I would like to thank Mr. Ferro for his letter to the editor in Wednesday’s Daily Reveille. As an entomology graduate student, his expertise in large-scale engineering research and design are invaluable as the state prepares for future hurricanes. His suggestion that Louisiana remains the last self-pitying hell hole of hurricane susceptibility is especially valuable — why can’t our buildings and infrastructure be as immune to hurricanes as the rest of the Gulf Coast, the Caribbean, or the Carolinas? Surely they don’t lose power lines in 100mph winds, as we naive Louisianians seem to do.Utilities companies are, unfortunately, as blind as the rest of us. Despite having a relative monopoly and government permission to charge whatever they deem needed to cover building our energy infrastructure — thereby able to reasonably use the best materials available for power lines at little or no cost to their bottom lines — they most likely just use shoddy old designs time and time again and are oblivious to the many available hurricane-proof power structures. They clearly have never thoroughly considered the advantages of installing underground lines throughout a state with high water tables, instead for some reason dismissing such an installation and maintenance as “prohibitively expensive.” What idiots.Of course, the housing construction industry must also change their ways. It is apparent the aerodynamic houses (~$200/sq.ft.) which Mr. Ferro proposes for hurricane preparedness also repel falling trees. Mr. Ferro surely doesn’t assume the damage done to houses across the state happened solely because houses were not sleek enough — that would just be silly. (If he would actually like to see firsthand how    hurricanes play into modern housing construction, he could check out the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity.)If only there was some motivation, maybe something like market force, to serve as the impetus for innovation in hurricane preparedness. Alas, nobody in the country understands like the writer the money to be made from hurricane-proof technology. It’s not that tree-repellent and flood-proof housing and infrastructure is unrealistic or uneconomical at this point in time, it’s just that nobody is trying to improve housing (see the AgCenter’s LaHouse) at all. We all should thank the writer for imparting his knowledge on us ignorant, uninformed, helpless locals.John CaseyBiological Engineering senior—- contact The Daily Reveille’s opinion staff at [email protected]