Beate and Tim are back home in Corpus Christi. Minimal damage — their house is fine and the plants will recover. That’s a relief, the fire of 2011 up here was enough disaster for one lifetime.
Houston is another matter, of course. This current crisis isn’t over yet, and the long term looks grim as the climate guessers say the sea level will rise and storms are likely to get more severe in the future. And so far there is no long range planning for the increasing population.
It’s a very low-lying coastal plain, with clay-based soils that do not drain very well. The city is subject to very heavy rainfall, as well as flooding from tidal events.
You take that flood-risk landscape and you put 6 million people on top, with prolific amount of pavement and roadways and a lack of collective and regional thinking about what that does to the natural drainage of that landscape, and you end up with disasters.
— The Guardian, What Makes Houston So Vulnerable
My heart goes out to the people there, and I hope they’re wrong about the prognosis.
I imagine it will take years before everyone is situated again. With ocean levels rising, it might be prudent to rebuild on much higher ground. Much.
Unfortunately planning ahead doesn’t get votes. Trump is pushing for faster approval of plans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. And one key part of his executive order dropped the previous requirement that plans for rebuilding take into account climate change and sea-level rise.
Not a good omen.
Thanks for the good news. My thoughts have been with them, and the other residents of the area. They have many years of pain and adjustment in front of them!
And hopefully they can recover before the next disaster hits. Some of the Katrina victims moved to Houston after that hurricane. Harvey is an extreme event, but one reason the flooding is so bad is because of the population growth and building that went on the past few years. The population grew by about 100,000 a year for the past eight years. That meant replacing the prairie and wetlands that used to soak up water with concrete and other impervious materials. The water has to go somewhere. Or else sit there for a while.
My heart goes out to them all and my fingers are crossed.
whenever someone talks about the devastation of tornadoes I always think that of fire and flood to be the worst. if there even has to be a scale for such things!
but with a tornado it is OVER. the fire and the flood damage goes on and on.
and it affects the very essence of life. often … like your stands of dead timber… for generations.
I didn’t know that Houston was the 4th largest city in the nation!
sadly this will be a very long recovery.
I would rather have a wildfire instead of a tornado or flood. Partly because there aren’t so many people trying to evacuate at the same time. That was a big problem with Houston, why the residents weren’t told to evacuate and completely clog the roads. From chron.com:
I have family in Houston and we are very worried as there has been no communication from them. We are unable to reach them by phone.
Maharashtra in general and Mumbai in particular is also in a cloud burst / flooding situation and life has come to a standstill in Mumbai. At least the mobile phone systems are working and we are able to keep in touch with people there.
Climate change nay sayers will have to rethink their stance.
I hope you family is all right and that you hear from them soon.
“Climate change nay sayers will have to rethink their stance.” I’m not as sanguine as you are, and I hope I’m wrong.
good news and sad news…good for your friends home, sad news for rummuser waiting to hear.
i think the same happens in western countries, I know in Christchurch (although not all is restored) they just build yet again on the cleared sites – with what they deem stronger buildings – and then what…
and the building out further and further – and destroying the surroundings which were like the “border combating natural forces zones”
I hated to see your last insert about the problems/deaths associated with evacuation…
For years governments haven’t taken flood prevention seriously, have spent as little as possible and allowed all sorts of rural activities that have hampered natural drainage and increased the risk of flooding. Now the chickens are coming home to roost and the unfortunate residents of places like Houston are left to clear up the emotional and physical wreckage. There’s little sign governments are ready to do more, so such flooding can only increase.