The Texas Floods Were a Preview of What’s to Come
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The country has watched with horror torrential rains dipped in Texas earlier this month, sweeping at least 135 people to death. Kerr’s county alone lost 107, including more than two dozen children at the Mystic Camp.
From a distance, it would be easy, even tempting, to think that floods like these could never happen to you. That the disaster is distant.
This is not the case.
While the details of the tragedy have become at the center, the list of contributory factors has increased. Sudden showers, driven by climate change. The absence of a full warning system to inform people that the Guadalupe river increased quickly. Building crawling in areas known for flooding, associated with incomplete information on risky places.
These are the same elements that could trigger a County Kerr County disaster in each state of the country. It is a reality that has already been on several occasions in recent years, with floods in Vermont, Kentucky, North Carolina and elsewhere, leaving grief and billions of dollars in destruction in its wake.
“The County of Kerr is an extreme example of what is happening everywhere,” said Robert Freudenberg, vice-president of energy and environmental programs in the regional plan region. “People are at risk because of this, and there is more than we have to do.”
The most obvious problem is that we continue to build in areas subject to floods. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, produces easily available cards showing high -risk places. However, according to the latest data from the FIRST Street Foundation non -profit climate research company, 7.9 million houses and other structures are in a risk area of special FEMA flood, which designates a location with 1% or more likely to be flooded in a given year.
TOP 10 of the FEMA flood zone
Source: First Street Foundation
In Louisiana, 23% of the national head properties are located in a flood zone of FEMA. In Florida, it’s around 17%. Arkansas, New Mexico and Nebraska are perhaps the less anticipated members of the Top 10, just like New Jersey, which, with New York, saw the rain and the torrential floods that killed two people earlier this month.
Texas ranks seventh in the country, with around 800,000 properties, or around 6.5% of the state total, seated in a flood zone. Kerr county officials have a limited power to prevent people from building in these regions, but even when governments have the capacity to prevent risky construction projects, they do not historically do so. Although a study has revealed that certain areas are finally starting to slow down the development of floods, people continue to build in perilous places.
“There is an innate draw in the water we have, but we must know where the limits are,” said Freudenberg. “In places that are really dangerous, we have to work to remove people from the danger.”
Kerr County is in a region known as the South Flood Alley, and at least four cabins at the Camp Mystic were sitting in an extremely dangerous “flood track”. Many others stood on the path of a 100 -year flood. When the Christian summer camp for girls underwent an expansion in 2019, the owners built even more cabins on the water.
