally wasting your time because that small bubbling hole isn't the only thing hemorrhaging and their insides are now just soup.
The first requirement is to actually own your primary residence in America with at least a 50% equity stake, and second you, as the owner, must be at least 62 years old.
If you can do 15 miles a day it shouldn't take longer than 4 months (120 days). 20 miles a day is more average one of the trail associations reports for many hikers.
I would agree the man is raising a red flag with being scared to fly as a reason not to visit. There are plenty of cruise ships that visit Indonesia. Star Cruises, etc. Nothing stops arrival by sea.
LoL, nothing like having multiple profiles on CS. It allows one to have a blog, then log off and argue under the next name, and on and on depending on how many accounts one has.
Someone else can research the other photos if bored.
In 1999 before many here had even heard of him,on a TV interview Donald Trump was advocating for a preemptive first strike on North Korea.
The question becomes has the plump boy delegated missile launch authority in the event he dies in a first strike, and if so to who and where is THEIR headquarters. If in addition to a glassing of the North Korean capital and any secondary HQ the North Korean nuclear warhead storage bunkers experience their own site receiving a 'diirty' neutron blast, then not only would no one be around to open the bunkers and take out the weapons, but the weapons themselves would probably be really unhealthy to be around for the next thousand years.
Because the liberal left are the 'running dog lackeys' of Russia and China. A weakened US military is in their best interest, so they encourage their stooges.
About a month ago I had a battery problem on my DR machine and left it in a tall grass meadow while I went to the house for a jump box and dinner. It was pushing sundown before I got back to it. I got it started and began mowing my way homem through the chest high grass. Suddenly about a dozen yards ahead I flushed a mountain lion which bolted through the grass to the fence, hopped over and disappeared into the darkness of the woods. I had rhe feeling he (she?) had just been watching out of curiosity,, but had not realized I was going to be mowing in his direction until suddenly I did.
I posted about the experience on the local community page on facebook. Most disbelieved me, except one neighbor who indicated that something had come over his wire fence the other night and ate most of two of his ducks.
Then the day after I posted another neighbor who lives about a mile up the road sent me this photo which she had taken with her cell phone earlier the same day I had my own encounter. The range was about 30 yards.
Thank you. I confess to a fondness for these early cartridge weapons. No question they were a game changer and a major upgrade from the earlier muzzle loading muskets. One major drawback of the old muzzle loaders besides being slow to reload and often with unrifled barrels (which made predicting which direction the projectile would go beyond, 'somewhere over there', was the fact you had to be standing to reload them properly. This was very inconvenient when caught in the open with hundreds of attackers launching flights arrows at you. The cartridge rifle allowed reloading and firing from the prone position.
So these first single shot cartridge guns totally changed the game. The Wagon Box and Hayfield fights showed that no longer did the Indians have 40 to 50 seconds to run forward while the soldiers struggled to reload. Red Cloud's costly attacks of 1867 were the last major mass attacks by Indians until June of 1873. By then of course the Indians had newer and better weapons than did the soldiers (often sold to them by US Army authorized Reservation storekeepers) and at Little Big Horn we clearly see the effect of repeating arms such as Winchesters and Henry rifles against the single shot rifle. Smokeless powder was the next major game changer but in the US that didn't happen until late in the 1890s.
There is no dispute of the heroic efforts of the First Responders on the scene, but outrage that it happened will always be justified. The police acknowledge 58 confirmed missing but advise the number may rise. If the missing are indeed dead, then that number needs to be added to the 17 known dead. 75 dead that gives us, with the possibility of it rising. Of course there is anger. There is also the possibility that unless prompt mediation is done in the other buildings, this could happen again and again. .
It is indeed a good question why the British company doing the renovation chose to buy a product which the ad online for specifically says not fire safety approved for over 40 feet. Sure it was cheaper than the good stuff, but really? And who was the compliance inspector that signed off on that installation?
The Carbine Sharps was the first of course. The Army had Sharps take 30,000 of the percussion carbines the Army had on hand from the Civil War and re-do them to use .50-70 cartridges for the cavalry. Consequently it wasn't until 1871 that the Army came out with a trapdoor carbine. By then of course the Indian War with the Cheyennes and Sioux and Arapahoe was well underway. General Sheridan had begun his campaign to exterminate the Bison and the Sharps 50 and and the Trapdoor .50 were the first guns used. Later when the .45-70 came out in 1873 the older .50s were simply issued or sold at huge discount to registered buffalo hunters. Although Buffalo Bill preferred the Trapdoor .50-70, many other buffalo hunters preferred the greater reloading speed of the Sharps. Both guns, used the same cartridge and either one could put a buffalo down quickly. The hunters were paid based on how many they killed, so rapid fire was preferred. Queries to Sharps resulted in that company making a longer barreled version in the mid 1870s and that was the Old Reliable in .50-90. That, like the Springfield .50 could take buffalo at 600 yards or even further. News of how easy Buffalo hunting for a living was spread quickly and soon Sharps was deluged with orders for rifle versions with better and better sights. Sadly for Sharps the extermination campaign was very successful and by 1884 the last buffalo herd was gone. Sharps then introduced the .50-110 and their .45-90 and .45-110 but there was nothing left to hunt with it and bankruptcy soon resulted for the Sharps company. Although Sharps Co. was now gone the .Sharps rifles proved to be exceptionally accurate and a favorite at the Creedmore matches at the close of the 19th century and performed well against the Ballards and Winchester High Walls.
Sounds like an AR 10 variant. One thing is for sure. He never practiced his marksmanship or sighted the gun in. I wonder if his wife back home had any clue what he intended when he left. LoL, I am sure the FBI Agents searching her home and carrying boxes out have the same question. I see a police mug shot photo of him, but there is no information as to what the charge was when he was arrested.
Should the US totally rebuild and modernize Subic Bay for the Philippines and also rebuild the corroding bridges and road ways there? If so, why? What is in it for the US? Allow Duterte to make his pitch. The other potential contractor is of course, China. Weird that the Philippines feels a few seldom used islands are too high a price.
We cancelled that laser because every time it discharged a half planet away about a million birds became blind and fell out of the sky. When they pointed it at the ocean dead fish washed ashore for hundreds of miles. The tests did ecological damage way out of proportion to the knowledge gained.
The N. Korean missiles fail simplhy because we hired a Romanian Gypsy woman to place a hex spell on them. She charges only $50 per missile so given her success rate it is a worthwhile investment.
Hey come on by at about 2am my time. I can give you an opportunity window from then to 3am. You lay back on the couch and I will experiment for different touches till we find the one you like. After that is found we can do it from 2am to 2:22am every 2nd Tuesday.
Ken_19 Blog Comments (3,903)
RE: Melania
Obviously Trump has the woman many men wish they had and are bitter they aren't able to.