Road 18 miles through west and SW Houston today

[TexasBushwhacker]

Took my first Uber because my totally functional car is stranded in my apartments parking because the entrances and exits are blocked by more than 3' of standing water.

Here's the thing. Other than some standing water on Westheimer, the roads were DRY. Drainage ditches were not full, at all. Yes, we have tens of thousands of flooded homes and hundreds of thousands of totalled cars. Thousands of our neighbors are displaced in shelters. Roughly half the busses are running and many more will be next week.

One would think, after getting more rain in 5 days than we normally get in a year (wrap your mind around that) after 2 days of sunshine, Houston is, for the most part, back in business. That is nothing short of AMAZING.

I love my city and my mayor!

[malaise]

1. Glad things are improving

[politicat]

2. So...

If
1) buildings are built to handle extreme wet for up to 10 days
-- elevated, reinforced concrete/block construction
-- no drywall
-- tile or Coadstone floors and walls
-- metal/plastic/resin cabinetry with gasketed doors and sealed stone, concrete, recycled glass or other impervious table and countertops
-- minimum two stories so one level is less likely to be destroyed
-- encased, surface sealed wiring instead of in-wall wiring
-- HVAC on roof, tankless hot water on upper floor
-- roof hatch

And
2) furnishings on a similar to Japanese model -- light, highly moveable, intended to be recycled/renewed after a few years of use and made of natural, compostable material

This could alter a devastating and regular sequence of events to a frustrating and irritating regular sequence of events.

White collar work would need to move to a remote server/no paper environment. Retail survivability can be improved with water dams (big bladders full of water, filled before storm, like sandbags) and concrete construction. After a flood, the mud removal and cleaning will take a couple weeks, but that's faster and easier to do with a pressure washer and Lysol than removing carpet and sub-flooring and drywall. Assume floods would require some replacement, but not everything.

It will require a building code and zoning. But we know how to make cast concrete and 3d print concrete structures. This is an issue of process far more than technology. Nothing I said is at all difficult, it just requires an adjustment in how we think about the technology we use.

[Demtexan]

3. Houston used to have houses built on blocks in yards.

Starting in the 50's that started th change.

The old neighborhoods like mine are mostsly gone.

Cement and townhouses are killing Houston.

Building houses in flood plains for rivers and creeks is stupid.

I think a lot of houses will be bought out.

[TexasBushwhacker]

4. Well, the flood plain maps will be redrawn

They simply must stop rebuilding in areas that flood all the time. FEMA needs to a buy back program and areas that are cleared can be reclaimed as government owned wetlands. The 2 reservoirs on the west side of town are actually parks 99% of the time. Their dams were already undergoing repairs, so I hope they take advantage of the situation and make them stronger and taller. They were built 70 years ago and their was supposed to be a 3rd major reservoir, but it was never built. Developers wanted to build and SURPRISE, some of those very developments are amoung the hardest hit. Those blasted developers made their money though.

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. Well, I'll take 3 story townhouses over McMansions

The bottom story is the garage, so you have a built in "okay to flood" area.

[Demtexan]

6. The problem with townhouses is that there is no yard to hold the rain.

Yards are flood plains.

That is why houses like mine were build on blocks.

The inner cities neighborhoods like mine shed more water now.

We will need more dentention ponds.

Lots more.

The water has to go someplace.

Townhouses will need above ground doors.