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I'm still not hearing either presidential candidate talk about global warming. Oh wait, Mitt Romney did make a joke about it - does that count? In any event, it sure seems like it's something voters are ready to discuss in a serious way, especially in the central part of the country, where houses are now falling apart:
Carol DeVaughan assumed her suburban St. Louis home was simply settling when cracks appeared in the walls. When she noticed huge gaps between her fireplace and ceiling, and that her family room was starting to tilt, she knew she had bigger problems.
Like thousands of other Americans getting stuck with huge repair bills, DeVaughan learned that the intense drought baking much of the country's lawns, fields and forests this summer has also been sucking the moisture from underground, causing shifting that can lead to cracked basements and foundations, as well as damage above ground. Repairs often cost tens of thousands of dollars and can even top $100,000, and they are rarely covered by insurance, as shocked homeowners have been discovering.
DeVaughan, a retired Presbyterian minister, said she expects it will cost more than $25,000 to fix the split-level home in Manchester, Mo., where she's lived for 27 years.
"I had retired," said DeVaughan, 70, who has stayed busy filling in at the pulpit for vacationing pastors. "I guess I'll keep working."
Home repair businesses, especially those specializing in repairs to basements and foundations, can barely keep up with demand. Drought-related home damage is reported in 40 of the 48 contiguous states, and experts say damage to homes could exceed $1 billion.
Dan Jaggers, a board member of the Basement Health Association, a Dayton, Ohio trade group for basement and foundation repair businesses, said this year's drought is probably the worst for homes since the late 1950s. Houses in the central United States - from Louisiana up through the Dakotas - are getting the worst of it, but significant damage is being reported across the country, he said.
"It's not only basements but crawl spaces and slabs," Jaggers said. "Wherever the soil is interacting with the foundations."
The lack of moisture in the ground has been causing the soil to crack open and pull away from homes' concrete bases.
It's strange, isn't it? Politicians have no problem telling us we need to sacrifice to fix imaginary problems (like the deficit), but they just can't bring themselves to talk about energy conservation, even in a climate emergency.
