As hurricanes loom, many in Florida Keys flee

jimmyjude · #1 (**permalink**) 05-04-2006, 02:35 AM

Quote:

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - Spiraling living costs, lingering trauma from past evacuations and fear that one day million-dollar homes could be reduced to rubble or again flooded are driving people out of the vulnerable Florida Keys as another hurricane season looms.

While most of Florida experiences one of the country's fastest population growths, the number of people living in the low-lying 110-mile (180-km) island chain at the southern tip of the peninsula is slowly dwindling.

In the last two years, residents have been ordered to evacuate six times up a narrow, mangrove-fringed 126-mile (200-km) road, the Overseas Highway, linking the Florida Keys to the mainland.

When Hurricane Wilma swept by on October 24, it flooded about 3,700 of 15,000 homes in Key West with a foot or more of water and destroyed 1,000 cars. Most residents were stunned.

"We're seeing adjustment disorders, post-traumatic stress," said Betsy Langan, assistant director of Womankind Inc., a health services provider. "Because of the hurricanes, people are exhibiting sleeplessness, difficulties in concentration and are feeling hopeless and overwhelmed."

On top of that, property values have soared beyond the reach of most working families. Home insurance rates are sky-rocketing. And salaries can't keep pace.

"You pay $400,000 for a trailer that's going to be junk soon. It's incredible," said Jose Cuevas, a moving company manager who commutes to work in Sugarloaf Key from Miami each day -- a 300-mile (490-km) round trip.

The moving-out business is booming. "Clients are worried about insurance. One said, 'They only want rich folks,'" Cuevas said. "They don't want to go, but they have to."

This is what the American people should have demanded all along.

We shouldn't have to keep rebuilding these people's lives because they are too stupid to move out of a perennial danger zone.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...DUS.xml&rpc=22