They mostly don’t own anything. Either a rich person or a company owns where they live.
You answered your own question lol. Your “sturdy houses” would also get fucking wrecked by a hurricane or tornado or earthquake or wildfire. We expect our buildings to get destroyed every so often.
Relative to the cardboard houses in the usa, houses in Europe are indeed very sturdy. Our concrete houses might not be designed for hurricanes, but they would still fare way better than a house entirely build from stud walls. It’s always a bit of a wonder to us that in the usa, houses are being built in a manner that will not survive the next storm. And that that is allowed. The downside of the sturdier European houses is that they take longer and cost more to build, which is also why the average house is smaller.
Here’s some obversations from an American engineer travelling in Europe: https://forstconsultingllc.com/blog/european-vs-american-home-construction/
Our concrete houses might not be designed for hurricanes, but they would still fare way better than a house entirely build from stud walls.
You only think that because you have no experience with them. Hurricanes demolish concrete and brick buildings just the same as wood, and floods don’t care what the material is.
That’s a good question. We do, now. But most of us can’t buy a new house, so we live in an older house. We don’t have a stone quarry anywhere nearby, so no tradition of stone houses, more frame houses because it’s hot and there wasn’t air conditioning so we built ventilated lighter houses that were cooler in the summer, there are still a lot of them around.
Yes, home hardening is one factor and even here in Florida, the building codes have been updated and the state provides matching funds for making improvements to existing houses (you apply, it can take some years to get to the front of the line) we got storm windows this way, and we got a strong metal roof when we needed to replace the roof covering. It just takes a really long time to change out or update the stock of houses.
And also, even though it seems like houses are getting knocked down every 5 minutes, there are still houses in Tampa built around 1900, it’s not that common in most cities. I was born here, am over 50 and haven’t even had to evacuate yet, assume it’s coming eventually but is not a frequent event here. Last direct hit around 1925.
People are so flippant about “just move” but I was born here, have seen the city get better, love it, have a good job, most of our kids still live nearby, its really expensive to move anywhere and pretty nice here most of the time still, and as a climatologist told my kid when they asked, probably will be ok through their lifetime.
Be skeptical:
Without adaptation strategies, the following conditions will likely incur substantial social and economic costs:
- Flooding of streets, homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, emergency shelters, etc.,
- Shoreline and beach erosion,
- Impacts to the operations of coastal drainage systems,
- Impairment of coastal water supplies and coastal water treatment facilities and infrastructure, and
- Shifts in habitats and reduced ecosystem services. source
Might be worth it to get a second climatologist opinion.
Stone houses? Are you thinking of castles?
In Europe most houses are made of brick and/or concrete, no need for a quarry anywhere nearby.
Also, the heavier the house the better it does when it’s hot. In hot places of Europe, traditional houses had very thick walls, small windows and are painted bright colors to reflect light (and heat).
Honestly my image was of some Italian village posted yesterday on Lemmy that looked like it was made of stone. Or Isgiliath.
I do also remember houses with thatched roofs in England though, those don’t seem like they would survive a storm.
Trump’s campaign includes making homes less sturdy so we can have a larger supply 🙃
even cheapo plywood and cardboard houses cost a fortune so construction companies don’t build with stronger materials because no one would buy the house. that’s my armchair opinion at least.
Funny, though, that cheap sticks and cardboard houses like they are common in the US are a rarity here in Europe. Reinforced concrete basements are the norm here, and the rest of any halfway modern house (from the last 80+ years) is brick and mortar. My house has 30cm walls made from concrete blocks, and this is no outlier.
Hurricanes track:
Climate change is a bitch, huh, Republicans who’ve spent thirty years denying it? (My heart goes out to all the people in the southeast who actually didn’t spend decades denying its existence and hampering efforts to slow it.)
Originally they thought that Helene would be a cat 3, too.
But the Democrats aim with the Hurricane machine proclaimed by MTG is getting better. Maybe the third try actually turns Mar-a-Lago into a pile of rubble.
I’m on the team running the weather machine this time. We are very excited for this run!
After gathering so much data from the last several storms, we finally have the power to call hurricanes and tornadoes exactly where we want them to go!
We’ll be feasting on the fetuses Boden personally hands us after this run, fellas!
But then we would have to charge the hurricane with destruction of evidence.
It’s a cycle, as republicans are fond of saying. I mean… this was all sea floor once.
