Re: Anyone from Iowa lurking here?

That is a requirement, at least, in the county in which I reside. But what happens, is that idiots get a permit and build on a Pillar-like structure. After the final inspection of their home, they enclose the lower area and finish it for living space. Such a house, about 8 properties downstream from me, had their illegally enclosed lower area wiped out by high water about four years ago. They could not believe the loss wasn't covered by insurance.

My house is several feet above the 500 ft. flood-plain and I've seen the river flow across the downstream corner of the lot to flow through the neighbor's garage, filling a low basin in front of our properties for about a 5 foot depth.

Because the cities of Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA allow land creation along parts of the Columbia river for development of condos, etc., reducing the river's width, therefore it's depth as water backs-up, I'm sure even my property (the Washougal River feeds the Columbia river) will be at risk in the future. Obviously, even the people who *should* know better than to Permit such property development, do not know know, or are paid-off well enough to not care.

This also puts me in mind of San Francisco. Draw a line down the San Andreas fault, and then plot the area's schools, hospitals, Firehouses, etc.

And at least Tillamook County in Oregon, has Permitted building of high income homes on sand dunes, which are unstable. When one of the developments was eroding away the homeowners expected the government to save their homes.

There is no shortage of idiots who will enable natural events to create disaster. (hint - do we have a global warming problem?)

true

martin

Yep. Where has all the common sense gone? In 1969 we were considering purchasing a house in North Scottsdale. When we had one of our every-ten-year "hundred year" rainstorm floods I raced out there to check out the property. It turned to be high and dry, so we bought it ;-)

We lived there for 25 years. Even during two tornadoes with subsequent multi-inch rainstorms we always stayed high and dry.

Now we live on a hillside... it would take a Noah's Ark amount of flooding to get us ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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You might be referring to "The Capes," in Oregon's Tillamook County, which was an upscale subdivision built on top of a 200-foot cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The local county officials persisted in denying development permits for some time, or otherwise insisted on

60-foot set-backs for safety as far back as in 1982, I think. However, the developers claimed they had met all regulations in effect at the time and insisted on proceeding with their plans without the setbacks urged by county officials. Eventually, this unresolved issue became a lawsuit by the developers against the county, designed to force the county to issue the permits. The county decided not to pursue the case, after a time, and chose to issue the permits rather than continue to fight in court, issuing the permits in 1991. (I also heard reporters interviewing staff at the county saying that the reason was simply that their county budget was quite small and wasn't able to fund what they expected to be a serious drag-out court battle.)

Early in 1998, wave erosion at the base of the cliff enhanced by "El Niño" storms had progressed to the point where landsliding had begun to work its way into the development. Expensive homes in this 7 year old subdivision were increasingly threatened, and spawned plans to construct a seawall to prevent further erosion and possible future disaster. But these plans ran directly afoul of Oregon's strict beach protection laws. The developers argued 'so what' and the State of Oregon argued they cannot use this excuse to violate still other laws only in order to protect their perceived investments. It all went to court, again. This time with the State of Oregon involved.

In February that year, some 32 townhomes closest to the slide area were ordered evacuated. As beach erosion slowed in March, owners of

28 homes were allowed to reoccupy their properties and by late August of 1998, four homes in the gated development had been condemned and more than two dozen were considered to be in danger.

Residents filed a $10 million lawsuit against the developers, designers, builders and sellers of "The Capes".

In any case, what's a small county to do when it gets sued by "big city" developers with serious dollars behind them? Small counties like Tillamook with very small budgets (because they don't already have the large tax bases from large scale development, yet) have very little real control when it comes to large scale development money, lacking resources to deal with them as peers.

It's not simple figuring out who should have done what, when, and who should pay in cases like this. I certainly do NOT enjoy the idea of Oregon or USA tax payers, who are as a group decidedly less wealthy than the purchasers and who are essentially innocent and ignorant bystanders in this entire debacle, being asked to pony up to pay for the greed-driven mistakes by the developers or the carefree stupidity of the wealthy buyers who all should have known better. Yet the county was arguably complicit (I consider it a weak argument, but one that needs serious consideration.) The county officials did make what in 20/20 hindsight now appears to have been wise suggestions -- but they weren't heeded and they eventually did cave in (perhaps from sheer exhaustion, though perhaps we will never really know for sure now.)

Is this the case you were referring to?

Jon

I found this from an attorney involved at some point in the case:

The first part of it discusses some of his experiences.

Jon

It may well be.

That is an interesting link.

Yet it happens time and time again. I say slaughter those wealthy buyers and their families rather than bail them out. Do it a few times and maybe they will look before they leap.

Many years ago, when I first came to California, I worked in the local Sears. I found out the highest paid employee was not the manager, or a department head, but was instead the guy that sold carpet. It seems that there were several big developments that had been built in a flood plain. Now, we are talking Palm Springs, so you don't get a lot of rain here, but these developments were just downstream from the mountains. So, every couple of years or so, we would get a big thunderstorm in the mountains, the water would come down, and it would ruin all the carpet in these very expensive homes. At the time (1979) Sears was one of the few local places that sold and installed good carpet, and this guy would ring up millions of dollars in sales...

Charlie

In the LA area, there isn't any place that _isn't_ practically on top of a fault! ;-)

Cheers! Rich

I wonder how big an earthquake it would take to screw up my Garmin navigation map..

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Don't worry though, about local fauls, LA is going to disappear when it slides into the sea from a continental shelf fault.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the pacific plate is moving north, not sinking.

Cheers! Rich