NEWS: August 2, 2017: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/us/miami-severe-flooding/index.html
Older Information:
Just got off a Florida page and found many people attempting to correct the Miami and Miami Beach images in City efforts to save all FloriIda tourist havens, as far north and west as possible. What from? Why from the increasingly frequent flooding of the east, south and west shorelines.
The complaint is that it is only Climate Change that is doing the damage. That would be nice. However, Climate Change is a much slower process. What is happening then, in Miami and in Miami Beach and other Floridia cities, gradually being inundated area? It is that the builders who are Northeran Snowbirds are positively sure that bigger and better buildings in the more popular areas are the things to create for other affluent people who can afford outrageous prices for condos which MIGHT be destroyed by Climate Change shortly. Such building are still being built in Miami. Some older ones need certain adjustments to offset the inconvience of water incursions.
Make the areas look like New York City; or Austin, Texas; or cities in Los Angeles/Hollywood areas of mansions and pools. [H.m.m.m California seems to be sliding into the Pacific, just about the same way that Florida is sliding into the Atlantic.]
The difference between the two coast lines is that California has mountains and cliffs that are eroding due to massive, expensive showcase homes built on eroding cliff sides. On the other coast, Florida is becoming the New York City of the south.
What architect in his right mind would build tall very expensive hotels and condominiums in a swamp? If even one of them, would go back and read about the Barefoot Mailman, who made the trek along the coast of Florida in the early years of Mr. Flagler and his railroad; he, or even a she, would find that the poor main carrier was constantly facing swamps and gators; lots of slimy soil. and difficult to walk on sand.
In the beginning, the houses on the coast were small homes, one story with proper hurricane shutters. Now, the builders for the small homes are touting sealed windows, electricity and air conditioning so that owners could weather out a hurricane while watching their television with chips and dips; at least until the roofs would be whipped away by hurricane winds.
Architects of the area schools dreamed of patios made with lots of screens against mosquitoes. Hurricane shutters that let in the air without letting in the rains and the wind and only small indoor spaces, for privacy with lots more open areas for the cool semi-tropical breezes.
Now, the perfectly designed hurricane shutters which lasted with their protected homes, are now gone. New roofs get blown away, screens are ripped off, and trees are overturned during the such hurricanes. Steel and metal signs are twisted into grotesquely distorted shapes.
Once an elderly person called the Hurricane Center in Coral Gables and asked why they did not tell homeowners to open a window or a door on the calm side of the house and shut the door on the wind side of the house during hurricanes. [They also had to remember to tell the home owners to reverse the procedure when the hurricane turned the winds and calm around in opposite directions.]
That person was told that it was only an Old Wive's tale and Useless in the hurricanes of Miami. The buildings got to be tall apartment buildings, and finally taller condos. The soil could be corrected it was believed. Yet, the land itself is sinking. Coral rock is not stable when the seas turn to acid. Coral Reefs are dying. Coral rock is disintegrating under the land. Slowly due to the acids and
pressure from buildings that are huge and heavy; or from ordinary jetties that make each stretch of beach in front of each hotel, privatized areas for every hotel along the ocean front.
Jetties along a beach to make a private water entrances on the shores of an ocean can and has destroyed beautiful homes, good roads by simple "wave-action" erosion. A young woman, maybe 20 or so who I once knew, showed us the remains of the house she had grown up in. It consisted of a tier of bricks about five high at a broken bare corner. No other evidence was there of the beautiful villa that her parents had built at the back of the wide impressive beach at the edge of the ocean.
The corner of the building was only four bricks wide. The beach she used to play on was wide and safe, until someone decided that nearby they would build a hotel for the tourist ships along the coast. Now, the jetties are two expensive to move away and the road had great chunks taken out of one side. The useless street lamps are beginning to rust and lean over.
The public rest room pieces were all over the sand near the jetty-made "cove." The only places that survived the winds and the waves were the rude huts set up for selling food and trinkets to the mythical future tourist trade. They were covered with sand up to the tops of their counters.
And now, both Flagler Street in Miami and the Fontainebleau Hotel and others in Miami Beach are flooded during such hurricanes. But no one knows why. Think! The answers are there in Florida because as the water is rising due to climate change; the land itself is sinking in protest! Or hadn’t anyone noticed? The land will return to its former swampy condition soon enough, unless we stop Climate Change and huge chemical infusions into the land and waters nearby.
