The Population of Florida alone grows on average, by 500,000(=95
) every year, this is true for many Gulf Coast states, as it stands, people STILL move to Galveston island and hurricanes STILL level it. And earthquake of similar destructive force hits a place like California or Japan once every 50 years at most. Generally only one per century is ever seen to demolish cities on par with your average hurricane.
Unlike earthquakes, hurricanes strike annually, and with global weather changes, they have been more frequent and more powerful. Yet people continue to live in hurricane prone areas, and more people move there every year. And every year, billions of dollars are accumulated in damages due to these hurricanes.
Billions of dollars, that you are generally paying for through your taxes. Primitive animals learned long ago, when a storm is coming, you leave. And after a while, primitive humans learned not to live in storm prone areas. Even advanced civilizations learned that living near an active volcano, even if it goes off only once every thousand years, is a bad idea.
Yet we have tens of millions of people living, on purpose, will full knowledge, in an area assured to sustain serious damage on an annual basis. Many of them even refuse to leave their homes when the storms are coming, resulting in death and injury that your tax dollars will end up covering, either in the form of FEMA or government loans to insurance companies to keep them from collapsing, especially now under economically stressed times.
So for your consideration, the libertarian ideal of: Do they deserve it? They know what happens down there, even if it only happens once every 10 years. The average person cannot afford to rebuild their home every decade. They knew what they were getting into, and on the chance they were born there, they know full well what goes on there if they have grown up to an age where they can move out/get a job somewhere else. Yet, in economically hard times, this may not be possible, but by the same coin, in economically hard times, we cannot simply have the government dropping a few hundred billion to fix the homes and lives of people who knew full well this could happen to them.
Should people who live in these areas be redlined by their insurance agencies to allow them to recoup costs, regardless of if the insuree's home was ever damaged by a hurricane at all? Should the government provide financial support and reconstructive support to people who knew they were moving into an area uniquely affected by this kind of weather? Should we as a nation provide incentives to move people away from these places?
On a personal note, you have to wonder how stupid some of these people are when they're more scared of an earthquake that happens once in a hundred years to the annual onslaught of hurricanes.