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Notes -
80+ dead and rising in Central Texas floods.
Kerr County is the Summer Camp capital of Texas. It's rugged hill country terrain and proximity to the Guadelupe River is perfect for exotic adventures outdoors, and it is close enough to major population centers to be convenient for parents to drop-off their children.
The downside is that low-lying cabins get completely wiped out in flood events. Camp Mystic for girls has double-digit casualties alone.
It is a common refrain to bemoan the fact that, "we don't let kids be kids anymore," and that may be true, but a big part of it is that we as a society simply don't consider the inherent risks acceptable anymore. I shudder to think about making 10-year-olds sit through a 30-minute site-specific emergency preparedness seminar, but that's where this is going, and given what's happened, I'm not entirely sure it would be a bad thing.
I think rich countries shouldn't be building houses and infrastructure in flood plains without damming or proper measures to control the water. It's not impossible. The Netherlands has most of its economic activity below sea level, they eroded the North Sea.
There are big floods all the time in Britain and Australia that wreck people's houses. There ought to be a more aggressive stance taken towards the weather, bring it under control one way or another.
@RandomRanger @faceh
The real turning point will be when insurance companies stop covering those areas. Flood insurance in the Texas gulf coast already has to be subsidized by the state government because it’s just not profitable anymore.
AKA: charging what it costs would be unacceptable. I'm sure there's some price where it makes sense to offer flood insurance in a floodplain, but the government decided that people should pay less than that.
At least it isn't a price control forcing the insurance companies take an (expected) loss on every policy.
Yeah, a straight subsidy is better then whatever price controls CA keeps flirting with. There's a real risk that of breaking the property insurance market with those sorts of moves.
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