People do migrate away from these areas after a disaster like this. Honestly, it's why I don't live any closer to the coast (I'm about 200 miles away). I once thought I wanted to live on the coast but decided that the thought of running from massively destructive weather and the possible damage/loss to property just isn't worth it.

I nearly ended up on the coast but a problem with the company doing the hiring delayed the process four weeks. A hurricane blew through three weeks into that process and I decided, nope...no thanks. I spent a few days in Port Arthur at an oil facility doing an emergency assessment to build an expedited repair plan on production equipment that had been underwater after Hurricane Rita in 2005 (Port Arthur was also hit very hard then too). I'm not sure how Rita compared locally there to this one but I imagine this one is worse. Rita decimated that facility and they (and/or their insurance company) spent about $400,000 repairing just the two machines we had in there - and we were practically NOTHING compared to all of the other machinery and processing equipment.

New Orleans saw roughly 20% of it's population not return after Katrina and I'm sure Houston/Port Arthur/Port Aransas will be similar. I'm afraid that the migration away from these heavily impacted zones is the future - which may not be a terrible thing in the long run. The storms and devastation are increasing.