http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/01/no-flooding-in-houston-was-not-caused-by Sure - sprawl made things worse. Impermeable land made things worse. Perverse flood insurance incentives made things worse. But Houston got more rain in three days than Seattle gets in a year and that's simply beyond the scope of civil engineering.
According to one estimate, Houston's paving over of wetlands cost it the ability to absorb four billion gallons of water. Hurricane Harvey dumped 19 trillion gallons of water on the city.
Having worked in Houston, spot on. The place is flatter than Kansas, bigger than four states, and they sunk the freeways for "100 year" flood drainage. I was there for Allison, which was an order of mag less than Harvey, and the place still flooded simply due to the geography. As much as I fucking HATE Houston and love it when people bash it, this article was all about posting a narrative that Texas=Bad. Of course it is the Guardian. When Irma hits Florida next week, with about the same water content, let's see if they say the same things about Miami, a "blue" city with no real long range planning built on a swamp. And Folks in Florida? Watch the weather, please.
I understand your point and agree that there is only so much you can plan for and prevent against. But I'm kind of gonna have to go against you and francopoli here, for a minute. In a nutshell, if a warehouse catches on fire, that's a tragedy. If a warehouse catches on fire and people die because the main and secondary fire exits were inexplicably locked, the sprinkler system malfunctioned, and the building hasn't been brought up to code for the past fifteen years, that's a disaster that could have been mitigated if the people in charge were being responsible, and if it turns out they were being negligent, they deserve every fine and every word of scorn that comes their way. This isn't the only article that I've read that has discussed this, in regards to Harvey. I read similar articles when Katrina happened. Hell, there's Haiti and the earthquakes. Chances are, the discussion will come again Irma hits Florida. You've shared maps of Louisana's disappearing coastline and I'm almost certain there have been conversations on here about how the disappearance of marshland has a negative impact in buffering against the weather. These conversations need to happen, more on the local level than the national level, but they still need to happen. Because where I'm sitting from, this is just more about people in control kicking the can down the road and trying to get away with what their predecessors got away with because "Hey, those plans were in the works well before I took office. It's not my problem bro."
If Godzilla stomps on a warehouse with 100 exits, and one of them was blocked because the party planner stacked some chairs in front of it, The Guardian would blame the party planner, not Godzilla. I am not a fan of sprawl. I am a fan of zoning. I am a fan of environmental laws, of alternative energy, of all that happy 350.org shit. But 27 trillion gallons of water fell on Houston. The Texas Tribune and ProPublica predicted exactly this consequence fifteen months ago. Scientific American did the same thing 5 years before Katrina. You can argue that lots of shit could have been done better to prevent the damages from Katrina, and you can argue that lots of shit could have been done better to prevent the damages from Harvey. But it'll still be 27 trillion gallons of water. Fukushima was designed for a 5.7m tsunami. It experienced a 39m tsunami. Go ahead and try to design anything coastal to withstand 120 feet of sea level rise - you will fail. Tragedy? Yes. Foreseeable? Yes. Preventable? no. 27 trillion gallons, d00d. Should Houston have better urban planning? Prolly. Are US flood insurance incentives demonstrably perverse? Yes. If your baby is hit by a flamethrower, does wearing a fire retardant onesie help much?
I mean, i don't call them villains, but all of the people who have been building in places with high likelihoods of wildfire are doing the exact same thing with a different element. Wildfires are a natural necessary part of forests, and we spend tons of money not only building in wildfire areas, but also preventing those fires from happening, which builds up all the dry dead shit in the forest, which makes situations for wildfire worse when one does finally happen. Hurricanes are going to happen. Because of climate change and warming oceans, more extreme hurricanes are more likely to happen. Harvey was going to happen. I even read a reprinted article in the Toronto Star this morning of someone last year saying "Shit's gonna go down and Houston IS NOT PREPARED" Of course, one can ask the question if anyone can truly be prepared for something the size of Harvey. I don't know. Were these people made aware that they were on a flood plain when they were building or buying? If not, then that's a problem. If they were, then I don't really know what to say. It's like living next to the Ottawa river and being shocked when a 1% flood (which they call a 100 year flood, which is dumb and misleading) shows up on that 1%. . Like, you were warned this might happen if you lived here and you decided it was an acceptable risk. So I don't know where i sit on this. I think if people were given the information and took the risk anyway, then they hold at least some culpability, but I also think that now's not exactly the time to go around saying that.
I'm sorry if I come off that way, but I don't look down on the people who live in dangerous areas. At the end of the day, it is your home, just like people who live in the shadows of volanoes. But it means you need to know the risks, you need to be prepared, and you need to be accepting of the fact that you may lose everything. It's the people who don't know the risks, aren't prepared, and aren't accepting of the fact they may lose everything who are the problem. I fully believe in sending aid to people in disaster affected areas, but I also fully believe in helping yourself in the first place by being ready for natural disasters. Having a strategy, practicing it with your family. having a Bug-out bag. It seems like a lot of people in Houston were not, and indeed, the City of Houston itself was not prepared. Again, how prepared one can be for a hurricane of that magnitude is up for debate, but Houston was warned that a storm like this was an eventuality, and that when it came it would be bad. I can't place blame on the individual people, because I don't know how prepared each person was, what they knew about where their houses were built. But the City of Houston does hold some blame in ... If not exacerbating the situation, then not attempting to make it any better.
I feel like people prep not to actually accomplish anything but to just feel better about the situation and calm some internal fears they have. Like sure have a bag ready but if something goes wrong quickly you need to actually be able to get to that bag. Like people who leave a loaded gun in the kitchen in case of intruders, well what happens if they come in the kitchen window while you're on the toilet ? Not to mention, what can people even take ? If a wildfire threatened my area most people don't have their own vehicles and would be fucked. That's not even considering all the tourists that got bussed in. So I could take a few extra people if they each have a small bag. I don't know how many people in Houston own their own vehicles, I imagine it's better than here, but well off people hang out with each other. The people who don't own vehicles probably know a few more who don't and only have a few friends with them. I don't think it's cool to really look for reasons to place blame on individual's if they didn't know how prepared to be or were told about the area they lived in. People move where opportunity is and honestly you can only be so prepared. It's not going to be the well off healthy people they find dead.
well, i think you're mixing metaphors here. there's a big difference between having a bug out bag in case of emergency and having an exit strategy in case of (insert your local area's natural disaster here), and having a loaded gun in case of intruders. I mean, for one thing where I live it's literally illegal to keep a loaded gun anywhere. ammo and gun have to be stored separately. But also, an intruder entering while you've got your pants down is a significantly more immediate threat than most natural disasters, which we have a chance to see coming. The exception being for earthquake, and Tidal waves, though you normally have at least a few minutes notice for tidal waves for all the help it'll give you, though even for them, if you live in an area where these are an issue, where are ways you can prepare and be ready. A natural disaster is not an intruder sneaking in the night. If anything, we are the intruders who put our homes in places they shouldn't really be. I also don't place the blame squarely on individuals. Yes, you have responsibility to know and to be prepared, but your local government also has a responsibility to inform and prepare its citizens, or at the very least give them the tools to prepare themselves. I also understand that like anything, the poor, elderly, and minorities are the ones most seriously affected. As KB pointed out, the way the situation is in your country, you basically get subsidized to live in unsafe places. That's crazy, but who lives in subsidized areas? The poor, the elderly, and minorities. For that final point, i have no solution. As the system stands there is literally no way to help these people until it gets to the point you have to call FEMA. It's horrible. I don't know, maybe you could evacuate them early? Have a focused evacuation with busses and trucks, etc on these likely hardest hit areas? Even that requires the city to be prepared, and the people to live there to know that there's an inbound crisis situation and to be prepared, which others have pointed out is a big ask. If your municipality's doesn't have a strategy, even if you have your own plan, the odds are against you. This is what government is for (says the socialist in me with all apologies for the libertarians in the audience).
The metaphor meant to show how maybe you can get to the bag and maybe you can't. Are people just supposed to bring this bag everywhere they go just in case? In that case the bag will need to be pretty small and only contain necessities that won't last very long. What about a single mother with multiple kids and no car ? She can only fit so much in that stroller and it won't last her long. Elderly people can't carry much but they need to get places as well. Sitting in their home when a disaster hits can lead to them being forgotten. I mean what blame are we placing on somebody who wasn't prepared enough in this situation ? Only having enough diapers for a few days as opposed to a week ? I don't really understand how to blame somebody for not being prepared enough for a flood. Shit just sucks.
No you didn't come off that way at all. I was trying to comment late at night and didn't have it in me to express nuance, thought I hit save draft but I either hit publish or the draft feature bug hasn't been stomped yet. I have and aunt who is a prepper. She spent a lot of time deciding where to settle down a few decades ago. She ended up living in far northern Wisconsin because it was the one of the few places she could find that didn't have a fault line or severe weather and a bunch of other problems. It's pretty hard to stay totally out of harms way. I live down stream from the Hanford nuclear cleanup zone. I live on a fault line that promises to unleash a big one. We have a federally managed waste cleanup on the river twelve blocks from my house. I'm a little bit prepared for a big earth quake but not the extent I should be. There are other risks that I can't mitigate by anyway except by moving. None of this stuff is some peoples heads. They aren't capable of worrying about risk on this level. There were two people in my neighborhood that were taken by surprise when the eclipse happened. Portland has been in a haze of wildfire smoke for most the week. It was only today when it started to rain ash from the sky that one guy asked me if there was a fire somewhere. People are about as prepared for this stuff as government is, which is, not that much..
Go figure. A mortgage for a house on a floodplain requires mandatory flood insurance. FEMA helpfully publishes these maps in an easy-to-find sort of way; this one is just north of the Astrodome. Oddly enough it used to be available as a .kmz but apparently they deprecated that without telling anyone. The argument as to why this got so stupid is something like this: 1) FEMA requires mortgages on floodplains to carry insurance. 2) Most insurers won't insure floodplains because they're going to flood. 3) The government ends up subsidizing flood insurance. 4) This lowers the cost of building on a floodplain to the point where the government effectively pays people to live there. Apparently the federal flood insurance still owes the government $12 billion... from Katrina.Wildfires are a natural necessary part of forests, and we spend tons of money not only building in wildfire areas, but also preventing those fires from happening, which builds up all the dry dead shit in the forest, which makes situations for wildfire worse when one does finally happen.
Were these people made aware that they were on a flood plain when they were building or buying?
It's easy to look back and criticize, but I wonder what would have happened if they hadn't zoned those areas for housing. There might have been a lot more homeless people, and there might have been more pressure to allow people to build homes there, knowing that a catastrophe could happen but also knowing that in order to avoid one big catastrophe, a lot of people would be homeless on a daily basis for years. Affordable housing is rarely located in the most desirable locations.