“Disasters are not natural. Nature provides events but we provide the vulnerabilities that take a natural event and make it into a disaster, or worse a catastrophe.’

“We have grown and put a lot of people at risk; in harms way. It’s an unfortunate and in some ways really embarrassing statistic that it’s the poor – the people who can least absorb the losses – are the ones who take the losses.”

“It’s either pay a little more now or pay a hell of a lot more later.”

“Don’t wait for government. There are things that can be done form the household to the neighborhood level, that will make bouncing back from a natural event much much easier.”