“I cannot imagine what 150 mile-per-hour winds might have done to this community; that’s what I’m horrified of. What’s a cat 4 or cat 5 going to do to us? They will be coming.”
Important reporting on #Beryl from a great environmental correspondent:
After a disastrous response to the category 1 storm, #Houston residents are left asking how the city could be so unprepared for a hurricane, and how much worse things could get.
New today from Correspondent Dylan Baddour:
This is pretty much all us locals have been talking about, how if a measly cat 1 caused all this then we've really been fooling ourselves about our infrastructure and readiness here.
Houston always acts like each hurricane is their first. They should have put building standards & restrictions in place decades ago. Instead they build anywhere & everywhere as fast as they can, all without regard to infrastructure to handle immense rainfall in their sinking geography.
I grew up in Houston and went through Cat 4 hurricane Carla there. We didn't have anything like the flooding they have there every time the rain falls heavy.
Year after year they stick their hand out for federal assistance, then continue build houses & roadways that readily flood.
Didn't Harvey send a message a few years back about potential flooding problems, etc. (TBF 30 inches of rain is going to be a problem everywhere but the open ocean).
But also, given its location & elevation, do people just need to be more realistic about how much can actually be done?
Ah, unhelpfully i did not fully appreciate the extent of the power problems versus flooding.
Lovely leafy cities really need to underground their power lines.
How ironic that the pollution cartel has allocated resources to protect their pollution operations, but resisted funding any effort to protect the communities their employees live in.
