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It has been ten days since the jaw-dropping flash flooding occurred that killed at least 129 people in Texas and wiped an all-girls summer camp off the face of the earth in the blink of an eye; nearly 200 people are still unaccounted for. Some people are starting to ask now about rebuilding, while others are asking more pressing questions about how to prevent this kind of devastation from happening again. Award-winning NorthJersey.com columnist Mike Kelly began asking that question about New Jersey in the wake of the Camp Mystic flooding. He appeared on 710 WOR to explain why he thinks New Jersey is one heavy storm away from cataclysmic flooding of its own.
Kelly told host Larry Mendte that he began to wonder- more than a decade after Hurricane Sandy overwhelmed much of the Tri-State area- how ready the Garden State would be today, compared to Texas: “Here in New Jersey, we’ve dropped the ball too when it comes to the dangers of floods and the warning signs that people have been outing out for years- and it’s not just New Jersey… This is the kind of reality check that America really has to face, and they won’t face it. You can’t just blame climate change, that sort of thing. I think a lot of it has to do with money, and the fact that people like to live near the water.”
Kelly feels insurance companies, governments and potential homeowners have to make tough decisions to make the Jersey shore safer from flooding: “Much of the Jersey shore- over 50 miles of it- is barrier islands. That includes Atlantic City, that includes Long Beach Island … People have to say, ‘Look, if you’re going to have a house there, there’s no insurance for it.”
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