Friday, March 28, 2014

Friday Beaver Slide edition


Cities see tax dollars while logging companies see profits. And there nary the twain should meet.

Hard to say which came first but it's almost a safe bet loggers cut trees long before subdivisions were laid in to provide cities with coveted tax dollars. After all logs were once well taxed and provided all the revenue needed that paid for schools and roads so property taxes were cheap back then. There was the growth spurts that fueled a growing housing market. Then came the housing bubble. That was fueled in part by out of state buyers who sold their over priced homes there and moved here because we were such a bargain.

Looking back it's fairly easy to see that this was a disaster in the making. Someone should have taken note that the hillside that gave way in Oso, Wa. had been clear cut some 25+ years back. Not exactly a place you'd want to build homes but they did. No one can say for certain what mother nature will do in any given place but it's a safe bet when you fool with her she'll get her revenge. The biggest oversight here was when people ignored a six inch subsidence that happened just two years ago. That should have been a wake up call but I guess it's human nature to ignore small cracks because after all they're probably just cosmetic. Nothing to see here keep shopping.

Looking at a satellite map of the surrounding area you'll find a patchwork of clear cuts and logging roads. That will be a recipe for future disasters unless the procedures for extracting logs from an area are changed. You can't strip the land bare and expect it to be stable. You also shouldn't build near a slide area no matter how pretty the view. But once again money rules the day.

After the initial reports of cars being shredded, houses buried and 15 feet of mud and debris this has turned into a recovery operation so let's just hope no one else dies in the process of cleaning up. It's going to be a monumental task that will take months if not years.

Bank fails later....

2 comments:

billy pilgrim said...

as they say, shit happens.

BBC said...

I often wonder when our hospital will slide into the bay cuz these idiots built it on a bluff.