human
This article really misses the mark. The flooding in Houston, in this case, had nothing to do with storm surge and everything to do with drainage. For this type of event drainage would have needed to be designed for 500+ year flooding and 30 inches of rain in a 36 hour period. And across several cities and all linking to the ocean, just not feasible.   Houston area communities do a very good job designing for drainage in this area, as does TxDOT,  but without tearing out the older systems and replacing them at an enormous cost, it will never be sufficient to handle this type of event. Imagine if this had happened in any other US coastal area, now imagine it happening in NYC...it gets so much worse. I was in Central America when Hurricane Mitch did this in 1998.  Around 20,000 people died and 2.5 million homeless. Maybe it isn't fair to compare Central America to the US, but I think it helps with scale. Houston's need of a surge protection  system is real, but its not why we flooded.
gpt
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