Portola Valley resident and community planning veteran Linda Weil spent some nine months working along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc in the communities there.
Katrina’s vast impact in Hancock County, with a population of 42,000 over 477 square miles, has her thinking about the consequences of a major earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to some 5.8 million people over 3,800 square miles.
“I am very anxious to see what the big quake is going to look like because we have so many people here,” she said. “It’s going to be such a mess. It really frightens me.”
In Mississippi, people are being forced to rethink where they live, whether they should rebuild, and what the level of danger is, given the new flood maps produced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Many local people think such steps are an extreme response, but scientists agree with FEMA’s new maps,” she said. “The insurance industry is sending a very strong message. The cost of insurance is going to be very high.”
— — David Boyce
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