FEMA should not be encouraging this by always serving people in known floodplains. I'm sure insurance companies already encode this in premiums (except apparently the ones which did not tell the insured about this issue in Houston).
When you build a home in the middle of a flood plain, you're putting the emergency services workers who have to try to help you at risk. You're having the city build infrastructure that has to be repaired/replaced every time there's a disaster. And we all know full well it will be the poor who live in these areas and lose their homes when disaster strikes- putting themselves onto welfare and bankruptcy that the rest of us wind up paying for.
There is no such thing as individual risk anymore. Welcome to the 21st century.
I recognize the American mindset of independence is different than the Canadian one of interdependence. It is too bad most of American society didn't have to survive an brutal overwinter in its formative days.
You're not the only Canadian here, bud. ;- )
> However you are not allowed to die for making this decision. Emergency services have to be spent rescuing you.
That's really the problem here. It needs to be possible to bargain access to these services, or pay for them at a higher rate. The homeowner must be directly exposed to the cost of living in a floodplain and having rescue workers come to them.
We decided as society that human life is not cheap and disposable. And while I recognize that argument begs the question.. that "we as society" may or may not include an individual who may disagree, the heart of the point is the individual isn't patamouny to how the world works.
Flood plains exist for a reason. They are supposed to flood. Your house and the infrastructure to support it undermines its purpose and makes the risk of flooding for everyone in the region worse.
The erosion of the Mississippi delta is a great example of tragedy of the commons in this scenario. We’ve spent billions on flood remediation and levees to build in floodplain, and as a result the whole delta is disappearing. New Orleans will wash away someday as a result. Every billion invested in supporting stupid decisions to build will cost $10 billion or more in destruction and misery in the future.