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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how flat is the houston area. West indies are often volcanic islands. Meaning the high ground will probably be "safe" from flood, the lower parts on the other hands.. Somehow they're a bit used to storms so they're not going full noob on this.

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You're thinking of Cuba, who are certainly not noobs at this [1]. West Indies unfortunately are routinely decimated by tropical storms. For instance Hugo in 1989 destroyed almost everything in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, leading to widespread lawlessness until President Bush deployed troops there [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba_Emergency_Response_System

[2] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/hawkeye.htm

Store owners guarding their stores from the roof w/ AK-47s will do that.

>You're thinking of Cuba, who are certainly not noobs at this. West Indies unfortunately are routinely decimated by tropical storms.

This isn't really true anymore. For example, 95% of homes on St. Martin were destroyed by Hurricane Luis in 1995, because everyone lived in wooden houses. From that point on, the law mandated concrete buildings, and now all but the very poorest people live in houses impervious to hurricanes.

The exceptions are places like Haiti, where folks are simply too poor to afford basic hurricane mitigation. But where people can prepare, they have prepared.

Houston is some of the flattest land you'll find in the states, but at least we're not quite below sea level.

I'm from Austin, and have lived in Tokyo, and I used to joke while in Tokyo you'd go stir-crazy missing trees and greenery, despite the large parks there; in Houston you go crazy missing hills and topography if you're used to it.

Heh, I remember coming back from Martinique, I landed in Paris, and while we were driving I was a bit lost, there were no up and downs anymore; everything was sooo flat.

Yeah, I saw the British Virgin Islands evacuated Anegada (which is a flat coral atoll), sending people to Tortola and Virgin Gorda (both quite hilly).

http://www.bviddm.com/emergency-arrangements-for-anegada/

cannot be too flat, have family friends who were high and dry but they didn't have far to go to find flood waters. Interestingly enough Houston didn't suffer flooding problems due to bad zoning, it has more absorbent surface coverage than most cities including some in similar positions relative to the sea.

Suffering a stalled storm is not what you can really plan for. the water simply had no where to go.

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