A royalty-free image of a flood
I don’t know about you, but every time I see a news story on some flood or hurricane in the eastern seaboard of the US, I’m frustrated by their inaction. Residents are aware of the risks of resettling in an area of high flood risk and hurricane zones but they keep going back. Year after year, generation after generation, homes in these high-risk areas continue to be insured and the government does nothing to resettle them to safer areas.
Like the US, East Asian cities also experience gale-force cyclones but well-developed areas experience a lot less damage. Those that live in secure high-rise buildings are elevated several meters, sometimes even several floors above ground level. It is not unusual to find residential estates in Southeast Asia that are elevated above a three-level shopping mall and a four-level carpark before getting to their homes on the eighth floor. If the car gets flooded or Starbucks closes for a day, that’s fine, your bedroom is still dry.
In certain less-developed regions such as Cambodia and Thailand, many rural houses are built on stilts to prevent creepy crawlies from climbing into their home. These stilts also help the home stay dry during monsoon season in case the fields flood. Understandably, Southeast Asian countries are much smaller than the mainland US, so they don’t have anywhere to move to, but there’s plenty of space for American towns at risk of sinking amidst global warming to move out to. China has moved villages for its Three Gorge’s Dam project, why can’t the US do the same to protect property and preserve live? Surely, it must be cheaper to do one big relocation rather than paying for annual and recurring rescue efforts.
Then there’s the issue with infrastructure. Yes, we’ve heard it all, America’s infrastructure report card shows a failing grade with over half of all bridges having some sort of structural deficiency. But if people don’t want to move out there are plenty of ingenious ideas that the Americans could import from their European ancestors. For centuries the Dutch have been battling with their coastline and they’ve dammed enough sea the reclaim a large portion of land. The UK has also constructed some highways on elevated mounds (much like the ancient Romans did) so emergency vehicles could still get to flooded villages during a flood.
America was the country on the hill after WWII, a beacon and self-proclaimed leader of the free world. It’s spending so much to police the world, but what is it doing for its own people?
