Midwestern Floods?

Question

I know the flooding in the Midwest has been devastating for the people involved, but how much of the problem has been caused by humans? We build cities and towns in a river’s flood plain, we create dikes, and levees to direct the river where WE want it to go. They break and flooding causes millions in damages.

How much of the blame is nature doing what nature doses, and how much is caused by humans trying to change nature? And does the government (taxpayers) have to responsibility to continually bail out those property owners without insurance for flood damage.

One time disaster assistance I can understand and people deserve help in an emergency. But I know there are people in Illinois living along the Fox River and Chain of Lakes areas that have had flood after flood year after year and refuse to move, but want continuing disaster aid. I can only presume there are other communities along the Mississippi that have filed multiple claims over the years. What is the answer.

Answer 1

actually I hear much less about these communities asking for aid the I expected. And in some cases the government has refused to insure some areas, as they refused to do the things the government required to protect their property.

Answer 2

They have been talking about just thing topic for years and years,  since I was a little kid growing up in Hannibal, Missouri and probably before.   In that town they built a huge flood gate.  It used to flood a third of the town every spring.  The trouble comes in when they allow places that are natural flood plains to build up business and put housing developments on like in.  For example,  Earth City near St. Louis,  is actually built on a natural flood plain.  When it was flooded in ninety three they just built it all over again and so it goes year after year.  As places like that, build better and better earth dams the water has to go some place and ends up flooding areas that have never before been flooded before because the water has to go some place in the wet years.  If it can't spread out on the flood plain it goes the path of least resistance.  People in Cedar Rapids hadn't seen this sort of flooding ever! They didn't originally build their houses where there was a water danger.  It just happened.  Now they have to decide what they are going to do about their water problem.  You can't in most places just get rid of the town.  I have heard of a few towns where the entire population picked up and moved the entire thing, but this is rare.  When you have lived in a place for a hundred years or more, buried your loved ones there and raised generations of kids there then you would be reluctant to move too.

Answer 3

Freedom comes with a price. The freedom to live where you want, in this instance, comes with a pretty big price. It's like everything else that's catching government regulations. We're made to wear seatbelts because of people being harmed in wrecks and the public having to pay the bills. You see where this is heading?

I think the government needs to stop bailing people out on all levels. We want our freedom, so we should have it, but we should pay for it. My home is in a flood plane. It hasn't flooded there in nearly 50 years, still, I have flood insurance along with homeowners insurance.  That's an extra 500 bucks a year, but...  

If a person is elderly or disabled I don't see a problem with helping. But we can do without somethings to bear the burden of our choosing.

Answer 4

if you want to complain about people getting help from the gov. because of where they choose to live then you should be looking at imagrants that get money to start a buisiness from gov. grants when they have no line of credit , as far as emergency help for a disaster these people pay for it all of us in the usa do , the problem is our gov. does not take care of home do to special interest politicians they use this money somewhere else thinking we dont know it's there until we find out and then tell us ther is not enough