I'm feeling slightly judgmental on the Texas flooding and I don't know if my judgment is merited

[conuly]

So, I read an article that said that the flooded cabins at the summer camp were low-lying, about 500 feet from the river. 500 feet is less than a tenth of a mile, so... one or two minutes walk.

And I read another that said that while the dramatic scale of this flooding was unprecedented, the fact that the river floods was very much not.

Am I right to think that at some point since the founding of the camp they ought to have moved the cabins back, put up a flood wall, or both? I live on a hill - if the water a few blocks down floods badly enough to affect us up here, that really will have been unpredictable! So I don't know about living quite that close to water at my front door. Maybe my intuition here is wrong and those precautions could not possibly have occurred to anybody?

Also, two links where you can donate.

Comments

[conuly]

Well, maybe a big enough tragedy will prompt some sort of legislation banning people from putting residences and sleeping quarters so close to the water on unelevated land. It shouldn't have to take that, but.

[spiralsheep]

We had bans on building at ground level on flood plains over here. Developers built a whole estate of new-build housing on a notorious flood plain (overflow not dry river channel) with only garages at ground level. They got sold to people who couldn't afford better houses elsewhere. The new inhabitants almost all immediately build ground floor extensions.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[conuly]

Jesus.

[fox]

You would think. And yet, Sandy Hook changed nothing. Uvalde changed nothing. Parkland changed nothing.

[rebeccmeister]

It shouldn't, but history does suggest otherwise, sigh.

A couple years ago I listened to a This American Life episode about the climate change concept of managed retreats, but also how people utterly and absolutely refuse to do them. So that's why we'll have even more climate refugees, sigh.

[altamira16]

Clearly, you do not understand the bootstraps you must pull yourself up by because you do not have Texas galaxy brain politics.

There are a lot of good Texans. Unfortunately, they are not in charge of the government.

[adafrog]

There are a lot of good Texans. Unfortunately, they are not in charge of the government.
Word. (I also live in Texas, but in the Panhandle)