There have been almost daily newspapers reports on broken or breached levees during this ongoing Midwest floods that brought many small towns along the Mississippi river underwater.
I have been following the news and my reaction was "It happened before in 1993, didn't the government learn something?"
It was easy for me to be skeptic about the work of FEMA and other federal agencies particularly after their slow response during the hurricane Katrina. Some of the flood victims recently interviewed by the New York Times echoed this sentiment. In fact, they did not expect any help would come from the government in rebuilding their homes given the seemingly complex bureaucracies.
What I learned was that newspapers reporting can be one-sided. They often focus on what or who to be blamed for these people's miseries. Why did the levees break? How did they spend our tax dollars?
The truth is many thousands of these levees are old and have never been inspected since the 1960s. Their status was not well understood according to FEMA report in 2006 titled "The National Levee Challenge". Many are substandard, too low and were originally designed to protect farmlands. No inventory of levees and related floor control structures are available at state or federal level. Not even here in the King County where there are more than 500 levees according to Washington State Department of Ecology.
The FEMA report also says that more than forty percent of the U.S. population lives in counties with levees. So it is pretty clear that flood is a big threat. It will get bigger as the increasing populations put more pressure on greenfield developments. This levee issue must be dealt at every level of government starting with the local. And it is not fair to expect FEMA to check the quality and capability of every levee and floodwalls. They will never given the budget to do that either.
By the same token, homeowners should be more proactive in understanding the situation they are in. I believe it is their responsibility to find out if their house is in a floodplain. If in doubt, get a flood insurance or move to higher ground! Because you can't count on the levees. There is a good chance that they will break.
I have been following the news and my reaction was "It happened before in 1993, didn't the government learn something?"
It was easy for me to be skeptic about the work of FEMA and other federal agencies particularly after their slow response during the hurricane Katrina. Some of the flood victims recently interviewed by the New York Times echoed this sentiment. In fact, they did not expect any help would come from the government in rebuilding their homes given the seemingly complex bureaucracies.
What I learned was that newspapers reporting can be one-sided. They often focus on what or who to be blamed for these people's miseries. Why did the levees break? How did they spend our tax dollars?
The truth is many thousands of these levees are old and have never been inspected since the 1960s. Their status was not well understood according to FEMA report in 2006 titled "The National Levee Challenge". Many are substandard, too low and were originally designed to protect farmlands. No inventory of levees and related floor control structures are available at state or federal level. Not even here in the King County where there are more than 500 levees according to Washington State Department of Ecology.
The FEMA report also says that more than forty percent of the U.S. population lives in counties with levees. So it is pretty clear that flood is a big threat. It will get bigger as the increasing populations put more pressure on greenfield developments. This levee issue must be dealt at every level of government starting with the local. And it is not fair to expect FEMA to check the quality and capability of every levee and floodwalls. They will never given the budget to do that either.
By the same token, homeowners should be more proactive in understanding the situation they are in. I believe it is their responsibility to find out if their house is in a floodplain. If in doubt, get a flood insurance or move to higher ground! Because you can't count on the levees. There is a good chance that they will break.
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