Climate-Related Disasters

I always wonder that myself. Or if there’s some other system. I’m sure this has been debated and discussed given Houston’s clay soil.

 

I've owned both slab on grade and pier and beam houses. Pier and beam is so easy to level. Just go under the house with jacks and a team and you can do a large house in a day. Slabs can be a nightmare, which I'm dealing with right now.

 

Yeah, if you're in an area where the ground is prone to shifting and you're planning on keeping the house for more than ~10 years, there's no way I'd pour a slab.

However, I'm pretty certain that many HOAs require them, because reasons.

 

Generally HOAs are in neighborhoods built by giant developers so there's a rigid ascetic standard because there are like 10 models anyway.

 

To tag onto this...Houston is a place where the ground shifts constantly with the clay expanding and contracting. I don't think anyone who has a house built before the 2012 drought doesn't have foundation issues. You can mitigate this somewhat before you build with the proper soil/sand mix and packing but ultimately slabs are going to get wrekt in H-Town.

 

Plot of Quantum of Solace, right?

 

"climate gentrification" is a good way to put it

 

My pappy taught me three things:

1. Never trust a woman with a dagger tattoo
2. Never ask a woman if she’s pregnant
3. Always read an article written by a guy named Thor

 

S**t don't flow uphill
Payday's Friday

 

Deadly Asian floods are no fluke. They’re a climate warning, scientists say

Southeast Asia is being pummeled by unusually severe floods this year, as late-arriving storms and relentless rains wreak havoc that has caught many places off guard.

Deaths have topped 1,400 across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, with more than 1,000 still missing in floods and landslides. In Indonesia, entire villages remain cut off after bridges and roads were swept away. Thousands in Sri Lanka lack clean water, while Thailand’s prime minister acknowledged shortcomings in his government’s response.

Malaysia is still reeling from one its worst floods, which killed three and displaced thousands. Meanwhile, Vietnam and the Philippines have faced a year of punishing storms and floods that have left hundreds dead.

What feels unprecedented is exactly what climate scientists expect: A new normal of punishing storms, floods and devastation.

“Southeast Asia should brace for a likely continuation and potential worsening of extreme weather in 2026 and for many years immediately following that,” said Jemilah Mahmood, who leads the think tank Sunway Centre for Planetary Health in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Asia is facing the full force of the climate crisis
Climate patterns last year helped set the stage for 2025’s extreme weather.

Atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the most on record in 2024. That “turbocharged” the climate, the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization says, resulting in more extreme weather.

Asia is bearing the brunt of such changes, warming nearly twice as fast as the global average. Scientists agree that the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are increasing.

Warmer ocean temperatures provide more energy for storms, making them stronger and wetter, while rising sea levels amplify storm surges, said Benjamin Horton, a professor of earth science at the City University of Hong Kong.

Storms are arriving later in the year, one after another as climate change affects air and ocean currents, including systems like El Nino, which keeps ocean waters warmer for longer and extends the typhoon season. With more moisture in the air and changes in wind patterns, storms can form quickly.

“While the total number of storms may not dramatically increase, their severity and unpredictability will,” Horton said.

Governments were unprepared
The unpredictability, intensity, and frequency of recent extreme weather events are overwhelming Southeast Asian governments, said Aslam Perwaiz of the Bangkok-based intergovernmental Asian Disaster Preparedness Center. He attributes that to a tendency to focus on responding to disasters rather than preparing for them.

“Future disasters will give us even less lead time to prepare,” Perwaiz warned.

In Sri Lanka’s hardest-hit provinces, little has changed since 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, said Sarala Emmanuel, a human-rights researcher in Batticaloa. It killed 230,000 people.

“When a disaster like this happens, the poor and marginalized communities are the worst affected,” Emmanuel said. That includes poor tea plantation workers living in areas prone to landslides.

Unregulated development that damages local ecosystems has worsened flood damage, said Sandun Thudugala of the Colombo-based non-profit Law and Society Trust. Sri Lanka needs to rethink how it builds and plans, he said, taking into account a future where extreme weather is the norm.

Videos of logs swept downstream in Indonesia suggested deforestation may have made the floods worse. Since 2000, the flood-inundated Indonesian provinces of Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra have lost 19,600 square kilometers (7,569 square miles) of forest, an area larger than the state of New Jersey, according to Global Forest Watch.

Officials rejected claims of illegal logging, saying the timber looked old and probably came from landholders.


Billions are lost, while climate finance is limited

Countries are losing billions of dollars a year because of climate change.

Vietnam estimates that it lost over $3 billion in the first 11 months of this year because of floods, landslides and storms.

Thailand’s government data is fragmented, but its agriculture ministry estimates about $47 million in agricultural losses since August. The Kasikorn Research Center estimates the November floods in southern Thailand alone caused about $781 million in losses, potentially shaving off 0.1% of GDP.

Indonesia doesn’t have data for losses for this year but its annual average losses from natural disasters are $1.37 billion, its finance ministry says.

Costs from disasters are an added burden for Sri Lanka, which contributes a tiny fraction of global carbon emissions but is at the frontline of climate impacts, while it spends most of its wealth to repay foreign loans, said Thudugala.

“There is also an urgent need for vulnerable countries like ours to get compensated for loss and damages we suffer because of global warming,” Thudugala said.

“My request ... is support to recover some of the losses we have suffered,” said Rohan Wickramarachchi, owner of a commercial building in the central Sri Lankan town of Peradeniya that was flooded to its second floor. He and dozens of other families he knows must now start over.

Responding to increasingly desperate calls for help, at the COP30 global climate conference last month in Brazil, countries pledged to triple funding for climate adaptation and make $1.3 trillion in annual climate financing available by 2035. That’s still woefully short of what developing nations requested, and it’s unclear if those funds will actually materialize.

Southeast Asia is at a crossroads for climate action, said Thomas Houlie of the science and policy institute, Climate Analytics. The region is expanding use of renewable energy but still reliant on fossil fuels.

“What we’re seeing in the region is dramatic and it’s unfortunately a stark reminder of the consequences of the climate crisis,” Houlie said.

 

speaking of flooding, washington state is experiencing historic flooding the past 2 days.

 

Barker Reservoir: Flood Control and Capacity Overview

Barker Reservoir.Barker Reservoir is southwest of the intersection of U.S. Highway 90 and State Highway 6, about one mile south of Addicks in western Harris County (at 29°46' N, 95°39' W). The reservoir is formed on Buffalo Bayou by a rolled-earth dam 72,900 feet long and 112.5 feet high. The spillway elevation is 73.2 feet, and the drainage area covers 128 square miles. The storage capacity of the reservoir, 199,000 acre-feet, expands to 209,000 acre-feet at flood stage. The purpose of the reservoir is to provide flood control on the Buffalo Bayou watershed in the San Jacinto River basin for the city of Houston. Water is stored in the reservoir until it can be released to flow downstream without endangering property. The United States Army Corps of Engineers completed the Barker dam in February 1946, but the reservoir had already been used in 1945 for spring flood control. The total storage capacity of the Barker Reservoir and the adjacent Addicks Reservoir is 411,500 acre-feet.


There is video at the link and the houses that were flooded didn't exist when the Barker Reservoir was built in the 1940's.

US Appeals Court sides with homeowners in Harvey flooding case

It's been eight years since Hurricane Harvey--eight years of a legal slog for Catherine Popovici and her family since their home flooded along the Barker Reservoir.

"We were trapped in our house," Popovici told ABC13. "Basically, what was really surprising for us is the rain came down, and then the rain stopped, and yet the water kept rising, rising up."

As the water rose, she took measurements with a ruler. Then, once they receded, she sued the government for flooding her property. This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals sided with her and five others, blaming the government, which built the reservoir, and saying they're owed money.

"The government has taken the right to flood your property," said plaintiffs' attorney Daniel Charest. "It built the dam so it would flood your property, and it was foreseeable that these floods would happen, and they inevitably will reoccur."

In the 27-page ruling, the court wrote exactly that.

"We hold that the flooding of Plaintiff's properties gave rise to a permanent taking," records stated. "Even if the flooding of Plaintiff's properties were temporary, we would still hold that the government took Plaintiff's properties."

Christina Micu is another of the six plaintiffs. Her home flooded after she evacuated to Dallas as the rain fell.

"It's just really was hard," she said. "It sucked really bad to watch all the flooding happening, knowing that my oldest son was at home, and seeing the pictures from the neighbors, the water rising up to the door, and me kind of freaking out, like, 'What's gonna happen with my son? What's gonna happen with my house?'"

She is grateful for the ruling. Her attorney, Charest, said it was a big win for the homeowners who did not know their homes could flood because of their proximity to the reservoir.

"Broadly speaking, we won everything that we asked for," Charest said, "With small margins on the damages side, and the government lost everything it asked for with small margins on the damages side."

And while this case represents just six plaintiffs, the ruling could impact countless other cases among thousands who flooded upstream of the reservoir after Harvey, potentially providing precedent.

Catherine Popovici is happy her case is one step closer to being over--eight years after the flood.

"I feel that the claim is correct," she said. "I feel it's the right thing to do morally. I feel that we have a moral claim, a good claim, and so I'm happy that the court affirmed this."

ABC13 reached out to the Department of Justice for a comment on the ruling and how they might proceed, but as of Tuesday afternoon, we have not yet received a response.

 

now it's california turn to experience flooding.