I ❤️ El “A”

If you're relying on Donald Trump to help you in the wake of disasters, like the fires that are raging in Los Angeles, don't hold your breath, says a member of Trump's own family Saturday. https://t.co/jSWWQlLtEv

— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 14, 2025

In August, 2017, a category four hurricane stretching down almost the entire Texas Gulf Coast parked itself inland and dumped rain solidly for days. It flooded cities up and down the coast, scrubbing one almost entirely off the map. Trump didn’t say one word against Texas, a ruby red state.

Houston flooded in Harvey. Virtually all of Houston. The parts that Harvey didn’t get directly were inundated by flood control. No, really. Reservoirs built in the ‘30’s to provide flood control for farmland (and the then far away city of Houston. Those reservoirs are now well inside the city limits) worked as designed and, when rising water required they be drained, they drained exactly as designed. The problem was, what was farmland in the early decades of the last century is some of the most valuable residential real estate in town in the first decades of this century. And the water went through it, in George C. Scott Patton’s memorable phrase, “like crap through a goose.”🪿 

People died in Harvey. Neighborhoods were wiped out. Almost 8 years later, we still haven’t fully recovered from it. Although we learned one thing from it. Flood control in Houston sucks. 

This was a feature, not a bug, before Harvey. I had a friend whose parents’ house started flooding after new development built up around them, and runoff that once soaked into the ground, ran across impervious cover down to them. The county promised to do something about it, did nothing, and allowed even more development upstream. Eventually the county just bought out the downstream neighborhood. Easier than building storm drains. Better than dissuading development with the burden of more costs or higher taxes. Can’t impede progress.

The flooding from the reservoirs was predicted decades before it happened. A city engineer wrote a report on it, warning of the inevitable disaster. He warned that development around the reservoir, and between it and the creek it was designed to drain to, would cause flooding and property destruction. The report was put in the warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant. Can’t get in the way of progress…

Houston has terrible storm drainage. The street near me still relies on the open ditches had when it was a rural road.  My street had two inlets, one at either end of the block. They backed up regularly. Even an inch of rain could cause street flooding. The East Texas town I grew up in was only 50,000 population at the time, but it had better drainage. I don’t remember the streets ever flooding there. Even before Harvey, street flooding was as common as 100F days in August.

Which is to say, a lot of the flooding in Harvey was caused by government inaction. Far more than any government failures in Los Angeles. The proof of that is not just in Harvey, but in the years since. Local government undertook a huge civil engineering project and actually improved storm drainage across the city. Since the work was done here, the street hasn’t flooded once. “Normal” was water curb to curb; “bad” was when it hopped the curb. Normal now is wet streets in the rain; bad is water covering the streets; at all. We could have done that anytime. We finally did.

But if another Harvey comes? All bets are off. You can’t design a system robust enough to handle that much water at once. Houston only sits 50 feet above sea level. There were suggestions we build giant drains that would carry the water to the Gulf. The only problem was, by the time the pipes got there (with the required drop per mile), they’d be about 50 feet below sea level.

Oops.

All of which is to say, LA can’t engineer its way out of fire danger, either. Firefighters have said no amount of equipment or personnel can control an entire neighborhood aflame simultaneously. And systems break down. Some reservoirs in the hills ran dry because of the drain by water hoses, but also because the pumps couldn’t operate to refill them (no electricity). We had that problem in a memorable winter storm when a statewide power failure took out no only heat, but water (no pumps, no water pressure). Again, local government was responsible; but nobody discussed cutting off federal aid to Texas. Not that it wasn’t discussed loudly:

The federal government is encouraging and subsidizing people to live in harm’s way,” he said. “I just went to Houston, I visited with some of the survivors, I mean, people whose homes have flooded three times in eight years.” 

Hensarling did not mention the role of climate change in making hurricanes more intense and destructive, and instead placed the burden for dealing with the aftermath of hurricanes solely on individual homeowners. 

“At some point, God is telling you to move,” he said. “If all we do is force federal taxpayers to build the same home in the same fashion in the same location and expect a different result, we all know that is the classic definition of insanity.”

So we should have abandoned the city by now? All 4 million of us? 🙄

Pretty damned sure flood control was a better answer. Give Hensarling credit: he came to Houston. Once. Talked to a few people. That made him an expert. Trump hasn’t so much as crossed the Mississippi since the fires started. And Elmo hasn’t so much as spent 20 minutes handing out food. But they’re experts, too. 🤷🏻‍♂️

It’s only been seven years since. Anybody even remember Hensarling?