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Their efforts take on a special poignancy with the start of yet another hurricane season (it officially began on June 1, though the tropical system Arthur formed a day early around the Yucatan Peninsula). With lingering La Niña conditions and water temperatures in parts of the Gulf of Mexico already a degree or two above average, there’s reason to be concerned.

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Many dams in Southwest China sustained significant damage after the recent massive earthquake.

The Min River and its tributaries have 30 dams upstream from Dujiangyan and 16 incurred significant damage from the recent earthquake. The Zipingpu dam is an example where a dam failure could have disastrous consequences.

Zipingpu dam threatens millions

The Zipingpu reservoir can hold a staggering 1.1 billion cubic meters of water, but the dam wall was cracked after the earthquake. Dujiangyan, with a population of 600,000 would be devastated by a dam failure first. Within a couple hours, water would then hit the provincial capital, Chengdu.

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In 2005 the world was aghast by the images seen on television and newspapers of the mass destruction caused to human life and the city of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

A recent report reveals that State authorities are bolstering levees around Sacramento to prevent it from experiencing Katrina-like effects during a flood. They also hope that severe storms don’t hit the capital city before the completion of projects planned to end by 2012.

With the right combination of bad weather conditions, officials from the Department of Water Resources predict that the American River’s 18,000-square-mile watershed, along with the Sacramento River’s 23,000 square miles in Northern California, could flood the capital city under 20 feet of water, cause $25 billion worth of damage, and devastate homes in Sacramento-area communities.

According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, flooding from the rivers would also leave “500 dead, 102 square miles flooded, and 300,000 people uprooted, an international airport and state agencies under water, and years of recovery.”

So what is the State doing to prevent Sacramento from becoming another New Orleans?

The Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency has been designated to work with state and federal agencies to double Sacramento’s flood protection by using pre-approved $5 billion dollars in state bond money.

Stein Buer, the agency’s executive director, is working with The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the federal Bureau of Reclamation to reinforce the Central Valley’s 1,600 miles of levees, build a spillway channel for the Folsom Dam, and buttress Natomas Basin levees.

Besides infrastructure maintenance, other signs that people are preparing for the worst are building moratoriums near flood-prone areas and higher flood insurance prices.

Environmentalists are concerned about the environmental impacts of more levee construction, homeowners are upset at another high expense, and builders are dismayed at the inability to build, but state officials assure that their plans are in the name of safety.

Because, after all, how horrible would it be if Sacramento became another Katrina? Nobody wants that.

Photo: Wikipedia

The Agency has a special webpage dedicated to flooding, updated every 15 minutes, and as I type this, the page states the following:

1 severe flood warning

74 flood warnings

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And, for five Asian nations, they are initiating a new course focused and designed around preparing for bigger floods.

Experts from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Nepal and Sri Lanka will head to the U.N. University in Thailand to partake in the three-month course. Focused around making an effort to foresee and mitigate flood damage, the course has been initiated as a result of the rise in storm severity and frequency in the region.

The course, announced on the 15th, was spurred by the scientific belief that many of the cities and mass-population areas in these countries are under risk of being submerged.

As the most frequent and deadly natural disaster in Asia, floods have long been a way of life. However, we only need to look at the past several months to see that the severity has grown. More than 3,000 people have been killed in the recent monsoons and storms, affecting a total of 100 million people, and racking up property damage well in to the billions of dollars.

"Floods created the fertile plains on which agriculture and populations have flourished," says Janos Bogardi, Vice-Rector of UNU, which leads the training programme.

The success of control systems, coupled with fast-growing populations, has drawn more people and investment into flood-prone areas, driving up the stakes involved in a catastrophic storm. With climate change threatening to increase the intensity, frequency and magnitude of storms, the time to assess the risk to people and property, and to act on that information, is now.

The pilot program set up by the UNU involves a total of six weeks hands-on, and a subsequent eight weeks of onsite activities to train officials in creating "what if" scenarios. These scenarios include:

• Estimate probable maximum precipitation and model extreme floods;
• Develop worst case estimates of flood peaks and simulate inundation; and
• Assess the number of people and the fragility of property under threat in flood zones.

Furthermore, the course will attempt to implement case studies that will help trainees and trainers alike to design appropriate mitigation measures, and work to standardize damage estimation methodologies for flood prediction. Case studies — which are rare due to the technology needed to design such simulations — will be acquired from Japan – one of the few countries technologically advanced to do so.

Other cases will include the 1991 storm that dropped half-meter of rain on Ormoc City, Philippines, in just six hours, resulting in more than 5,000 deaths; the three days of rainfall in December 1999 in northern Venezuela, which resulted in massive mudslides that killed tens of thousands and caused some $3.5 billion in economic damage; and flood experiences of Hanoi, Vietnam, home to nearly four million people.

Prior to a follow-up meeting, students will be provided with a state of the art GIS (Geographic Information System) so that they can create fully rendered 3-D models to run more effective simulations.

"It may be human nature to gamble rather than invest when rare but potentially large losses are involved. However, climate change is changing the odds of the gamble — the threat of catastrophic flood is growing, and with it the importance of devoting time and resources to remove the consequences of surprise," says Srikantha Herath, Senior Academic Officer at UNU. "We need to anticipate and prepare now for the growing intensity and frequency of storms said to lie ahead."

When a catastrophic storm hits, it is extremely difficult to prevent widespread flooding. The emphasis should be shifted from the impossibility of ‘fail-safe’ systems to ’safe-fail’ — knowing in advance the steps needed to minimize damage and destruction when rare catastrophic floods overwhelm even the best systems.

UNU: Preparing for Bigger Floods (PDF) via ENN: Five Asian nations to study flood, climate risks