It's a case of "pick your poison." Which disaster is least reprehensible to you?
In the Deep South where I grew up, you can set your watch by the summer afternoon thunderstorms. The last time I lived there, our TV and Wii got fried while turned off and plugged into an uninterupted power supply that was supposed to protect them from any electrical issues. To this day, my mother will say "Can't talk. A storm is coming. Bye!" when I call because the electrical storms are awful in Georgia.
When I lived in Kansas, it was tornadoes.
In California, earthquakes. Worse, California has fire season, not a season I ever want in my life again, ideally.
Etc ad nauseum.
Human development tends to have a strong correlation to flood zones because water is essential to human survival and human civilization. We need to drink to live. We need water for crops and flood plains have rich soils. We use rivers and oceans for transportation of goods. Major cities have a tendency to be coastal and sitting on a natural harbor that has been artificially enhanced.
Sure, floods cause problems. But having no water is generally vastly worse.
Life's a bitch. Then you die.