[extropy-chat] Re:katrina opportunity

[Damien Sullivan]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 02:30:07PM +0200, giorgio gaviraghi wrote:
> the recent new orleans disaster must be considered as
> an alrm bell of things to come during this century.
> natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes,
> tsunamis, earthquakes, mudslides , fires, and others
> re becoming more frequent nd more dsmaging.

I've read this is more because more people are moving to disaster prone areas
such as California and Florida and Seattle.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050905/ap_on_sc/katrina_unsafe_planet

   In the 1970s, only 11 percent of earthquakes affected human settlements,
   researchers at Belgium's University of Louvain report. That soared to 31
   percent in 1993-2003, including a quake in 2003 that killed 26,000 people
   in Iran, whose population has doubled since the '70s.

   The expanding U.S. population "has migrated to hazard-prone areas -- to
   Florida, the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, particularly barrier islands, to
   California," noted retired U.S. government seismologist Robert M.
   Hamilton, a disaster-prevention specialist. "Several decades ago we didn't
   have wall-to-wall houses down the coast as we do now."

-xx- Damien X-)