Fire And Flood

Every year - year after year - we are witness to the spectacles of thousands of acres burning and thousands more flooded. It is nature demonstrating that these events will happen over and over and over.

Brush overgrows in California, rain falls in the plains. The brush catches fire, sometimes a result of arson, and the rain water starts down the many river channels to the Gulf of Mexico.

And that's when nature runs into man and his constructs. In California, we continue to see lavishly expensive homes built and rebuilt in areas that are guaranteed to burn. In the plains, we see farms, homes and entire communities built - and rebuilt - in areas that are guaranteed to flood.

So we spend billions and billions trying to prevent the burning and the flooding, all to no avail. Entire communities burn or drown, and then in comes Mr. federal government, pockets stuffed with tax dollars, to fix it all up - exactly the way it was - so we can witness yet another repeat of the entire cycle.

Our tax dollars are thrown away in an endless cycle of rebuilding those things and places which nature repeatedly destroys... And will continue to do so.

Those people living in or near green belts should not be allowed to build in known burn areas, and those in the plains should not be allowed to build in known flood zones. Rebuilding homes in areas that will overgrow and burn once again is stupid. Building miles and miles of ever higher levees to protect those very unwise gamblers who have built in the bottom lands - levees that will most certainly be over topped or breached in a future flood - is senseless.

Taxpayers should not be responsible for the homes and properties of those who place themselves in harm's way. Our insurance rates need not endlessly increase because insurance companies continue their policies of insuring the uninsurable.

Watching some simpleton on TV news get all teary-eyed over losing their home to flood waters for the second or third time and crying for help - again - is a scene right out of a nightmare.

As far as lost farmlands in the flood zones? The total acreage involved is only a drop in the bucket to the total that we have. Those few acres will not be missed. The bobble-headed idiots on TV may scream about "millions of flooded acres of farmland", when in actuality it is only a few thousand acres affected. It floods only a few miles on either side of those rivers, often much less.

Don't rebuild in those areas. Don't spend billions on levees that will only fail again. Helping these bottomlanders to resettle out of the flood zones - once - will be far cheaper than what we are doing now. Then refuse any kind of building permits in those places, and refuse help to those who ignore good advice and show no common sense at all and who willingly set themselves up for disaster.

I, for one, and sick and tired of seeing us have to pay for the foolishness of people who have the attitude that it won't happen to them, that it won't happen in their lifetime, and anyway - if it does, if it does - Uncle Sam will set things straight.

I say let them suffer the consequences of their foolishness by themselves, without dragging the rest of us into the mess they create.

You tell me... How many times must we repeat this nonsense before we put a stop to it?