“Houston’s perfect storm is coming — and it’s not a matter of if but when,” journalists wrote, a year and a half ago. “Why isn’t Texas ready?”

Former Houston mayor Bill White escapes his home moments after it floods on Sunday. White, 63, served as Houston’s mayor from 2004 to 2010. (Courtesy of Bill White)

David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist “Houston’s perfect storm is coming — and it’s not a matter of if but when,” journalists wrote, a year and a half ago. “Why isn’t Texas ready?” The story was a joint project of The Texas Tribune, an excellent local publication, and ProPublica, the deservedly well-regarded national group. Headlined “Hell and High Water,” it exposed the lack of preparedness, and downright denial, in Houston about flood damage. The project mixes maps and text, and you can dip into it briefly or dig into the details. “We’re sitting ducks. We’ve done nothing,” Phil Bedient, a Rice University professor and storm-surge expert, says in the story. “We’ve done nothing to shore up the coastline, to add resiliency ... to do anything.” The article isn’t perfectly clairvoyant — no story is. It falls into the common trap of exaggerating the economic effects of a news development that’s bad for other reasons. But the story offered an important — and, sadly, unheeded — message: Even though it’s possible to mitigate the effects of extreme weather, we’re instead making choices that aggravate them. To give them their deserved credit, that story is by Neena Satija, Kiah Collier, Al Shaw and Jeff Larson. In Slate, Henry Grabar points out that grasslands around the city could have absorbed some of the nearly 52 inches of rain that have fallen so far — had they not been cut by development. To make matters worse, he writes, officials “encouraged development in low-lying, flood-prone areas without regard to future risk.” At CityLab, Tanvi Misra notes that the failure to prepare for floods often hurts low-income, minority communities the most. These communities “are most vulnerable to flooding, or near petrochemical plants and Superfund sites that can overflow during the storm. This is especially true for Houston.” So far, Harvey has submerged an area greater than 15 times the size of Manhattan. “It’s basically impossible for any of us to get our heads around the scope of just how much damage there’s going to be when this is over,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted (although these maps, from The Times, give us a good idea). On a more uplifting note, Time’s Maya Rhodan has the backstory of the Houston sheriff’s deputy whose helping of two small children ricocheted around social media. In The Times. Frank Bruni writes, of Trump’s Texas trip: “The weather around him changes. The weather inside him doesn’t. It’s a warm bath of self-regard — the biggest ever, I’d wager — and it overrides everything else.” The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Lisa Lyneé Daniels on Houston’s imperiled students.

Source NY Times Opinion Page







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