Great Idea: Manual boarding vs Automatic boarding by CityTech blogger Viki Bailey

We need to learn how to build disaster-resistant communities to lessen the human fatalities and economic losses resulting from natural disasters. The first thing people who expect to be in harm’s way is to board up their homes. They do this to protect their property from being destroyed by hurricanes and tornadoes, floods.  An idea that occurred to me was what I call automatic boarding. First let me define boarding up during a storm. Boarding up before and during a storm is the process of installing boards, usually plywood sheets, on windows and doors of a residence or building to protect it from storm damage. Boarding up is also done to prevent unauthorized access by squatters, looters or vandals. A good place to learn about boarding up your home is here. My idea is taking boarding one step further: why not install an automatic gate surrounding the property that will automatically rise when there is threat of a storm? The gate would roll out from under the ground and automatically spread itself around the property from bottom to top, protecting the property from any damage during a storm. The gate would act the same way bags of sand or dirt stacked against each other forming a boarder or wall reaching knee high. Wouldn’t it be great if automatic gating be mandatory especially during storms? And there would be funding earmarked for it? It would pay off in the long run because there would be less damage to property, people would be protected and rebuilding would be minimum to none.