Global View
Can you see the stream? The City of Indianapolis
buried Pouges Run underneath the downtown area in 1914. The “stream” is
underneath the intersection of Kentucky Ave. and McCarty Street in this
photo. (Photo: Indianapolis Department of Public Works.)Forest fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes get all the glamour on TV news but floods are the most common natural hazard that leads to property loss and death. If you forget everything else about this course, there is one thing I want you to remember: never buy or rent a house or apartment within the flood plain of a stream. Second, if you buy a house that sits beside a drainage pond or sits in a low point in a neighborhood, you should buy basic flood insurance at $100 a year. Remember, insurance companies won’t cover your losses from a flood.
Floods are a natural behavior of rivers. Its only when humans foolishly build houses next to streams that flooding becomes a problem. Most governments fail to protect their citizens from flood risk because they are eager to collect property taxes on new buildings, and they believe they can engineer their way out of flooding risks.
Often, many people are affected by flooding hazards when a new shopping plaza or housing development drastically changes the behavior of a local stream, causing runoff to damage their property or increase the discharge and flood risk of local streams.
Please complete this section by taking the assessment.
