About

Slabbed: verb blown down, knocked down, or just down; noun name of a blog

Slabbed began as the Insurance Issues Forum, a thread on the Clarion Ledger’s Story Chat and grew to 35 pages of information and over 38,000 page views before becoming a blog.

Actually, Slabbed began when two residents of Katrina Ground Zero – Topbanana and Coastal Cowboy – survived the extraordinary experience of having their homes reduced to slabs by the largest natural disaster in this nation’s history.

When it became evident Katrina Ground Zero was also Ground Zero for the Insurance Industry, they called on their longtime friend, a construction specialized CPA by trade – otherwise known as “Sop81_1” on 3800 or so posts to the Yahoo Finance boards.

Sop became the front man for the Mississippi Insurance Forum blog, to lead the discussion of a properly functioning insurance industry. Promise came after the hurricane adding the perspective of disaster assistance to the blog.

Unlike the big, new multi-issue blogosphere, the old Story Chat board, and its successor the Forum, allow a single issue focus – in other words, these first responders, were slabbed by the complexity of issues that needs confronting for post-Katrina Ground Zero and the limited the capacity of the blog format to respond.

Rebuilding the blog has proven far easier than rebuilding the Mississippi Gulf Coast where folks have been getting slabbed on a fairly regular basis since Katrina.

Over four years after the hurricane, there are insurance claims that haven’t been settled and families still living in temporary housing. The insurance war has now expanded to an all out assault on the State’s legal system. Higher construction and insurance costs have slowed the restoration of the built community and slabbed the restoration of the social community.

Slabbed provides a foundation for building back better than ever with more and better organized information and the addition of nowdoucit and Bam Bam Bigelow to assist Sop with the expanded focus. Coastal Cowboy, Promise, and Topbanana will join a group providing guest posts on specific issues.