Active Spring Flooding Season

  • Dutchtown, MO, March 20, 2008 -- Areas remain under flood water. Much of Missouri has been affected by recent flooding. (Photo by Jocelyn Augustino, courtesy of FEMA)

Spring floods are hitting some parts of the country,
and the National Weather Service predicts high waters might hit
more states. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Spring floods are hitting some parts of the country,
and the National Weather Service predicts high waters might hit
more states. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

There were record snowfalls in some northern, eastern and western states during the winter. Soil
moisture in some areas is very high. With the potential for spring rainstorms, the National
Weather Service says conditions are above average for flooding. Deputy Director Vickie Nadolski
says the threat will last a while.

“As you see the temperatures start to warm up in the summer, then certainly the ground will start
to dry out a bit more, but right now it’s quite saturated.”

Nadolski urges the public to listen to warnings of flash floods and river flooding. She warns
against driving or walking into flood waters.

The National Weather Service says soil moisture is not as high in states with prolonged droughts,
and that a lot of rain or snow there will bring temporary improvement to local reservoirs.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Costs of Building in Danger Zones

  • In San Diego’s suburbs, the homes on the outer edges of developments and in close proximity to the surrounding countryside are the first to burn. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

During the past 20 years, we’ve been building
homes closer to nature. Whether it’s near coastal areas
or in the wilderness, homebuyers want to live in more
natural settings. But… Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports
often that means putting people and property in the path
of floods or fire:

Transcript

During the past 20 years, we’ve been building
homes closer to nature. Whether it’s near coastal areas
or in the wilderness, homebuyers want to live in more
natural settings. But… Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports
often that means putting people and property in the path
of floods or fire:

2007 was the second worst in history for wildfires in the U.S. Nine-million acres were
scorched and Southern California bore the brunt of it. Most of the property damage was
in San Diego where wildfires in wilderness areas spread to suburban neighborhoods. Half a
million people were evacuated and Shannon Denton was among them. She says her
neighborhood was cleared out at 4 in the morning.

“We were scared. ‘Cause we didn’t – luckily we had all our pictures organized, so we just took most of our pictures and our video stuff, grabbed our kids at the last minute and left within a half-hour. It was scary, very
scary.”

(construction sound)

These days, Denton’s subdivision is busy. There are bulldozers demolishing the burned
out remains of old houses. And construction crews are building new ones on every single
street.

Denton’s thankful her house was spared. But she says even if it had burned down, she’d
take the risk of it happening again, because she likes living here.

“It’s pretty close to nature. There’s a lot of walking and hiking, a lot of mountains that you can take trails and different things.”

Despite the risk of fire, people like Denton don’t want to leave. Some of the 18-
thousand homes lost in San Diego last fall were built in places where wildfires had
burned only four years earlier.

That’s not unusual. The US Fire Administration says nearly 40% of new home
development across the country is in places where residential homes and wilderness meet,
and thus, are more prone to fire.

“They have a right to build that single family home.”

That’s Jeff Murphy of San Diego County’s Department of Planning.

“As a jurisdiction its our responsibility to have codes and ordinances that are
in place to make sure that there’s minimal structural damage as the result of wildfire and minimize
the risk of loss of life.”

Murphy says people are going to live where they want to, all government can do is
require smart development. And San Diego’s building codes are the most restrictive in
the California. They were reevaluated after the 2003 wildfires, when seven percent of the
homes were destroyed.

In the 2007 wildfires, Murphy says the new codes reduced that loss to one-percent.

“Even though we had a lot of structure loss during these fires, what these
numbers are showing us is that our codes are working.”

And Americans aren’t just building in areas at risk of fire. We build in flood zones, too.
FEMA estimates around 10 million people in the US are at risk of flooding. And
according to the United Nations, we saw the most floods of any country last year.

Roger Kennedy is a former director of the National Park Service. He says this kind of
“risky living” costs US taxpayers about two-billion dollars a year in firefighting and
rebuilding costs. The total in property damage hovers around 20 Billion.

Kennedy says people are choosing to build and live on land that’s in danger-prone areas
because they’re not responsible for the true costs. Insurance, guaranteed mortgages, and
federal disaster relief have reduced the personal financial risk.

“People wouldn’t settle in places from which they knew they would not be
rescued and where the taxpayers wouldn’t pick up- or the insurance company which is
essentially the same thing- wouldn’t pick up the tab.”

Kennedy says knowing about a home’s potential risk might reduce the material cost of
fires and floods. And, it might save lives.

But he says, people have to want to know their risks. And even then… they might choose
to ignore it. Because for many, the enjoyment their property brings far outweighs the
occasional “Act of Nature.”

For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

The Costs of Preventing Flood Damage

  • A shed in Valmeyer, Ill. shows how high the water got during the 1993 Flood. The flood waters caused such damage that most of the town moved a few miles east, high up on a bluff. A few residents and many farmers, though, stayed in the flood plain. (Photo by Tom Weber)

It’s been 13 years since the Great Flood of ’93 caused widespread destruction along the upper Mississippi River. After the flood, there was talk of needing to expand the natural floodplain by eliminating levees that protect farmland. That didn’t happen. In fact, not much of anything has happened, but that doesn’t stop farmers from wondering if the government will buy their farms and turn them into natural areas designed to take the waters of the next big flood. Tom Weber reports:

Transcript

It’s been 13 years since the Great Flood of ’93 caused widespread destruction along the
upper Mississippi Rivers. After the flood, there was talk of needing to expand the natural
flood plain by eliminating levees that protect farmland. That didn’t happen. In fact, not
much of anything has happened, but that doesn’t stop farmers from wondering if the
government will buy their farms and turn them into natural areas designed to take the
waters of the next big flood. Tom Weber reports:


For all the river talk in these parts, it’s actually kind of hard to see the water. Doug
Sondag’s farm is about about two miles from the river and his view to the west
is of the bluffs, on which Missouri towns, like Herculanium, sit.


“That’s Missouri bluffs. That’s Missouri bluffs, and to the north the bluffs that you see is Missouri.
We’re on a big bend here.”


Doug’s friend Ron Kuergeleis is visiting the farm today. Kuergeleis lost his home in the
’93 flood, but he still farms on the flood plain near Valmeyer, Illinois. The two also are
commissioners with the local levee district, which means they’re in charge of keeping the
local levee up-to-date so the river is kept away.


Today, though, they’re talking about the possibility of a new federal levee and something
called “Plan G.”


(Ron): “You’re talking quite a few farmers that would absolutely put them out of
business. You’re one of them, I’m one of them, and there’s – (Doug): “There are quite a few
more.” (Ron): “There are quite a few more.”


No one is going out of business any time soon, though. Plan G is something the Army
Corps of Engineers studied and decided wasn’t worth the money. It would have the
Corps spend billions building up bigger levees along the upper Mississippi to 500-year
levees: the highest levees the Corps builds.


Plan G also would create a huge storage district nearby. A storage district is a kind of
relief area where flood waters go to take strain off other levees. Corps engineer Richard
Astrack says design elements like these can help control flooding in other places:


“Now we have the capability that we didn’t have before to look at whole system to ensure
that actions taken at one location can impact another location.”


The Valmeyer storage district would require a new levee in the flood plain, which would
leave 10,000 acres of currently protected farmland unprotected and on the wrong side of
the levee.


This all started a few years ago, when Congress told the Corps to study the entire Upper
Mississippi River, from Illinois’s southern tip to Minnesota, find out if the current levees
are good enough to reduce flood damage. If not, should there be some comprehensive plan to guide just which levees get built up and when? Such a study actually had never been done.


The Corps’ Richard Astrack says they looked at a lot of options, including that Plan G,
to see if any of them were worth the time and money. And it turns out, none of them is:


“None of the plans passed that test. Our draft report does not
recommend any systemic plan.”


And the Corps’s final report will probably recommend essentially doing nothing because
the current system does a good enough job of preventing flood damage. The Corps will
recommend updating, but not raising, current aging levees, and also creating some mini-
levees to protect roads that approach bridges.


But even with all the assurances that Valmeyer, Illinois is safe for now, farmers in the
bottomlands are worried that the federal government might one day force their children
or their grandchildren off their farms.


Ron Kuergeleis is a fourth generation farmer:


“We’re pretty much assured in our lifetime it ain’t gonna happen. But some of us got another
generation coming up and you don’t know. He claims, you know where you going to
come up with money, but if they want to come up with it, they’ll find it.”


The worries stem from the fact that Corps cannot, in all fairness, guarantee that such a
levee would never be built. Because setting aside some of the bottom lands for natural
flooding could protect big cities such as St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee,
there’s concern that Congress might one day instruct the Corps of Engineers to buy out
those farms.


So, while Valmeyer is not getting a new levee right now, the people here say they’ll keep
working to stay one step ahead to make sure it never happens.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tom Weber

Related Links

Faulty Flood Walls Spring Problems

  • Donna Smrdel stands in her backyard by the "flood wall." (Photo by Julie Grant)

Many people are drawn to live near rivers, lakes and other bodies of water. That means they have to take special care in case of floods, but flood walls and levees don’t always protect them. In one town, residents are asking why the wall separating their backyards from the neighboring river didn’t hold back the water. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports on the safety of floodwalls and building in a floodplain:

Transcript

Many people are drawn to live near rivers, lakes and other bodies of water. That means
they have to take special care in case of floods, but flood walls and levees don’t always
protect them. In one town, residents are asking why the wall separating their backyards
from the neighboring river didn’t hold back the water. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports on
the safety of floodwalls and building in a floodplain:


Dale and Donna Smrdel bought a condominium along a river just a few months ago.
This summer they’ve been sitting in the backyard on a wall overlooking the river and
watching the sunset. But now, that concrete wall is broken and falling away from the
bank. It’s crumbled in some spots and held together only by twisted rebar.


“This is where the largest portion simply fell away because of the water. It was a torrent.
It was so strong it picked up a camper and flung it over this wall. Because the water was
so high above the wall, that it was like a toy. It just floated away like a toy.”


People on rafts rescued everyone from
second floor windows. Donna Smrdel says they thought this wall would protect them
from flooding:


“I don’t think there was a single person here that believed this was not going to keep us
safe. I think we all believed that even if the water did rise that it wouldn’t hurt the
retaining wall. None of us are engineers. We looked at it, it looked safe. We believed
we were safe. We had no idea, we just had no idea.”


This story is not uncommon. Last year, people in New Orleans expected a flood wall to
protect them from rising waters brought on by Hurricane Katrina. People along the
Mississippi River expected levees and flood walls to protect them from the Great Flood
of ’93. Many flood walls hold, but when they don’t, the people who thought they were
protected quickly find out they’re victims. In the case of the Smrdels, it turns out that
wall wasn’t even meant to protect them from high water.


Painesville City Manager Rita McMahon says the Smrdels live near the exit of the river,
where ice often jams in spring:


“Well, that wall was built by the private property owner as actually a flood protection
from ice dams. It wasn’t intended to protect the property from this type of a flood. This
was a volume flood that came from the south to the north. It was just a wall of water, so
to speak.”


The Smrdel’s condo community was built in the 100-year floodplain 30 years ago. Back
then, there weren’t regulations on building in a flood-prone area. Today, new buildings
have to be elevated.


That’s better protection then a wall, but flood walls and levee protection give people a
sense of security. Often they don’t think about that protection failing them, and the
consequences of what that failure will mean to their homes and families. Engineers say it
is possible to live safely by the water, but homeowners have to do their own investigating
to find out the safety of housing elevations and flood walls. We spoke with Carm
Marranka, a structural engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers:


Julie: “When you look at Katrina, when you look at the Mississippi floods in ’93, and when we
look up here, do you think that sometimes flood walls, even those built by the Army Corps,
provide a false sense of security?”


Marranka: “I don’t know if it’s a false sense of security. I think
with the design and assumptions that I’m familiar with the factors of safety, those
structures are built at. And good maintenance, I think that’s a big issue. They have to be
maintained. They cannot be allowed to fall into disrepair.”


When the Army Corps builds a flood wall, Marranka says it’s usually up to the local
community to maintain it, but the local governments often don’t have enough money to
pay for that maintenance. Donna Smrdel doesn’t trust any of it anymore:


“I mean, even if they bulldozed it, what kind of retaining wall will they build next? If
this didn’t work, and we all believed it would work, what do you build next?”


All those other people flooded out of their homes will also have to decide whether they
trust flood prevention technology, and if living by the beautiful scenery is worth the
threat of floods.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Restoring Streams in the Heartland

  • Settlers dug ditches and straightened rivers to drain the fields they needed for planting. (photo by Mark Brush)

Today, we wrap up our series on pollution in the heartland.
To farm in the nation’s heartland, people first had to drain the water from the land. In a lot of places, that meant dredging rivers to get them to move along faster and carry water off the fields. But straight, fast rivers aren’t healthy rivers. And the rushing water carries pesticides and fertilizers off of fields and deposits them downstream. But in some places, farmers are starting to repair rivers. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams has the final story in our week-long series:

Transcript

Today, we wrap up our series on pollution in the heartland. To farm in the nation’s
heartland, people first had to drain the water from the land. In a lot of places, that meant
dredging rivers to get them to move along faster and carry water off the fields. But
straight, fast rivers aren’t healthy rivers. And the rushing water carries pesticides and
fertilizers off of fields and deposits them downstream. But in some places, farmers are
starting to repair rivers. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams has the final story in our week-long series:


From an airplane, the land below it looks like it was drawn in geometry class. Fields
of corn and soybeans look almost like perfect squares. Rivers seem as straight as a ruler’s
edge.


When rivers have their way, they’re unruly. They have lots of twists and bends, but people have straightened a lot of rivers and streams to make it easier to grow crops
and raise animals. European settlers forging their way West got stuck in huge swamps.
The mosquitoes were terrible. But the settlers’ chances of raising food in the swampland
were even worse.


“In order to reclaim that land, muckland, for raising vegetable crops, they had to drain it.”


Barb Cook owns a farm here in fertile southwest Michigan. Her grandfather farmed here
in the early 1900s, back when the rivers were being straightened.


(sound of river)


Cook’s standing on the bank of the Dowagiac River. Right now it’s as straight as a canal
and it’s moving fast. But it’s about to get some of its curves back.


Barb Cook says she was skeptical when she heard about the plan to coax the river back to
its original path.


“Well, they want to put the wiggles back. Well, why? Were they trying to hoodwink
anyone or were their objectives pure? And I got involved and felt they were really truly
trying to improve things.”


Cook’s now the vice president of the group. It calls itself MEANDRS. It’s made up of
farmers and biologists and fishermen. People who all have a stake in what happens to the
river.


They’re carving out one of the curves the river used to follow.


Jay Wesley is a biologist with the Department of Natural Resources. He says even
though this new meander isn’t connected to the river yet, little springs are bubbling up.


“We’ve actually even seen trout in here since this first part of the project’s been done.
They’ve come up through the culvert from the river and have found their way up here.
So it’s pretty cold, high quality water.”


That’s exciting news for fishermen. A river fed by cold groundwater can be a mecca for
trout. The pools and riffles sculpted into the new meander will give fish places to hide.


These small signs of hope are a pretty big deal. This project is a very long labor of
love 12 years in the making.


That’s because there are lots of hurdles. For one thing, meander restorations are
expensive. Half a million dollars at the low end.


There are piles of paperwork.


And some farmers worry that restoring meanders will flood their fields.


In this project, the MEANDRS group surveyed nearby farmers early on about their
concerns and included them in the planning process. Bill Westraight is the President of
MEANDRS. He’s also a farmer who owns land along the river.


“I think what I say holds more weight with farmers than if somebody had come down and
was mandating that they participate in some way.”


Westraight says they had some major critics in the beginning. But he says they’ve gotten
almost all the neighbors on board. He says it was crucial that they gave everyone a say.
They also commissioned feasibility studies to make sure upstream farmers wouldn’t be
flooded.


All these hurdles mean that projects like these aren’t very common.


Andrew Fahlund is with the nonprofit group American Rivers. He says big projects like
meander restorations almost always need government funding. And that funding’s been
cut dramatically over the past few years. Fahlund says those cuts are short-sighted
because healthier rivers can actually save money in the long run.


“One of the reasons you get such an economic benefit from river restoration is that you
reduce the costs of having to treat water, filter
that water and clean it up for human consumption.”


(river sound up under)


The MEANDRS group says there’s no way they can restore the entire river. But they
hope mending just this small section will help revive the river a bit.


The group points out that this type of restoration won’t work everywhere. They say in
many places, channelized rivers are still crucial for keeping fields drained.


Farmer Barb Cook says even now, she sees this project as an experiment. In a few
months, she’ll get to see whether all her hard work will pan out, when they’ll try to force
water from the straight channel into the new meander.


“As you look at the stream behind us, it’s quite a volume of water. Water has its own
way. Mother Nature has something to say about this too. She may say no.”


Cook says nothing ever runs smoothly. But she says they’ll just be flexible and this time
around, let the river choose its course.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

A Mad Dash for Trash

  • Penn State is luring people to its annual "Trash to Treasure" event with gimmicks such as going for the "most people disguised as Groucho Marx" record. (Photo courtesy of Penn State University)

Each spring when college students leave their dorms, they leave behind tons of unwanted furniture, rugs, and other stuff that just didn’t make the cut for the trip back home. At one time, it all would’ve ended up in a landfill. In recent years, some universities have been sorting out the usable items and holding huge yard sales. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan took her pocketbook and her microphone to one of those big sales:

Transcript

Each spring when college students leave their dorms, they leave behind tons of unwanted
furniture, rugs, and other stuff that just didn’t make the cut for the trip back home. At one time,
it all would’ve ended up in a landfill. In recent years, some universities have been sorting out the
usable items and holding huge yard sales. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan took her
pocketbook and her microphone to one of those big sales:


“Welcome to the fifth annual Trash to Treasure sale. Let the excitement begin.”


At 7:30 a.m., the gates to Beaver football stadium at Penn State are hoisted and thousands of
people run through six metal corrals. It’s a mad dash for CD players, stuffed animals, and other
remnants of college. Sixty-six tons… of stuff. What’s with kids leaving behind all this, and that
$215 chichi bronze silk purse – with tag intact?


“No one wants to take it home. I mean to fit all that stuff in a car – it’s awful. It’s really hard to
do. So I mean if you can’t fit it you might as well leave it and leave it for somebody else.”


Erin Horning is a college student herself. She’s here for the fourth year in a row.


“I was a freshman in college this past year so I came here to get all my college stuff from the
students that already left like irons, and oh, furniture….”


Penn State’s Environmental Strategies Team started the Trash to Treasure sale to keep leftover
lumber and coffee mugs out of the waste stream. Other major colleges around the country are
following suit, including Notre Dame and West Virginia University. Penn State spokesman Paul
D. Ruskin says it also saves the school 43-hundred dollars in hauling costs.

“We had a problem. We had 60 to 70 tons of usable material left behind. And the solution which
we found was to have this massive sale and to have the items donated to this sale. And to have
United Way take over and manage the sale.”


The charity brings in 300 volunteers who sort sale items over a few weeks. Bethany Heim
volunteered for 19 shifts. She and her husband are also first in line for the sale, having arriving
around midnight.


(sound of people in stadium)


“I came for a vacuum. It started as a joke when I started volunteering here three weeks ago.
And now I found THE vacuum.”

Heim says that besides keeping trash out of landfills, the sale benefits the community in other
ways.


“They have stuff put away for Katrina victims. I’m sure some of it will make its way to the flood
victims in New England. And just that it’s not on the sides of the streets – ’cause driving
through town when you see all the furniture from the college kids on the sides of the streets.”


Penn State tries to bring more customers in every year. The school’s Paul D. Ruskin admits that
the county market for box fans has already been saturated. So now it’s trying to generate
enthusiasm with gimmicks. Like this year’s attempt to break the record for the most people
wearing Groucho Marx masks. The effort fell 138 people shy. Still, the United Way netted 45,000 dollars. And as for Bethany Heim…


“I got my vacuum!”


And with happy customers like that, universities are starting to realize that selling all the college
student leftovers is good P.R. as well as just good sense.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

Related Links

A MAD DASH FOR TRASH (Short Version)

When college students head home for the summer, the unmatched dishware and stuffed animals that filled dorms often become trash, but a number of schools are turning stadiums into sale grounds and hawking the remnants of college life. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan has more:

Transcript

When college students head home for the summer, the unmatched dishware and stuffed animals
that filled dorms often become trash, but a number of schools are turning stadiums into sale
grounds and hawking the remnants of college life. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan has
more:


When college lets out, dumpsters get overwhelmed with tons of students’ belongings, but not at
a few major universities. Five years ago, Penn State started getting students to donate their
goods. The school invited the local United Way to sort area rugs and shoes, to run a sale and
to reap the profits. Notre Dame and West Virginia University followed suit.


Paul D. Ruskin is a Penn State spokesman.


“It is a solution that has no downside. It keeps things out of the landfill. It keeps down Penn
State operating costs. It makes nice items available to families at a good price. And it helps a
charitable organization.”


It’s also a big draw. More than five-thousand people attended Penn State’s event this year.
Other universities are reporting similar turnouts.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

Related Links

Study: Wetland Banking Hurts Urban Areas

In some parts of the country, developers who damage or destroy wetlands are mitigating that by buying credits for wetlands that have been created somewhere else. It’s called “wetland banking” and it’s similar to banking programs for air pollution. Wetland banking resulted from state and federal efforts to stop the loss of wetlands nationwide. The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

In some parts of the country, developers who damage or destroy
wetlands are making up for it by buying credits for wetlands that have
been created somewhere else. It’s called “wetland banking” and it’s
similar to banking programs for air pollution. Wetland banking resulted
from state and federal efforts to stop the loss of wetlands nationwide.
The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports:


J.B Ruhl is a professor of property at Florida State University. He
compiled a list of all wetland banking transactions in Florida. Ruhl
found a clear shift of wetlands from urban areas to rural areas, taking
environmental services away from cities.


Ruhl says wetlands provide flood and storm surge control, capture
pollution and recharge groundwater.


“If you take that wetland out, you’ve lost some value that you have to
either replace by building cement storm water ponds and all the other
things that could kind of replicate the wetland. Or, you just don’t replace
them, and either way you’re either spending money to replace the
wetland or you’re spending money to deal with the problems that arise
when the wetland is gone.”


Ruhl says the federal government should keep better track of where
wetlands are being lost and where they’re being replaced – and of the
environmental costs and benefits of those transactions.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Great Lakes Leaders Worry About Water Dispute

Great Lakes governors and mayors are worried about a dispute between the U.S. and Canada and its effect on international water policy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

Great Lakes governors and mayors are worried about a dispute between the U.S. and
Canada and its effect on international water policy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Shawn Allee reports:


Devils Lake in North Dakota sometimes floods homes and farms. So, the state planned
to divert lake water into a river that flows into Canada. But Canada worried pollution
and invasive species would flow across the border.


It turned to the International Joint Commission.


The IJC reviews water disputes between the U.S. and Canada… including Great Lakes
issues.


The U.S. government didn’t want that review.


Great Lakes mayors and governors wanted North Dakota and the U.S. government to
relent. At the last minute, the U.S. agreed to a review, but only after the project’s
underway.


Blair Seaborn was Canada’s top representative to the IJC.


“We worry a little bit when we see these rather unilateral positions rather than the very
good bilateral work that we’ve normally operated under.”


Seaborn says the larger water agreements … like ones affecting the Great Lakes … are
still intact.


But he says Canada feels stung by the rift.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Building for Disasters

  • People rarely build a house with tornadoes in mind. Some think that developers and homeowners should be more aware of potential natural disasters. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

There’s a whole category of disasters people think will probably never happen to them. Major floods, landslides, and earthquakes happen sometimes decades or centuries apart. So, people don’t think about them or they ignore the risks. And, some experts say, that’s why we build or buy houses
in places that really aren’t safe. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Melissa Ingells reports:

Transcript

There’s a whole category of disasters people think will probably never happen to them. Major floods, landslides, and earthquakes happen sometimes decades or centuries apart. So, people don’t think about them or they ignore the risks. And, some experts say, that’s why we build or buy houses in places that really aren’t safe. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells reports:


Disasters happen. It’s only a matter of when. The problem is, we prepare for things like tornadoes that happen every year, but we aren’t prepared for a major flood that might only happen once a century. Donald Hyndman is with the Department of Geology at the University of Montana. He’s an expert on disasters.


“People just do not understand the scale of events, they also don’t understand that if in their lifetime there hasn’t been a really major event, that there won’t be a really major event.”


So Hyndman has co-written a new textbook on disasters. He says there’s a lot of pressure to build houses in places that are hazardous. Maybe it’s just a great view, so people build there despite warnings. Or, they think they can stop the ground from moving with retaining walls, or think they can stop floods using levees. Donald Hyndman says that even well built projects just can’t stand the power of nature.


“There is increasing pressure to build in the same lowlands, the same flood plain areas, and the developers say, well, the Army Corps of Engineers has built a major levee or dyke here, that protects people on these floodplains. The problem is, levees break and they always break.”


Donald Hyndman’s co-author is his son, David Hyndman, a geologist from Michigan State University. David Hyndman, says even when a place is a known area for disasters, demand for housing means buildings go up all over again in the same spot.


“There’s always development pressure, and the developers even fairly soon after large floods like some that occurred in California, they keep pushing and the public has forgotten what has occurred and then often the development will be allowed, which causes a disaster afterwards.”


Donald and David Hyndman both say developers don’t help the situation when they build in dangerous areas.


But folks in the housing business say there are plenty of laws to warn potential homeowners, before a house is even built. Lynn Egbert is the CEO of the Michigan Association of Homebuilders. He says that people often ignore the regulations because they want to live where they want to live.


“Consumer desire – consumer interest and desire is the primary reason, even though there are state regulations and federal regulations to put people on notice and protect against the risk for insurance, to locate where they want to locate, which is a property right.”


Egbert says that real estate people and lenders are supposed to let property owners know of the risks. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes people don’t know to ask. And sometimes people think that despite the risks, a disaster just won’t happen to them. Donald Hyndman says we don’t respect how powerful the earth really is.


“Basically, some people feel that they can control nature, or improve on nature, and I’ve actually heard some politicians say we can improve on nature. We can not only not affect the results, those results are typically – they typically backfire. So we really cannot control nature.”


The Hyndmans are hoping their new textbook will help build awareness of all kinds of disasters—but especially the ones that could happen right in our own backyard.


For the GLRC, I’m Melissa Ingells.

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