I live in Louisiana near Texas. Most of the roads in Houston are in the flood zone. It is called "the Bayou City" for a reason. Here are ten things we learned from the Hurricane Harvey and the Texas Flood 2017.
1. AT&T was sketchy and Verizon is owned by a Cajun.
2. The Cajun Navy and Texan Navy are better equipped than the Fed Govt and are much faster.
3. Race does not divide us, the media divides us.
4. CNN stands for Covers Negative News and CN stands for Cajun Navy.
5. We will find the means to cook in any situation.
6. All Lives Matter....including animals.
7. No water is too deep or too shallow for passage.
8. A Cajun and a Texan can launch a boat anywhere including roadways.
9. Our strength is "Togetherness".
10. Under no circumstances will we be defeated.

Government is the problem. Much of that land and the land in the south should of never been built on...period!
Hope your family members are ok.

Yes, Bloomberg, straight on left politics with the usual climate change alarmism.

Politico, is not much different but it does put the blame elsewhere-
' heavily subsidized federal flood insurance. '
building in areas with impervious soil
' the explosive growth of low-lying riverine and coastal development'
http://www.politico.com/magazine/stor...

In about 1953-54, we got our first TV. News story was about a Mississippi flood at that time. I asked my dad, "Why do people live there?" He said, "I don't know but when you live in a river bed, plan on getting wet."

A post under humor would have eliminated some of my initial confusion when reading, then I saw Bloomberg and then I read your comment. I have a female friend there with three children, not mine, whom I have been more active in conversation with since Thursday morning before the storms landfall. I tried to give her advice without giving orders, all direct orders I gave were in the form of jokes. Every day our conversations ended with her having a solid plan to get out and go to higher, more northern, ground at her grandmas. But then the next day she never executed and then we developed new plan. So after repeating this 9 times now, and as I sit here and hear her situation becoming more dire and more helpless, all I can think to myself is that I did what I could. I told her directly to get out. She, for reasons that I can not gather, decided to stay. Her excuse was always that she had no money and could not leave. That is just nonsense and quite honestly I have to apologize for writing this now because I feel like it doesn't belong here, but what can you do for humanity? If you provide valuable advice and guidance and they can't or won't take it, what can you do? I won't send money because I've learned the lesson 100 times over that money doesn't fix things. What can you do?

I love the assumption that if it didn't work, the government wasn't involved enough.

Yeah...if you follow that thinking I have a bridge to sell you...

I live in las vegas where it gets quite hot (115 degrees and more) during about three months, and if there was some sort of disaster which destroyed electric power, many people would die. There is very little underground building (basements) where people could stay reasonably cool. I can just hear the leftists trying to save the people here who didnt think for themselves but just assumed that civilization will protect them from the naturally occurring heat.

I live just south of Houston in Pearland. I commented before that our planned community of 20,000 had only 12-13 homes flooded. That is due to good engineering for flood control. Yes, the streets were rivers, but that is part of the plan. Now, the point. The topology of Houston says "flood me." It was, as mentioned, a swamp. It does not matter whether there are zero or a million zoning, etc., regulation. Houston, with 50+ inches of rain, is going to flood. (What city wouldn't?) The only way not to have floods in Houston is to not have Houston.

Good article for terrible Economics...and no, not funny, except perhaps as black humour. (Which I suppose is racist to say now.)

Here's an excellent antidote from FEE with example after example of how much the free market is helping Houston...

https://fee.org/articles/the-private-...

It seems to me that there are places where people
should just not attempt to live. If they are that sub-
ject to natural disaster, why build cities there in the
first place.?

Leftists ALWAYS have hidden agendas, and one should not listen to what they say and take it at face value.

Big government almost always CANT do good things because of the way political decisions are made. Its rather simple actually.

Hey, if we could figure out how to apply the drain on resources big government "offers", I have no doubt it could suck the life out of any of nature's forces.

Require residential sprinkler systems?!?

Clearly if cities were able to require residential sprinkler systems there wouldn't be a flood now.

Thank you very much for the post by the way. It was good for me.