60-Day Notice of Claim Form

It's that time in the Hurricane Ivan cycle when those who haven't yet achieved a satisfactory settlement with their state-regulated property insurance company are contemplating filing a lawsuit. More than four months have gone by since Hurricane Ivan devastated the Pensacola area, yet thousands of local homeowners still haven't had their claims properly adjusted.

Be aware that before filing a lawsuit, Florida Statute 624.155(3) requires that you file a 60-Day 'Civil Remedy Notice' on a form provided by the state's Office of Insurance Regulation. Directions as to how to fill out the form and the places to send it are on the final page of the form, which is formatted for Adobe Acrobat.

The required form can be downloaded by clicking directly on this url: DI4-363.

Or, copy-and-paste this url in your browser:
http://www.fldfs.com/Consumers/Forms/DI4-363.pdf

Tax Update

The Beach Tax Committee has posted an update on the tax lawsuit. The Committee hopes soon to post a Q & A on its web site and "a mailing to all parties to the suit."

Prowling Perdido

It was predictable. It was preventable. It happened anyway.

The first reports of burglars on area barrier islands surfaced in the Pensacola News Journal Saturday. Stolen items include "a sofa, a microwave oven, some hand towels and a few kitchen utensils."

Just the sort of thing a lot of people in Pensacola don't have anymore. Just the sort of stuff they want.

Don't mistake it: this is a problem created by your Escambia County Commissioners, as Linda L. wrote here a few days ago.

Sean Smith has a brief account reporting that Perdido Key residents are complaining of burglars.

Three residents from condos at Perdido Towers, Old River Landing and Rolling Surf on Thursday reported thefts of ... unlikely burglary items from hurricane-battered Perdido Key homes.

The three condo communities are on Perdido Key Drive, west of River Road, and remain without electricity. Residents believe they are more vulnerable to thieves because they lack basic utilities and cannot live in their homes.

"You look at these streets, and it is dark. How inviting can that be? Without protection, we are at the mercy of burglars," said Mary Alice Marston, Old River Landing condominium association vice president.

One man has been arrested. He was apprehended in a "pickup pulling a trailer." The county sheriff's response is to begin random "bike patrols" on Perdido Key and Pensacola Beach "as manpower allows."

Bike patrols? Aren't bike patrols used to bring law enforcement closer to the people who live in neighborhoods?

With 80% or more of area beach houses and condos standing dark and empty, that hardly seems like the police vehicle of choice. More appropriate to the circumstances might be something along these lines.

Parsing of the Peril

Today's Pensacola News Journal devotes its spare 'one-a-day editorial' to the bonehead move by Citizens Property Insurance to file a 'test' suit against a disabled war vet. The title is 'Insurance Company Lawsuit Unfairly Changes Playing Field'.

The editorial makes several of the same points we also mentioned the other day down thread. As the newspaper says --

'This litigation could take years. That creates an untenable situation for people already frustrated by delays... . * * * [I]f the law is to be changed, it should be done after all current claims are settled and it should include strong provisions guiding how the determination will be made on dividing responsibility for the damage.'

That last point about "dividing responsibility for the damage" is a good one, well informed by the reality of what's happening here on the ground in Pensacola. Virtually every homeowner with hurricane damage knows it, too.

Many insurance adjusters working the Panhandle, it seems, have been trying to attribute as much 'damage assessment' to flooding water as they can. This undoubtedly is because for most home owners in a flood plain, insurance policies covering surging water are less generous (other than, perhaps, when it comes to the deductible) than most other forms of property insurance. The National Flood Insurance Program arbitrarily imposes a fixed maximum on policy limits that bears little relation to actual market value or replacement costs of a damaged structure. Furthermore, payments for flood damage ultimately come straight out of the federal treasury instead of a private insurance company's reserves.

Consequently, all windstorm insurance companies have what might be called a personal interest in parsing the cause of storm damage to see that as much as possible is attributed to flooding water rather than high winds. As George Kehrer, executive director of Community Assisting Recovery told The Street.com just before the hurricane season began last summer:

insurance adjusters ... are likely to appear helpful. But don't confuse their interests with yours... . * * * "They're friendly, but they're not your friend," he says. "Their job is to save money for the company."

In fact, Pensacola could be the poster child for that aphorism. A month ago, we made national news again when USA Today reported:

A legal aid center set up in Pensacola after Hurricane Ivan hit Sept. 16 fielded more than 1,500 complaints during its first month. Among concerns: Homeowners... were told that their policies cover wind storms —- but now find that they won't pay for all damage because most of it was caused by flooding.

As many locals in the Pensacola area are learning, when peak hurricane forces of both wind and water rage together for more than 18 hours, arbitrarily parsing the cause of damage between two forces of nature becomes a highly subjective art. Not surprisingly, confusion over attributing that damage to wind or water ranked high in public concern throughout Florida , according to last fall's poll by Gannett Corporation's media outlets.

It ought to rank high with our state legislators, too. As everyone who has lived through one knows, by definition a hurricane involves both high wind and surging water. FEMA's own web site explains, "As a hurricane nears land, it can bring torrential rains, high winds, and storm surges."

Policies promoted, marketed, and sold as 'hurricane insurance' ought to cover all hurricane storm damage, whatever the immediate physical engine of destruction may have been. It makes no sense to micro-parse the peril of a hurricane by physical causes which are inherent in every named tropical storm and which so closely interact with each other. One might as well allow insurance companies to sell "fire policies" that don't cover damage from smoke or high heat.

Set Up To Fail

"Citizens Property Insurance, Florida's insurer of last resort."

How many times have you read that appellation attached to the name of the state-owned insurance company? In media accounts about Citizens, it's as common as mold. If I didn't know better, I'd think that was part of the company name. As in, "Citizens Property Insurance Of Last Resort, Inc."

Might as well add a logo: You deserve the worst because no one wants you.

Few news reporters (or insurance customers, for that matter) know the reality behind that too-easy characterization of Citizens. Yesterday, however, Melanie Payne of the News-Press in Southwest Florida gave rich and informative context to the story of the rate increase request expected from Citizens. Along the way, she tossed off a great line.

The line:

: "...many of Citizens 882,000 customers wonder why they are paying boutique prices while being treated like discount shoppers."

The context:

Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-run insurer of last resort, has applied for an increase that would raise rates for inland Lee County homeowners with Citizens wind insurance an average of 59.9 percent. The rates for some Florida customers will almost double.

Here's the zinger (emphasis added):

According to Citizens spokesman Justin Glover, the agency had no choice but to respond with rate increase requests once private insurers began to file theirs. By law, Citizens is required to charge the highest rates in any county, Glover said. So far, a dozen private insurance carriers have filed for rate increases with the Office of Insurance Regulation.
* * *
[T]he Citizens increase requests were a result of an order by the state to revise upward some of their prices, which were found to be below the rates of private insurers in certain counties.

Citizens is not supposed to compete with private carriers, instead offering insurance to those turned down by regular carriers.
* * *
But if Citizens doesn't need the money to pay claims, why raise the rates, asks Bill Newton, executive director of the Florida Consumer Action Network in Tampa.

"When Citizens is forced to make unnecessary rate increases it keeps prices high for everybody," Newton said.

If private companies were forced to compete with Citizens it might restrain companies like State Farm and Allstate from raising their rates, he said.

The state politics-oriented blog Florida News has been covering downstate privatization scandals. Citizens Property Insurance is the other side of the coin: A state-owned business set up to fail by the legislature.

Well, they're doing a great job of it. Also yesterday, the much-heralded Citizens 'report' about hurricane settlement practices was delivered to state CFO Tom Gallagher and his industry-dominated 'advisory' panel. Paige St. John of Florida Today has the account.

The plea to the charge of being really, really lousy at adjusting insurance claims? Guilty as charged.

Citizens reported --

it has closed 79 percent of all hurricane claims, though there were still 5,273 claims where the damaged property had yet to be inspected.

Citizens' closure rate doesn't include commercial property, such as condominiums. It also doesn't include closed claims that were reopened.

Office of Insurance records show that as of Dec. 30, Citizens had 28 percent of its hurricane claims open, the second-worst closure record among major insurers.

* * *
The system is still not working smoothly, task force members said.

Carol Everhart, representing the Professional Insurance Agents association, said she called the phone number publicized on Citizens' Web site. She waited on hold for 20 minutes only to be disconnected.

"It's an example of the frustration our clients are facing," Everhart said.

The sentence handed down by Mr. Gallagher? Two weeks probation:

Gallagher's Citizens review task force on Wednesday gave the company two weeks to draft a structure sufficient to handle the 1 million policies it manages. The plan is to include regional claims offices, an in-house system to track claims and a plan to work with the agents who sell Citizens policies.

Apparently, no one mentioned Citizens' other case-closing strategy of suing its policy holders and threatening the rest.

State Insurance Company Sues Disabled Hurricane Victim

One wonders if Jeb Bush, who's now winging it back to attend his brother's $40 million inauguration celebration, can find the time to do a little 'fact finding' about Florida storm victims of the state-controlled insurance company.

While Florida governor Jeb Bush was planning his whirlwind 3-day tour of South Asia to polish his political image and 'find facts' about tsunami damage anyone can see 24/7 on their television screen, back home the state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Co. -- over which you can be sure Governor Bush has ultimate authority -- was filing a lawsuit against a disabled policy holder who dared to make a claim for wind damage after his house was declared a total loss following Hurricane Ivan.

Citizens Property Insurance was created by the state of Florida, as its web site describes to "more efficiently and effectively [provide] insurance to, and [serve] the needs of, homeowners in high-risk areas and others who cannot find coverage in the open, private insurance market." Now, it says it will be sending hundreds of letters to other premium-paying customers who've made wind claims, telling them of the lawsuit and saying they'll hear from Citizens again if and when there is "a final determination from the courts regarding its obligations... ."

That reads, "Don't call us, we'll call you." As so many have said, dealing with Citizens Property Insurance Co. is 'worse than Hurricane Ivan.'

Amber Bolman of the Pensacola News Journal has the story:

The insurer of last resort for Florida home owners is suing an Escambia County couple, alleging the company should not be required to pay the full wind policy coverage on their destroyed Grande Lagoon home because most of the home's damage was caused by flooding.

In a case that could affect hundreds of local home owners, Citizens Property Insurance Corp. is asking the Circuit Court to nullify an earlier ruling that obligates insurance carriers to pay out full wind policy limits in cases where homes have been deemed total losses, even if only a portion of the damage was inflicted by wind.

Some attorneys are speculating the case could further delay insurance settlements for Panhandle families who have been waiting months for checks to begin rebuilding their homes.

"This thing could take two years to resolve," said plaintiff's attorney Bob Kerrigan. "And in the meantime, these people who have already had their homes destroyed are going to have to sit around and wait some more while the insurance companies try to get the laws changed to avoid paying."

Barbara and Ralph Perkins, whose home on Grande Lagoon Boulevard was devastated by Hurricane Ivan, were notified of the lawsuit last week after having demanded full payment on their $140,000 wind policy from Citizens.

To make matters worse, Bolman reports, in targeting the Perkins couple, Citizens is picking on a disabled Vietnam War veteran. Ralph Perkins not only needs a house, he needs it to be wheelchair-accessible.

What is going on here? In effect, Citizens simply doesn't like the rule of law followed in the Florida case of Mierzwa v. Florida Windstorm Underwriting Assn., 877 So.2d 774 (4th DCA 2004). . It's decided to challenge that existing rule of law by suing one of its customers in another court, sending intimidating letters to the others whose homes have been destroyed by a combination of wind and local ordinances that require the home to be torn down if it's more than 50% damaged, and then use the pending lawsuit as an excuse not to adjust windstorm claims for the next several years.

Ahhh! So that's what Citizens meant when it claimed last month that it would have all claims 'settled' by the end of 2004.

One wonders if Jeb Bush, who's now winging it back to attend his brother's $40 million inauguration celebration, can find the time to do a little 'fact finding' about Florida storm victims of the state-controlled insurance company. Given this latest move by Citizens, it's conceivable that all of South Asia will be rebuilt before hundreds of Florida families like the Perkins' have a home again.

Pensacola attorney Bob Kerrigan, the News Journal reports, is calling on the state's Department of Financial Services to require Citizens to make payments to affected home owners.

"The state-controlled insurance company is suing citizens of the state trying to overturn a law they don't like," Kerrigan said. "The law says home owners in this situation should have their full policy limits paid. It's very clear."

It's important to understand what's going on here. Florida's "value policy law" has been on the books for decades. It applies to all state-regulated property insurers, the state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Co. among them. All of those companies have been setting rates, and collecting premiums, and establishing a competitive market based on a variety of risk factors, the "value policy law" among them.

The "value policy law" simply says that if a structure is effectively totalled and a covered peril (for example, wind) contributed to the damage, the policy owner who has been paying premiums is entitled to the policy limits on which those premiums were based.

The Mierzwa case did not particularly break new ground when the court held that in determining whether a structure has been "totaled" the insurance company must take into account, as well, the impact of local and state building codes. An analogy might be drawn to auto collision policies: if the frame of your car is damaged irreparably, you rightly would expect to collect on the lost value of the total vehicle even if, in theory, the car could be reconstructed on top of the damaged frame. You collect the full "policy value" because you wouldn't be allowed by local law to register or drive the rebuilt vehicle in its unsafe condition.

In Mierzwa, as in the case of hundreds of Northwest Florida hurricane victims, existing local law specifies that if the structure is located in a flood plain and it suffers cumulative damage of more than 50%, then it must be torn down and re-built on pilings.

If Citizens doesn't like the "value policy law" it's free to attempt to convince the legislature to amend or repeal it. But as things stood when Citizens was collecting premiums from policy holders, that was the law. As things stood when Hurricane Ivan destroyed thousands of structures in flood zones around the state, that was the law. As things stand now with tens of thousands of hurricane claims still pending with Citizens, that is the law.

Instead of following the law, Citizens has chosen to sue some customers and send threatening letters to the rest, hoping the courts eventually will retroactively overturn the Mierzwa holding. Beyond the individual hardships this will cause, the tactic virtually guarantees that it will be many, many years before coastal communities throughout Northwest Florida can recover from Hurricane Ivan. Everything from the school property tax base to tourist sales tax revenues will be adversely affected.

The state's property insurer betrays its core mission and the very reasons it was created when it targets its own customers with lawsuits and intimidating settlement practices. Governor Bush and state CFO Tom Gallagher should put a stop to these abusive practices -- right now.

Discontinuance of Beach Checkpoints

While passing through the Pensacola Beach eastbound residential area checkpoint this past Friday, I commented to the attending deputy that we sure would be sorry to see them go after this weekend, when the checkpoints are to be discontinued. He fervently replied, "And we'll be sorry to go, so please contact the commissioners! Call them! Leave messages!"

I figured it was the least I could do. Even though I'm sure you join me in realizing it's highly unlikely to do much good, I sent the following e-mail to the Escambia County Commissioners today, and copied the Sheriff's Department. Please send one yourself, or call them, if you agree with me. I only hope we never have to say we told them so.

Here's the letter:

"Tonight's discontinuance of Sheriff's checkpoints at the entrances to the residential areas on Pensacola Beach is a very big mistake.

This is a huge, widely devastated area that cannot possibly be properly patrolled and controlled by deputies - not when the vast majority of the structures are unoccupied and thus remain an open invitation to vandalism and looting, and not while many of those structures have been officially deemed unsafe to enter without risk. The amount of time and personnel required to carefully patrol each block 24-7 when the area is opened to all comers will simply be prohibitive.

While it may be true that most residents' belongings have been removed, there are still plenty of owners and renters who for logistical or monetary reasons can't afford to do so, or who've been unable to find rental storage facilities in the area. (I don't have to tell you that storage capacity here is severely overtaxed.)

Some of the other factors inviting trouble:

There are thousands of out-of-town workers in the area, who may not feel a connection to and/or sympathy with Ivan victims, and the temptation to "salvage" personal property, fittings and fixtures from unguarded, especially damaged, houses will be high. Not everyone from everywhere is as upstanding as most of our local area citizens.

Further, since the beach has always been a playground for the young, there'll be the added danger of those kids with nothing better to do, and maybe with a few beers under their belts, deciding it's OK to wreak more havoc on structures already trashed by Ivan. It may prove virtually impossible to protect these young people from themselves. The dangers are many, and the potential liabilities huge.

Certainly not least is the difficulty of protecting homes under re-construction, many of which contain equipment and new materials stored on site or already installed. While this is a potential problem in any new housing project, here we have what amounts to an entire darkened, unguarded and somewhat remote town full of temptation for those who would as soon steal plywood as gold. Fledgling re-construction efforts on Pensacola Beach, as difficult as they presently are for all kinds of reasons, should be applauded, encouraged and protected, not left open to the frightening prospect of new harm.

Leaving a checkpoint deputy at each end of the beach 24-7 and reducing the number of patrolling deputies the beach normally enjoys would seem to be a much wiser move than closing the checkpoints and increasing patrols. In fact, isn't this a no-brainer, or am I missing something?

(I think what I'm missing is the political aspect: pressure from your county constituents spouting that baloney about our severely wounded island under protection of its owner now somehow resembling a private gated community. Look, that's just the usual old sordid sour grapes, and there's no call for it. Please don't be stupid enough to fall for such childishness.)

The very last thing Pensacola Beach needs now, while we're trying to rebuild the island and its tourism, is a lot of negative publicity about incidents of thievery, vandalism, and possibly even personal injury. Will you wait until that's already happened, or will you work with the Sheriff to find a way to maintain the security the non-core area still needs and deserves?"

Cumulative Flood Law Surfaces

The weekly Gulf Breeze News has a cautionary tale in this week's issue for Gulf Breeze residents whose insured homes were flooded by Hurricane Ivan. Indeed, the Gulf Breeze News made the news itself.

Chris Chatelain has discovered that City of Gulf Breeze ordinances still impose "what is called a five-year cumulative rule" for flood insurance. The city didn't even realize it, the News reporter says, until the paper made inquiries.

Chatelain writes in part --

Under this “rule,” total flood damages under each policy roll over to accumulate in increments of five years at a time. For example, a policyholder’s damages from this year will be totaled with any other flood claims on that policy within the last four years. Once a policy is “maxed out” (usually $250,000), then the home is placed into the 50 percent rule and must be brought up to the latest city and county flood codes before it can be repaired or rebuilt, according to Gulf Breeze Director of Community Services Shane Carmichael. Carmichael said he and the city did not realize that the city still had the rule on the books while the county and State had repealed the ordinance ... .

Bringing a house into conformity with the latest building code involves demolition and complete rebuilding if the house is in a designated flood plain and not on stilts.

Under the city ordinance, for example, a house on a slab which is damaged to what was considered 45% of its pre-storm value would have to be totally replaced by one raised on stilts if a later storm's surge damage amounted to as little as 6% loss of value.

It is a rule choked with complications. Consider just three:

• What if the house had been sold between storms to a new, unsuspecting owner? Is the new owner stuck with what happened under the previous seller's ownership or could he reopen and contest the earlier percentage?


• If the previous owner didn't disclose details about what percentage was claimed in a Year One Storm, is he liable to the new owner when because of the ordinance the house is 'totalled' in Year Five after comparatively minor damage?


• If the structure's "value" appreciated between storms occurring, say, five years apart, does the ordinance apply the same "perentage" calculus to two different values from two different years, or use a constant "value" benchmark established after the first storm and apply that to the second storm damage to yield a damage percentage?

The Gulf Breeze News has done a public service by alerting city officials to what their own law says. The city should return the favor by repealing this anachronism and conforming the local ordinance to state law and that of other area communities.

Local Connections

"How devastating is it? It’s more devastating than Hurricane Ivan 10 times over." -- Pensacola relative of a tsunami survivor

Downthread, I promised more information on yesterday's news that Gulf Breeze Mayor Buzz Eddy is soliciting donations for Asian tsunami victims. Here it is:
* * *
In an interview broadcast Friday morning, Eddy told local NPR affiliate WUWF-FM that the city hopes to raise $6,000, or an average of one dollar per Gulf Breeze resident, for Tsunami relief. After collecting donations, the mayor said the city will assess the situation and send the money to "one or more care organizations."

For those who prefer making direct donations, the New York Times provides a list of respected world relief charities.

* * *
The Pilot, a North Carolina newspaper, has an on-line interview with Pensacola native Malina Gabriel, whose aunt barely survived the Asian tsunami. Here's a snippet:

Malina lives in Pensacola, Fla., and was home visiting for Christmas when she heard the news Sunday. She witnessed the destruction of Hurricane Ivan earlier this year, but said it pales in comparison to the disaster that’s befallen her father’s homeland.

"It was devastating to see what happened to our beaches and the families around us," she said. "We didn’t find out until the day after Christmas what had happened over there."
* * *
"We’re so fortunate to have the things we do and they’re not as fortunate as we are. To have this happen. How devastating is it? It’s more devastating than Hurricane Ivan 10 times over. You just can’t imagine what it’s like to watch it on TV and see my father’s country be swept away. The entire side of the country where he’s from is gone."

* * *
Can anyone doubt that sending Jeb Bush to Asia "as co-chairman of a U.S. delegation with Secretary of State Colin Powell" is the opening shot in the 2008 presidential campaign? Why else would the Florida Governor travel half way around the world to glance at what he could see right here at home, up close and personal?

The governor was chosen by his brother, President Bush, because of his experience with the four hurricanes that caused extensive damage to Florida in 2004. He will serve as co-chairman of a U.S. delegation with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The White House issued a statement Thursday citing Gov. Bush's "extensive experience in the state of Florida with relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts following natural disasters."

"Extensive experience," eh? Well, let's hope for the sake of the tsunami victims that Jeb doesn't plan on starting an Asian version of Citizens Property Insurance.

Tsunami Perspectives

"For millenniums, the sea's waves have battered the coastlines of the world, here cutting back a cliff, there stripping away tons of sand from a beach, and somewhere else, in a reversal of their destructiveness, building up a bar or a small island. Unlike the geologic changes that take millions of years to bring about the flooding of half a continent, the work of the waves is perceptible during the brief span of human life; the sculpturing of a continent's edge is something we can all see for ourselves." -- Rachel Carson, 1951

-----------Many Pensacola area people I know, victims themselves of the recent hurricane season, are eager to contribute to relief for the victims of the Christmas tsunami. A helpful list of respected world relief charities is provided in the New York Times.

To that, John Gunn adds in his email letter that Gulf Breeze mayor Buzz Eddy has made arrangements to receive donations at Gulf Breeze City Hall. Details will follow soon, I am sure.
-----------
No sooner had the Red Cross predicted the death toll will rise above 100,000 and half a million more injured in the horrible tsunami tragedy, than the BBC reports, "New figures reveal at least 112,000 people died in Sunday's ocean disaster."

Still, the melancholy numbers continue to rise.

Across the region thousands remain unaccounted for since the 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake off Sumatra that forced a wall of water smashing into coastlines as far away as east Africa.

One of the biggest-populated areas still cut off from outside help is Sumatra itself:

In Sumatra, the Florida-sized Indonesian island close to the epicentre of the quake, the view from the air was of whole villages ripped apart, covered in mud and seawater. In one of the few signs of life, a handful of desperate people scavenged a beach for food. On the streets of Banda Aceh, the main town of Sumatra's Aceh province, the military managed to drop supplies from vehicles and fights broke out over packs of instant noodles.

Major-General Endang Suwarya, military commander of Aceh province, said after flying over the stricken region that 75 per cent of the west coast of Sumatra was destroyed.

A Canadian newspaper also reports that "the U.S. State Department said 12 Americans died in the disaster — seven in Sri Lanka and five in Thailand. About 2,000 to 3,000 Americans were unaccounted for."

A vivid account in the UK Guardian says --

Aid workers arriving in the region are being confronted with devastation - entire towns and villages razed, and countless people - some of them with cuts and broken bones - searching desperately for clean water and food on streets covered in debris and dead bodies.

With at least 5 million people in need, it is already one of the biggest humanitarian exercises in history, with 60 nations having pledged over $220m (£114.5m) in cash and hundreds of millions more in emergency supplies.

[Update: The Springfield, Mo., News-Leader is carrying a helpful comparison of the challenge confronting international aid organizations. "'The army of relief workers probably will need to be 10 times the initial federal help to Florida in last summer's spate of hurricanes,' said Joe Myers, a former Florida disaster-response chief. 'That means starting with 50,000 relief workers, then building to even more.'"]

The disaster seems likely to worsen as bacteria and viruses spread among the panicked, thirty, and starving survivors. From the Seattle Times:

For reasons not entirely understood, natural disasters are rarely followed by epidemics of communicable disease and very high mortality frequently seen in man-made catastrophes such as civil wars, genocide and involuntary displacement of whole populations.
* * *
Large numbers of corpses themselves pose little, if any, health threat. Putrefying flesh does not create disease-causing pathogens or spread them.

The real danger is from infections already present in the population at low rates that can be spread rapidly in the absence of proper sanitation.

Among the waterborne ailments linked to floods, the WHO cites bacterial and viral diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, hepatitis A and leptospirosis, the latter of which can be spread through the urine of rodents attracted to flood debris.

How well people fare will depend in large part on decisions being made in the next few days or weeks as local health authorities and outside agencies work frantically to provide water and rudimentary sanitation to the homeless and destitute.

The New Yorker is sharing a unique historical perspective on tsunamis and closely related sea wave hazards by reprinting a 1951 article written by Rachel Carson for the magazine. For me, it was oddly comforting to read Ms. Carson's lyrical prose describing how such tragedies have been with mankind almost as long as time itself, even as muted images of the horrible Christmas tsunami were re-playing over and over on my television screen. Here is a snippet:

For millenniums, the sea's waves have battered the coastlines of the world, here cutting back a cliff, there stripping away tons of sand from a beach, and somewhere else, in a reversal of their destructiveness, building up a bar or a small island. Unlike the geologic changes that take millions of years to bring about the flooding of half a continent, the work of the waves is perceptible during the brief span of human life; the sculpturing of a continent's edge is something we can all see for ourselves.
* * *
The sea waves that have fixed themselves most firmly in the human imagination are the so-called tidal waves. The term is popularly applied to two very different kinds of wave, neither of which has any relation to the tide. One is the seismic sea wave, produced by an undersea earthquake; the other is an exceptionally vast wind wave—an immense mass of water driven far above the normal high-water line by winds of hurricane force.
* * *
The writings of man contain frequent mention of the devastation of coastal settlements by sudden great waves. One of the earliest on record rose along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in 358 A.D., passed completely over islands, and flooded low-lying shores, depositing boats on the housetops of Alexandria, and drowning thousands of people. An hour after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Cádiz was visited by a wave that is said to have been fifty feet higher than the highest tide. Waves from this same disturbance travelled across the Atlantic, reaching the West Indies in nine and a half hours. In 1868, a stretch of nearly three thousand miles of the western coast of South America was shaken by earthquakes. Shortly after the most violent shocks, the sea receded, leaving ships that had been anchored in forty feet of water stranded in mud; then the water returned in a great wave and the ships were carried a quarter of a mile inland.

This withdrawal of the sea from its normal stand is often the first warning of the approach of seismic sea waves. Natives on the beaches of Hawaii on the first of April, 1946, were alarmed when the accustomed voice of the breakers was suddenly stilled. They could not know that this recession of the waves from the reefs and the shallow coastal waters was the sea's response to an earthquake on the steep slopes of the Aleutian trench, twenty-three hundred miles away, or that in a matter of moments the water would rise rapidly but without surf, as though the tide were coming in much too fast. The rise carried the ocean waters twenty-five feet or more above normal high tide. In the open ocean, as is characteristic of seismic sea waves, the waves produced by the Aleutian quake were only about a foot or two high and would not be noticed from a vessel. Their length, however, was enormous, the distance between crests being about ninety miles. It took the waves less than five hours to reach the Hawaiian chain, so they must have moved at a speed of about four hundred and seventy miles an hour. Along the shores of the eastern Pacific, they were recorded as far into the Southern Hemisphere as Valparaíso, Chile; the distance, eight thousand and sixty-six miles from the epicenter of the earthquake, was covered by the waves in eighteen hours.

The storm waves that sometimes rise over low-lying coastlands in hurricane zones are accompanied by a rise of the general water level, forming the so-called "storm tide." The rise of water is often so sudden that people have no chance to escape. These waves claim about three-fourths of the lives lost in tropical hurricanes. The most notable disasters caused by storm waves in the United States were at Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900; on the lower Florida Keys, on September 2 and 3, 1935; and in the Atlantic Coast hurricane of September 21, 1938. The most fearful destruction by storm waves within historic time occurred in the Bay of Bengal on October 7, 1737, when twenty thousand boats were destroyed and three hundred thousand people drowned.

For an even broader perspective, we're now told that scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have calculated that the tsunami affects everyone on the planet. Quake's Power Speeds Up Earth's Rotation and Shortens Our Days is the headline in The Scotsman. The effect is unlikely to be noticed for a few thousand years, however.

Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in California, said that a shift of mass towards the Earth’s centre had caused the planet to spin one millionth of a second faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.

He added that when one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was forced below the edge of another, "it had the effect of making the Earth more compact and spin faster". Days will get shorter by a fraction of a second, Mr Gross said, although the effects are probably too small to be detected by hi-tech global positioning satellites that monitor changes in the Earth’s spin.

The poles travel a circular path that normally varies by about 33ft, so an added wobble of an inch is unlikely to cause long-term effects. "That continual motion is just used to changing," Mr Gross said. "The rotation is not actually that precise. The Earth does slow down and change its rate of rotation."

When those tiny variations accumulate, planetary scientists must add a "leap second" to the end of a year, something that has not been done in many years, he added.

Not all agree on the exact measure of spin and tilt caused by the tsunami. "We won't know for weeks," geophysicist Thomas Herring of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told New York's Newsday. "The most accurate measurements will take about three weeks to get all of the data processed. So it's a guess, as of now."

But, as Rachel Carson's fascinating essay reminds us, the sea also exerts a countervailing force --

The very movement of the water over the bed of the ocean, over the shallow edges of the continents, and over the inland seas carries within it the power that is slowly destroying the tides, for tidal friction is gradually slowing down the rotation of the earth. In the earliest days, it took the earth a much shorter time—perhaps only four hours—to make a complete rotation on its axis. Since then, the spinning of the globe has been so greatly slowed that now, of course, a rotation requires about twenty-four hours. Mathematicians say that this retarding will continue until the day is about fifty times as long as it is now. And all the while the tidal friction will be exerting a second effect; it will be pushing the moon farther away, just as it has already pushed it out more than two hundred thousand miles.

The tsunami tragedy has awed the world. It demonstrates the fragility of our planet and the power of nature. Most of all, I think, it reminds us of the interdependence of all mankind, and life itself, on earth.

Just as with the lowly worm Convoluta roscoffensis, whose mysterious ways Rachel Carson describes at the end of her New Yorker essay, we are all destined to "live out... life in this alien place, remembering in every fibre... the tidal rhythm of the distant sea."

Beach Opens to Public Sunday Night

Escambia County officials announced Wednesday that Pensacola Beach will be thrown open to the general public at 6 p.m. Sunday evening, January 2. According to the Pensacola News Journal, Chief Sheriff's Deputy Larry Smith says beach residents "have had enough time to secure their belongings."

The 3/4-mile commercial core from the west end of Casino Beach to Avenida 10 has been open to the public for some time. Starting Sunday night, free access to the rest of the 8-mile long island community will begin when the sheriff's office takes down make-shift security checkpoints on Via DeLuna and Fort Pickens Road.

Access to Perdido Key similarly will be unfettered starting Sunday. The sheriff's office told the News Journal that the checkpoints there and on Pensacola Beach have cost about $5 million in overtime pay. All of it is being covered by FEMA, although the "federal reimbursements won't be paid until mid-2005."

So, it seems money wasn't the driving force behind the decision to re-open the entire beach community so much as grumbling from mainlanders who like to rubber-neck. An echo of some crank's letter-to-the-editor published in the News Journal on December 16 can be heard in the explanation offered by Deputy Smith, as quoted by the newspaper:

"Either the beach is open, or it's closed," Smith said. "By letting a select group in, you'd be establishing a gated community." Smith said.

And what a gated community it is! Most neighborhood street lights do not function. Mountains of trash still line the streets. No sooner is the garbage picked up than more takes its place. Sand mountains piled four stories high by bulldozers block beach views in much of the residential area. Broken glass and debris make access paths to the beach treacherous.

Traveling the full length of Via De Luna at night last week, one could count across the whole length and width of the east end of the island less than fifty lighted homes or temporary trailers. Before the storm, there would have been 1200-1500 inhabited houses, condo, and townhouse units.

With no restaurants, goods for sale, public restrooms, safe beach access, or life guards, it's difficult to imagine any lawful reason tourists or mainlanders would want to venture past the point where temporary security checkpoints were established. Morbid curiosity? Free 'yard sales' of hurricane-damaged junk? House hunters hoping for a "handyman special"? Or, was it pressure from media sources, staunchly defending their First Amendment right to sensationalize human misery for profit?

We are assured by the News Journal that the sheriff promises, "Deputies will continue to operate additional security patrols throughout the hardest-hit areas." That might be. But the risks of a premature re-opening go beyond the threat of thievery.

How soon they forget. Less than two years ago, Pensacola Beach was dubbed "Death Beach" by Chris Brewster of the National Lifesaving Association because of all the drownings that occurred in unguarded beach areas beyond the commercial core. Do county officials seriously think letting the public wander freely through still-devasted, largely dark and empty neigborhoods is going to enhance public safety -- or the reputation of Pensacola Beach as a safe and enjoyable place to visit?

FEMA Extends Deadline

FEMA late Wednesday granted a 60-day extension for hurricane victims in Florida and Alabama who still need to apply for disaster assistance, according to a number of Southeast Florida news sources, including the Tuscaloosa News and Pensacola TV station WEAR-TV.

The initial deadline was this Friday, December 31. The deadline for SBA loan and grant assistance is January 3, 2005. At this writing, it is unknown if SBA will extend its deadline as well.

Earlier today, Patrick Whittle of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that "FEMA officials said they were working with the state [of Florida] to determine if the Friday deadline should be extended." According to Whittle's article, FEMA has received 1.1 million applications, statewide, since Hurricane Charley struck.

Oddly, WEAR-TV's early evening report says the new deadline for Florida residents will be slightly shorter than for Alabamians. "In Florida," the station reports, "the deadline has been extended to February 28th. The new registration deadline is March 3 for Alabama residents."

Could this be because someone thinks Alabama residents read slower?

Update
The web site for FEMA now confirms the early reports. According to FEMA:

At the request of the State of Florida, the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has extended the application deadline for hurricane victims disaster assistance registration to February 28, 2005, for the four 2004 hurricanes that made landfall in Florida—Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne.

“With registrations still averaging more than 1,500 a day, it is important to keep the process open until everyone who suffered damage has a chance to call and get registered for assistance,” said Craig Fugate, state coordinating officer.

To register, Floridians should call the FEMA toll-free number, 1-800-621-FEMA (3362), or TTY 1-800-462-7585 for those who are speech- or hearing-impaired. Teleregistration hours will be 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. EST, seven days a week until further notice. Applicants may also register online at the FEMA website http://www.fema.gov by clicking on the red “hot-link” button in the upper right-hand portion of the page marked “Register for Disaster Assistance Online.”

“Even with the extended deadline for registering we encourage everyone to go ahead and complete the process as soon as possible,” stated Bill Carwile, federal coordinating officer.

Evidently, it is true that Alabama residents will have an extra three days to file their applications for FEMA assistance.

Never let it be said that the federal government in far away Washington isn't sensitive to the differing needs of each state.

Update on the Tsunami

Bumped from down thread:

Update on the Tsunami
Monday, December 27
The Washington Post reports this morning that more than 20,000 are now believed dead from the Christmas Tsunami. The Chinese news agency Xinhua reports the toll has topped 22,000. Australia's The Age reports the total has topped 24,000.

Millions of survivors have lost everything, and now urgently need medicine, shelter, food and clean water. "This is a massive humanitarian disaster and the communications are so bad we still don't know the full scale of it. Unless we get aid quickly to the people many more could die," said Phil Esmond, head of Oxfam in Sri Lanka.

The worst affected countries are Sri Lanka, where the reported toll last night passed 11,500, India (6600 dead), Indonesia (4991) and Thailand (839).

A Gulf Breeze friend, Don Rolle, is presently living on the island of Borneo, well north of quake. He cautions in an email message received today that "other places like Burma and Malaysia have not really reported in" as yet. The death toll is sure to continue rising.

New DEP Web Site

Just before Christmas, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection announced it is launching a new web site with 'before and after' "video clips and photographs of Florida’s shoreline from spring 2004 and in the aftermath of Hurricanes Frances, Ivan and Jeanne... ." The videos are intended to help "disaster relief personnel, property owners, realtors, insurance agents and coastal planners... assess coastal damage to assist in the recovery process."

Also available is a 64-page damage assessment of Hurricane Ivan. The report is in Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format. You can directly access it by clicking here.

The web site was made possible by DEP engineers and managers who --

assessed erosion along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts following the summer storms. Engineers completed close to 1,000 hours of aerial and ground assessments across 25 coastal counties, shooting 76 hours of video and more than 5,200 still photographs to document hurricane damage to the state’s famed beaches, sandy dunes and coastal communities. Collected data was used to develop the State’s Hurricane Recovery Plan for Florida’s Beach and Dune System.

As of today, however, it's premature for those interested in a video of the Pensacola area to pay a visit. Only a coastal control map of Northwest Florida is available on the web site. No videos or post-storm photographs can be accessed as yet.

But it is possible to see pre-storm aerial photos of Pensacola Beach neighborhoods by repeatedly zooming in on the map page for Northwest Florida. The resolution gets fuzzier the closer you get, of course, but pixilated individual homes, trees, and large plants can be made out -- with the state's coastal control line superimposed over all. What that shows, as beach residents know all too well, is that a great many structures on Pensacola Beach were built seaward of the coastal control line well before Hurricane Ivan.

Either state and county officials have made a mockery of coastal construction control laws by handing out far too many 'variances' over the years, or someone should arrest Mother Nature for violating state law.

When the web site is completed, DEP advises that Internet visitors will need an up-to-date browser and may have to download the latest Windows Media plug-in or DIVX software to see the videos. This is because, as DEP boasts, the web site uses "state of the art e-tools." Links for the necessary software, which is freeware, are provided on the new DEP web site.

For more information, visit the DEP's description about Regional Coastal Monitoring Data Files.

Holiday Empathies

It's easy for victims of the four Florida hurricanes to feel sorry for ourselves this holiday season. But our misfortune should make it easier for us to empathize with others who, alas, are enduring similar misfortunes -- greatly magnified.

Dreary Christmas Day
Pig-gray skies. Sleet. Cold rain. A biting wind. Dreary. Depressing.

Christmas Day in Pensacola? Yes, true. But elsewhere, too. Consider the holiday experienced by our soldiers in Iraq.

Under gray skies and a cold, steady rain, Anderson, 28, and his convoy of three armored Humvees from the Army's First Cavalry Division pulled out of Camp Falcon cheerily, with the guitar-heavy sounds of Metallica blaring from Sergeant Brandon Shaw's CD player. Specialist Steve Bobb, 24, of Meigs County, Ohio, gripped an M-16 and a mounted M-240 machine gun at the rooftop portal of the Humvee.

* * *
A few minutes into the patrol, their hopes for an easy afternoon were dashed. Headquarters radioed in with a new order: head to Route Irish, the deadly stretch of road leading to Baghdad International Airport, and secure it for an hour.

The mood soured quickly; conversations ended. Two of the battalion's men had already been killed and nearly two dozen injured on the road. Shaw, a 23-year-old State College, Pa., native sitting behind the wheel sullenly headed toward the airport. He turned off the Metallica.

Across Iraq, US soldiers tried their hardest to make the best of a tough, dreary Christmas.

In Pensacola, many wished at Christmas time for a new roof or a little help from FEMA. In Iraq:

"To be honest, we're all about trying to get out of here," said Staff Sergeant Miguel Molina, 34, a scout from Hammonton, N.J., based in Baghdad. "You sit in the Forward Operating Base and you got rockets and attacks every day. You don't focus on all the holiday stuff. I just don't want to send none of my guys home in a body bag."

Tsunami
Still shell-shocked over the 8 to 12 foot water surge that washed over Pensacola area beaches and cities? Today, a massive tsunami triggered by the largest earthquake in 40 years, swamped the entire coastline of Southeast Asia.

Early reports are that more than three five six seven no, eight no, ten thousand have died from Indonesia to India, and the death toll is mounting by the hour. The New York Times reports waves "up to 30 feet high" crashed into beaches in Thailand, "where thousands of tourists were lazing on the country's renowned white sand beaches when the earthquake struck."

We've seen what 12 feet of water can do to a moderately sized city. Imagine the destruction and heartache a 30-foot tsunami can cause as it powers over heavily populated communities stretching from Sumatra to the Indian subcontinent.

On Evacuation
About four thousand Pensacola Beach residents were kept away from their homes for nearly two weeks after Hurricane Ivan. Many grew frustrated, angry, and fearful of losing what little they might have left. When we were finally allowed to return, most of us found our homes unlivable. We moved in with relatives, into FEMA trailers, pitched tents, or area rentals. And then the task of making repairs and wrestling with insurance companies began.

But let's pause for a moment to consider how the 250,000 residents of Falluja must be feeling after evacuating their homes for more than six weeks. Yesterday, a small fraction, only 2,000, were "allowed back into the city for the first time since the American-led assault in the city in November."

Many civilians who fled Falluja have said they are desperate to return. Many have been camping out in winter temperatures in tents, or staying in schools and other public buildings.

Instead of showing a deputy sheriff a driver's license and beach pass, Falluja residents have to submit to fingerprinting and eyeball scans. And what do they find when they arrive home? According to Dr. Saleh Hussein Isawi, the acting director of the Falluja general hospital:

I was there, inside the city -- about 60% to 70% of the homes and buildings are completely crushed and damaged, and not ready to inhabit... . Of the 30% still left standing, I don't think there is a single one that has not been exposed to some damage.

One of my colleagues... went to see his home, and saw that it is almost completely collapsed and everything is burnt inside.

When he went to his neighbours' home, he found a relative of his was dead and a dog had eaten the meat off him.

I think we will see many things like this, because the US forces have cleared the dead people from the streets, but not from inside the homes.

* * *
There is no water, no electricity, no sewage system - there is nothing inside the city, except a very small amount of medical supplies that have come from Falluja hospital by two ambulances.

Christmas Rations
Remember those MRE's we were glad to have after Ivan cut Pensacola off from the rest of the world for nearly a week? Consider the plight of Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov and U.S. astronaut Leroy Chiao, whirling 127 miles above the Earth inside the International Space Station. Last month, they were 'asked' according to Rueters and 'ordered' according to the Los Angeles Times to cut their daily rations because they were about to run out of food -- including MREs.

Russian officials accused the previous crew of overeating during their 6-month mission, leaving a deficit of meat and milk and a surplus of juice and confectionery.

Christmas Day, a resupply ship arrived with "2 1/2 tons of equipment, supplies and more than enough food to ease a serious shortage." If you happen to find yourself in space, "more than enough food" means you can eat until March, when the Space Station has to be re-supplied again.

Rating Disasters
Sick of all the talk about the Saffir-Simpson Scale for hurricanes? Try the Torino Scale "used to categorize the threat of asteroids."

The Torino Scale is named after the city in Italy in which it was adopted during a workshop in June, 1999. The scale uses numbers and colors to indicate risk of collision, all based on complicated analysis of an asteroid's path and calculations of how that path might change as it's affected by gravity from Earth and other bodies.

And what's the forecast for the coming Asteroid Season? According to USA Today NASA issued a Dec. 24 update stating Asteroid 2004 MN4

is now being tracked very carefully by many astronomers around the world, and we continue to update our risk analysis for this object. Today's impact monitoring results indicate that the impact probability for April 13, 2029 has risen to about 1.6%, which for an object of this size corresponds to a rating of 4 on the ten-point Torino Scale.

Still, we're told, the odds against a life-destroying impact with Earth are about 60 to 1.

Anybody remember the odds of four hurricanes hitting Florida within a two month period?

Update on the Tsunami
Monday, December 27
The Washington Post reports this morning that more than 20,000 are now believed dead from the Christmas Tsunami. The Chinese news agency Xinhua reports the toll has topped 22,000. Australia's The Age reports the total has topped 24,000.

Millions of survivors have lost everything, and now urgently need medicine, shelter, food and clean water. "This is a massive humanitarian disaster and the communications are so bad we still don't know the full scale of it. Unless we get aid quickly to the people many more could die," said Phil Esmond, head of Oxfam in Sri Lanka.

The worst affected countries are Sri Lanka, where the reported toll last night passed 11,500, India (6600 dead), Indonesia (4991) and Thailand (839).

A Gulf Breeze friend, Don Rolle, is presently living on the island of Borneo, well north of quake. He cautions in an email message received today that "other places like Burma and Malaysia have not really reported in" as yet. The death toll is sure to continue rising.