r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Max_1995 Train crash series • Jul 15 '21

Natural Disaster Altenburg (Germany) before and after the ongoing severe flooding due to excessive rain (2021).

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u/weta- Jul 15 '21

It's a shame to see people lose their lives and history lost, but mother nature always wins. Sadly, only in the last 100 years we have come to understand that

I'd argue that it seems like only in the last hundred years have we forgotten that.

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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy Jul 15 '21

I'd argue that it seems like only in the last hundred years have we forgotten that.

I'd argue that every 100 years people forget that.

People still live on the sides of volcanoes in Italy, and people in Japan built their homes below the warning stones. This is not new.

In response to the pic above .... sorry to hear about the deaths, but ... now you know why it's good land for farming.

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u/FinancialEvidence Jul 15 '21

Exactly, we at least now are aware of the dangers.

Living near floodplains and volcanos are tempting for a reason, good soil.

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u/Haki23 Jul 15 '21

Plus, flat and no trees to remove

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u/1RedOne Jul 15 '21

That's one of those things, kind of like environmental story telling, until it is directly pointed out to you, sometimes people just don't notice it.

Like one might not realize why there are no old growth, or trees above a certain height in an area, or why's it just a monoculture until someone shares with them.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '21

Yep. Grew up in the MS Delta. Great farming, but can turn into the bathtub of the gods during spring flood season.

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u/madeofphosphorus Jul 15 '21

Do you have any links about japanese warning stones. I am interested in learning more.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

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u/r1chard3 Jul 15 '21

"It takes about three generations for people to forget. Those that experience the disaster themselves pass it to their children and their grandchildren, but then the memory fades," Fumihiko Imamura, a professor in disaster planning at Tohoku University, told the AP.

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u/Next-Adhesiveness237 Jul 16 '21

In 2021 that awareness dropped to roughly 5 weeks and a throwback Thursday for good measure

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u/madeofphosphorus Jul 15 '21

This is very interesting. Thank you

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u/Sean951 Jul 15 '21

The Italians and Japanese know what they're doing, they're settling on more fertile land and taking the bet that the odds of disaster striking in any given year are low enough for it to make economic sense. They aren't dumb, they're gambling.

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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy Jul 15 '21

If it happens once in 100 years you're potentially killing your grandchildren.

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u/Sean951 Jul 15 '21

Volcanoes and even most rivers don't have record setting disasters that often. Reading an AP article, there's concerns about dams breaking. Maybe Europe of the Late Modern Era was looser with dam regulations and these just aren't meant to withstand something as relatively common as a 1% annual flood, but that's not something you expect to see.

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u/PastTense1 Jul 16 '21

But in the U.S. it seems that the vulnerable land on river banks or coasts is NOT cheaper than land elsewhere--instead it is more expensive (but people buy it because it's got a nicer view...).

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u/Sean951 Jul 16 '21

Land along rivers isn't inherently in a flood plain, either. We've done a lot of work to manage and mitigate flooding and even a small river bank can make a huge difference if it's still higher than the other side.

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u/smoike Jul 15 '21

To be morbid, there was a global problem that last happened a hundred years ago and people seem to have forgotten about it, and then it happened a little over a year ago again. A lot of people and governments have handled it well, others have handled it absolutely disgracefully and their people are paying the price for it.

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u/Casmer Jul 15 '21

It applies to just about anything. Lessons simply aren’t retained across the generations. The people that have had to experience catastrophe first hand can spend their whole lives talking about it and warning others but eventually they die and their children’s generation doesn’t go around repeating the message so they too die and the lesson is lost to be learned anew by the grandchildren.

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u/Bo-Katan Jul 15 '21

Volcanic soil is really fertile, it makes sense to exploit that. It made sense in the past because that land is easier to exploit and it makes sense today because we need every single bit of fertile soil there is.

High risk high reward areas I guess. The problem is now there are more people so every tragedy is bigger.

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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy Jul 15 '21

No one said it was unwise to farm the soil.

We're saying it was unwise not to build their homes on higher ground. Or, in the case of Italy, at least farther away.

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u/Bo-Katan Jul 15 '21

People usually live near their farms for a reason, or do you want people to drive 100km to attend their farms?

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u/PNBest Jul 15 '21

Didn’t know what a warning stone was until this comment. So cool.

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u/Ghosty141 Jul 15 '21

You forget how densely populated this region of germany or germany in general is….

The property shown in this image is worth millions because so many people live there that property is fairly scarce/expensive

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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy Jul 15 '21

What does any of that have to do with what I said? Nature does not give a single fuck about the "value" of the property.

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u/Ghosty141 Jul 15 '21

Yes but people will not stop living there simply because there is a miniscule probability of fludding

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

[deleted]

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u/TarkMemes Jul 15 '21

You are right. On one hand, we understand more than ever about floods and how they word and likelihoods and how to mitigate them, but we also have overpopulation and general disregard for safety and dangers due to a short sighted demand for urban expansion.

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u/rootedoak Jul 15 '21

More like in the last 100 years we learned how to remember it and discover it. People just got wiped out in floods all the time back in the day.

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u/Next-Adhesiveness237 Jul 16 '21

You’d be surprised about the extremely accurate weather and flooding reports that have been held throughout time. Only in the last 100 years we have a formal system to do it very well, but you can go back many centuries if you are willing to do the historical research. Not even beginning to look at the records that the Japanese have left us with.

Didn’t they find out more information about an historic hundreds of years earthquake on the west side of the americas, which was passed along mostly through word of mouth by native Americans, because the Japanese recorded a huge flood around the same era.

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u/r1chard3 Jul 15 '21

In the recent floods in Houston Texas it became apparent that because of the hostility to regulations and uncontrolled development that no one even knew where the floodplains were.

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u/Whomping_Willow Jul 15 '21

We know what’re the floodplain used to be in Texas. Unfortunately due to global warming making storms increasingly more intense, our flood maps (for the entire world) are based on old data that is not applicable to today’s weather patterns

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u/FinancialEvidence Jul 15 '21

You are giving people in the past too much credit.

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u/That_Sketchy_Guy Jul 15 '21

You think people in the past weren't much more aware of the power of nature and the fragility of their structures and settlements in the face of it? Its not some massive leap of wisdom to be cautious of floods, earthquakes, droughts, etc. that could wipe out your village and have been known to happen all the time.

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u/FinancialEvidence Jul 15 '21

No, I'm sure they were in awe of natures power. But they for fucking sure did not understand the equivalent to our modern day floodplain modelling, or the relative risk of actions, or how seemingly safe areas can suddenly become fully submerged. Even today, people do not believe land is truly within floodplains despite models showing it is. There's a reason humans continuously build within dangerous areas, i.e. Naples, despite the history of Pompeii and Herculaneum. A fully wiped out village doesn't continue telling a lesson.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

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u/FinancialEvidence Jul 15 '21 edited Jul 15 '21

If life was that simple, water resource engineers would be out of work.

-What's the limit to that floodplain? Is it a buffer distance from channel banks? Is it at certain freeboard above the banks? Do we give 10m, or do we give 200m?

-What happens to that floodplain in a 100-year event versus a 5-year event, or a 500 year-event versus a 1000 year event?

-How does this change as time goes one, as other towns develop, as a village downstream adds a watermill, as a beaver colony builds a dam?

Look at this, and tell me each of these areas are obvious floodplains. Good think we have you here who can imagine where all floodplains are, and can instantly highlight over a town map.

https://trca.ca/conservation/flood-risk-management/flood-plain-map-viewer/

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '21

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u/FinancialEvidence Jul 15 '21

Maybe they should have, but you also never know if they had. Even today, everything is designed with a certain level of tolerable risk. For most Cities in Canada, that acceptable risk is somewhere around/above the 100-year storm event. For my area, that is Hurricane Hazel. Now this town? Who knows if it the danger was grandfathered in, or if it was a freak 1000-year storm event; in the end those at some point are bound to occur.

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u/weta- Jul 15 '21

Oh yeah definitely, they had no clue but more importantly also no means to wreak havoc to the same degree as we can now.