As flooded Alberta communities begin to pick up the pieces and government recovery money starts to roll in, it would be wise to not only think about repairing the damage, but to prepare for what's to come.
In the past week-and-a-half, many people affected by the flooding have remarked how they thought the deluge that struck the province in 2005 was a so-called once-in-100-years flood, only to live through a similar disaster only eight years later.
Most climate scientists are warning that due to the warming of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, these types of events are going to happen more frequently.
According to a report prepared for the Insurance Bureau of Canada last year, intense rainfall events in Canada are expected to increase in frequency so that “an event that occurred on average once every 50 years will be likely to occur about once every 35 years by 2050.”
“Even in regions of the country where average rainfall is projected to decrease in the summer, the frequency at which severe precipitation events occur is expected to increase over the next 40 years.”
Some meteorologists believe such damaging storms and the flooding they cause could happen even more frequently.
The same report indicated that the country's aging infrastructure will not be able to handle such high amounts of rainfall.
“A significant long-term deficit in infrastructure improvement has left sanitary/surface water systems vulnerable as, in some areas of the country, the storm and sanitary sewer infrastructure is simply unable to handle the increasing levels of precipitation,” the report states.
So while we rebuild our communities, we should also think about using some of the money set aside for repair and recovery efforts to build new, or improve existing, infrastructure to handle the storms and flooding events that are expected to come.
It makes more sense to take preventive action now than to continually have to spend vast amounts of cash every time a storm, flood or other natural disaster wreaks havoc.
On that note, we should also look at ways to avoid building future communities— and even move existing communities— away from areas that are prone to large flooding events.
In an interview with the Globe and Mail last week, Blair Feltmate, chair of the University of Waterloo's Climate Change Adaptation Project, said with natural disasters such as the 2013 Alberta floods increasing in frequency, millions of people across the country could soon find their homes uninsurable.
“In the absence of weather-hardening infrastructure, under the new extremes of climate change and extreme weather events, we are categorically heading towards an uninsurable housing market in Canada in many, many regions,” he told the newspaper.
Feltmate added, in what should seem like common sense, that while the provincial and federal governments are doling out recovery money, they should also work with industry to develop up-to-date flood plain maps for the country.
Those maps could then be used to indicate regions where extreme flooding is likely that can be designated as “uninsurable markets,” with warnings for communities, developers and businesses not to build there.
That's good advice as we deal with the present challenges caused by the flooding and look ahead to make sure this type of devastation doesn't happen again.
