Nice article, Karl: short and direct. Increasing flooding losses are not rocket science: more people and structures being built in vulnerable creations + climate change impacts = more frequent and severe flooding damages. Kudos to Chad Berginnis for being so succinct as to why these combined trends continue: human irrationality and elections. If we can overcome some of our irrational traits in thinking about disasters, as summed up, for example, in the book "The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters," that might help us learn the hard truths necessary for us to stop increasing the frequency and scale of flooding disasters. And then maybe we could find our way to supporting politicians that understand these difficult realities and the hard policy choices required.
Excellent article by Christopher Flavelle in this morning's NYT. It nicely sums up the problems flooding causes throughout the U.S. and our complicated relationship with water - living next to it, wanting to be around it, and what happens when it goes where it wants to go, regardless of our efforts. Time is coming (and sooner that any of us want to readily admit) that we will need to start looking at land and asking the toughest of questions, "Should we really be building or rebuilding there?" From the article, quoting ASFPM chief Chad Berginnis, CFM, "Berginnis suggests a fourth option for flood protection: In especially high-risk areas, stop building new homes." Wise words, if we have the ears to hear them.
Mike S.
1mo
Unfortunately many fall into the 3 D’s with disasters. They Deny it is happening, they then Deliberate for inordinate amount of time, when they finally Decide on course of action, it is too late. Let’s hope better decisive decisions in the future.
Flood Mitigation Solutions
3wThe real problem is that we have a huge inventory of older high flood risk buildings in FEMA flood zones that keep getting flood damaged. We are half way through the process of removing subsidized rates on the buildings and the rates now are becoming unaffordable. The banks tell us we have 20years until a 40% devaluation! The Congressional Buget Office report in 2024 estimates we have 10.5 million residential buildings that need retrofit and the asset value is over $3.5 trillion. I worry much less about building new homes to higher elevations than I do about the coming devaluation and crush on our economic system. Retrofit now or our kids are going to inherit a hot mess.