tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post2231130420586322779..comments2023-10-14T03:58:59.333-06:00Comments on The Tao of D&D: Hurricane HarveyAlexis Smolenskhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-15060622652397882302017-08-31T15:47:54.321-06:002017-08-31T15:47:54.321-06:00I'm not ideological about it, and I'm will...I'm not ideological about it, and I'm willing to consider any reasonable point. But I'm not sure that captures the reality. I was just down there 2 weeks ago. My wife and family got out 3 days ago as part of a mandatory evacuation of part of Fort Bend county (a few miles from the Houston border. Her apartment complex was in the middle of a large residential area with no tall buildings (the only retail was a just opened mini-mall of 6 or 7 businesses.) I'm familiar with some of the other areas that were evacuated. Believe me, Lack of zoning had nothing to do with it (at least in those areas). Could they do things a bit differently next time? Sure. You learn. Then again, the rain they got in that area was dubbed an "800 year event." Do you plan for that? Maybe. But what about a 1600 year event?Oakes Spaldinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08078500142758654392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-41110388205270190952017-08-31T15:26:26.018-06:002017-08-31T15:26:26.018-06:00Oakes,
Some guest on a news program was talking a...Oakes,<br /><br />Some guest on a news program was talking about how in Houston, the zoning is so crazy that people put up office towers where across the street there's a cow pasture. That's problematic.<br /><br />Part of the solution is, yes, building the sort of ditches that L.A. has. In Calgary, where we get flooding out of the mountains, the city has been on a 10 year program to sink a sewer system with 8' diameter pipes that run parallel to the river to direct the groundwater to pass out of the city below the level of the river. We did have a bad flood four years ago and the city stepped up their program; this is the sort of infrastructure I mean.<br /><br />But most important, it's a careful planning that makes one edge of the city generally higher than the other edge, something that is done by ensuring that all the office towers are built in the same general area, so that multi-acre parking lots don't create large areas where the water can't seep into the ground; or ensuring that housing is built in planned neighborhoods, separated from zoned commercial regions that have the same parking lot problem. If people can just build whatever building wherever they please, the development of concrete surfacing tend to create depressions behind the lots, where steady seepage of water into the ground causes that ground to subside. Then, when the flooding gets worse, those depressions become semi-permanent lakes that do not drain off, but must remain until the water evaporates ~ or is expensively pumped out.<br /><br />These are just surface problems. Urban planning is all important in this era. Ignoring it, because we don't want to pass laws that discourage people from doing whatever they damn well please (which Texans proudly proclaim) create huge problems of the sort we're seeing.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-84042011730243628502017-08-31T15:06:18.646-06:002017-08-31T15:06:18.646-06:00I'm not sure how zoning or urban planning woul...I'm not sure how zoning or urban planning would help, unless such planning included building a 20 foot high platform in a 10000+ square mile area. The whole place is just so damn low and flat. If the low fatality total persists, everyone involved should get a medal.Oakes Spaldinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08078500142758654392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-2196495118711729662017-08-31T14:36:44.434-06:002017-08-31T14:36:44.434-06:00Oh, just the usual American short-sightedness I...Oh, just the usual American short-sightedness I'm sure. <br /><br />Pretty awful what's going on down there. Some of those pix/videos from Houston remind me of Asuncion during the rainy season. Of course, Paraguay is a 3rd World country with precious little infrastructure...JBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03263662621289630246noreply@blogger.com