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Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
So are people likely to hope this doesn't happen again or start designing for it?
It's kind of hard to figure out with global weirding. Like, we are definitely warmer in New England than when I was growing up, to the point where plants that can live here are changing, but we also are probably windier and stormier. I'm not sure we're adjusting building codes, though, and there are now a couple of times a year when there are people who are so disoriented by the sway of our office building that they need to head home. There's going to be some big storm sometime soon where a lot of buildings just collapse.
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Dunno at this point. Right now we're still trying to assess the damage and figure out what can be done. Personally, my priority is 1) replace plumbing with PEX, which did fairly well during this most recent freeze, 2) look into getting more insulation in the attic and underneath the house if possible (taking into account the very real mold problem), 3) get someone to look at my chimney which I've never bothered to have had inspected in the 19 years I've lived in this house. A dog claimed the fireplace when we first moved in and he had better use 99 percent of the time than I did so I never bothered to look into whether it worked or not.
Everyone I talk to is pretty convinced that this isn't the last time we'll see something like this. The bigger issue is the infrastructure that just wasn't designed for this, especially the power grid. The good news is that this hit in the MIDDLE of the legislative session, so the government can't put this off and hope people forget about it. Whether or not we have the national anthem play at every single state funded event is going to play second fiddle to how the fuck did the energy capitol of the world let this happen? And the Rs are in a particularly embarrassing spot because there are no Ds to blame because there are literally no Ds in any state government position.
Where we're looking at changes of building codes for climate change these days is in the flooding arena.
We're at the point that a local weather blog has created a flooding scale so people have a general idea of what to expect when a rainstorm hits. We've been dealing with these sorts of floods for about six or seven years now when they were a once-in-a-blue-moon event before, usually only if a hurricane came around. I know someone who rebuilt her house three times since the Memorial Day Floods in 2015 due to flooding. It wasn't until Harvey that she tore it down and then put it on stilts nine feet off the ground.
From what I understand, the insurance hit from the freeze was bigger than a hurricane, because it's spread out all over the state. It took a week for my insurance company to get back to me after I filed the claim, because it's based in Texas and even San Antonio was frozen for nearly a week. Ultimately, I think the insurance companies will be the entities driving construction codes to adapt for global climate change, because they end up paying for the disasters that strike.
