THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 28, 1996 TAG: 9606280005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 37 lines
Life along the Atlantic seaboard is at once exhilarating and dangerous.
Along with the stunning natural beauty of the coastline comes an element of danger. Lurking in the warm water and winds off the coast of Africa are summer's sinister weather systems: hurricanes.
For more than 60 years Hampton Roads has been lucky. Mammoth storms have thundered across the Atlantic during the June-to-November season, but catastrophic 'canes have made landfall elsewhere: Florida, South Carolina, New York and Massachusetts, to name a few.
How much longer will calamity pass us by? Forever, we hope. Yet at least one major insurer, Allstate, has decided that luck is running out in Virginia Beach and has announced that it is raising homeowners' insurance rates there by a painful 74 percent.
Hampton Roads does seem frightfully unprepared for hurricanes, from naive and potentially deadly evacuation plans to an unstable coastline that could leave thousands of property owners devastated if a big storm blew ashore.
So it is good news that Virginia Beach is proceeding with a $102 million hurricane protection plan that will fortify seawalls, build up dunes and build stormwater pumping stations.
Federal dollars may fund most of the work. But City Council wisely voted to fund the entire first phase - $8 million - because it fears that the feds will be slow with the checkbook.
Sen. John Warner, who was in town earlier this week when the city signed the agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the four-year-long project, has pledged to help secure the federal money.
It is welcome news that a realistic hurricane-protection plan is in place and construction will begin before the end of the current hurricane season - and before our luck runs out. by CNB