Florida is a scary place. But it’s such a bargain!

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About 40 years ago, I talked to a county drainage engineer while standing on the crown of a central Florida street. It was the only relatively dry spot in sight.

Everywhere I looked, homes looked like houseboats. I met two people who had killed water moccasins in their front yards.

I asked the drainage boss if there was anything his crew could do about the area’s chronic flooding, now or in the future.

“What do you mean, ‘do?’” he asked. “It’s wet for a while, and then it will dry up.”

I also asked if the residents would get any help from the local government in putting their homes, septic fields and lives back together.

He said No, no they wouldn’t.

How come? 

“See all this here water?” he asked. I allowed that I did.

“This here water did not run off our public roads,” he went on. “If it had, we would take care of it.

“But this here water came from the sky,” he continued, pointing to the sky so I would be sure to understand where it was.

“It’s God’s water,” he said. “So God, in his grace and goodness, will have to take care of it.”

The county guy had expressed Florida’s general governmental philosophy, then and now, about disaster mitigation. It’s the same philosophy you hear when somebody shoots up a school. 

Thoughts and prayers. 

As Hurricane Ian bore down on Florida’s west coast a few days ago, one would think the state could have found one dude smart enough to organize everybody. But the nation’s fourth-largest state still seems to be a balkanized collection of rogue fiefdoms. Local yokels are free to make the calls on some really important stuff. 

Lee County gave the evacuation order a day later than surrounding areas, which didn’t exactly rush it, either.

That meant the hurricane hit Lee County less than 24 hours after people were told to hit the road. So far, that’s where the majority of the deaths are. 

More efficient strategies would be advisable, considering the number of Floridians likely to get in the way of a 150-mph windstorm has doubled since 1980. That’s because of manic housing development in places that probably should have been left alone. 

Florida is not like other parts of the United States. It is largely swampy and inhospitable, offering substantial challenges ranging from encephalitis-bearing mosquitos to hurricanes the size of Germany.

Historically, Florida has been smacked around by hurricanes more than any other state. In recent years, not quite as much. But that’s no reason for confidence.

Obviously.

Most of the semi-tropical state’s territory should probably have been reserved as habitat for impressive local or invasive monsters like alligators and Burmese pythons. There would then perhaps be fewer such spectacular reptiles consorting with residents in backyards and tot lots.

Photo by Gary Chapman on Unsplash

Absent such environmental conservation, citrus groves are reasonably safe land uses. Hurricanes and other inclemencies don’t do much more than drive up the price of fruit when the trees are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But there was money to be made converting orange and grapefruit zoning to old coot retirement zoning. Land dedicated to citrus has dropped 33% in the last 25 years.

Photo by alex pshenianykov on Unsplash

The state and its municipalities have allowed homes, and lots of them, to be built where angels fear to roost. So it would be reasonable to have tough building standards that give them a fighting chance of making it through a hurricane. 

One of those standards should probably just say, “See these places that are vulnerable to various disasters? Don’t build anything there.”

But they build almost everywhere in Florida. In my day, residential developers operated with such unbridled exuberance that their scads of new faucets all but sucked water tables dry. That led to the substratum of local life becoming unstable, and homes, cars and small retail stores sometimes disappeared.

Sinkholes. You’ve seen the pictures.

State of Florida

They still occur. Just another Florida phenomenon that fascinates residents of less interesting U.S. states.

Traditionally, Florida building standards haven’t even been as tough as in states not frequented by enormous storms.  The codes were improved at the turn of the century, but all those buildings thrown up in previous decades of madness are immune.

That seems to suit those who run things in The Sunshine State. Their contented lives depend on Florida being one of those places where the main attraction is how cheap it is for the suckers to move there. 

Cheap is as cheap does. Flood control, which is very expensive, can’t be expected to keep up in a watery state where the average property tax rate is about 23% lower than nationally. And there’s no state income tax to fall back on, either.

Despite occasional horrifying storm surges, you can buy a house in most parts of the state without any flood insurance. After all, requiring insurance would make moving to Florida much more expensive.

About half the homeowners on the coasts have flood insurance. A few miles inland, barely anybody does. 

If more homeowners were required to buy flood insurance it could drive down the price for each buyer and reduce the risk for each seller. As it is, many insurance providers are threatening cancellation of Florida policies, or just plain pondering bankruptcy — a situation that existed pre-Ian.

Moving to Florida is, to some extent, a bait and switch racket. It looks cheaper, but in reality, maybe not.

Lots of elderly people go there, but they find out that medical and dental care is exorbitantly priced, and the quality can border on the atrocious. Just another thing that’s haphazardly regulated in freedom-loving Florida.

It’s one of the reasons snowbirds keep a place up north: for at least part of the year, they have health care that’s relatively healthy.

But their cars probably have Florida license plates, and Social Security sends their mail to Boca. Cheaper.

In Florida, politicians may have an attitude about disasters that their constituents might not appreciate. Former Florida Congressman Ron DeSantis opposed aid for the New York area after Hurricane Sandy in 2013. Now, Gov. DeSantis wants some help for his own state. He’ll get it, of course. All is forgiven.

Florida's entire 16-member GOP congressional delegation voted last fall against pumping $18 billion into the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund that a clobbered state like Florida can immediately tap into for faster recovery (It passed anyway).

The Florida politicians’ philosophy: don’t help anyone, even those in deep trouble, until you know how it’s all going to be paid for. 

If everybody had that attitude, paramedics would refuse to transport heart attack victims until they had rifled their pockets looking for wallets.