Rou

So, once again, the Mighty Mississippi River has overflown it's banks. The waters have risen and left devastation in its wake. Huge areas of land are under water. Homes are destroyed. Crops are wrecked. All a tribute to the amazing power of nature to flex her mighty muscles and remind us all how insignificant our best efforts to chain her down really are.

There is of course, a lot of suffering in the flood wrecked regions. I feel for them. Some.

That emotion is tempered by a couple things. The reason many of those towns are there is that the land is exceedingly fertile. It doesn't just magically happen that way. Something causes it to be fertile. Floods.

Sure, we've built up huge levees to reduce the amount of flooding that occurs. We try to make sure the Mississippi River, one of the largest and most powerful rivers in the entire world, stays inside it's banks. We don't let it straighten it's course or naturally redirect it's flow seasonally. We lock it into it's path with levees. Because it doesn't have anywhere else to put it, we force the river to deposit it's sediment of the bottom of the river instead of across the floodplain. That raises the river higher every single year making it more and more likely to overflow the levees. You have to raise the levees to match. And if it ever does break a levee, that much more water will flow out into our towns and farms. It's a vicious circle.

So, here we have huge populations of people living on or near a flood plain because it's both fertile land, and has easy access to a major shipping lane. Note the term. Flood plain. There is a reason we call it that. These people, living on these flood plains are taking a calculated risk. Even if it wasn't apparent to them decades ago, the 1993 flood should have raised awareness.

Certainly, the government noticed. It changed it's rules for federal flood insurance. Silly things like requiring people to flood-proof certain areas, or build houses on stilts to prevent flood damage. Did the people listen? I'm sure some of them did. But most of them didn't. And now they're trying to figure out what to do because the government isn't going to cover them.

It's those people that I just don't have a full measure of sympathy for. Yes it's bad. It sucks. But at the same time, they choose to wager their lives and belongings on a bet: that the Mississippi River wouldn't destroy their homes. That the levees would protect them. That the 1993 flood was a statistical anomaly that could never happen again.

Yes, yes. It sucks to be them. I can't truly imagine the damage done to their lives. I really don't want to be totally cold-hearted. I just think that there are certain facts of life that you need to accept. I accept that any money I go into a casino with is as good as gone, and anything I come out with is a bonus. They need to accept that they were gambling everything they had on the hope that the river wouldn't flood. My odds at blackjack are probably better than theirs out on the floodplain.