Wanderer Vagabond

I think that this article highlights perfectly the insanity that we engage in (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/10/german-valley-swept-away-cemeteries-gave-up-their-dead). Yes, the flooding they got on the River Ahr is cyclical, those cycles are now getting shorter but the real stupidity is that after a flooding event such as this, the insurers insist that everything is rebuilt as it was (the no betterment clause of Insurers). So we have a town that has been wrecked by floods and at the behest of the insurers you are not permitted to do anything to make it more resistant the the inevitable future floods (unless you pay for it yourself). The quote from the article says,"....If you are rebuilding a school, say, and you want to move the science laboratory from the ground floor to the third, so that equipment can be protected in the case of another flood, insurers and government funds won’t cover the cost of fitting. Everything needs to be as it was.....". Whilst building on any flood plain is hardly the brightest of ideas, but iF we are going to do so, why not built houses that will at least have some resilience? How about building the house on 'stilts' or a framework that abandons the ground floor to floodwater and only have rooms on the first and second floors? It's hardly rocket science but will be met with the whine,'Oh, it's too expensive to do that' as though having your house flooded by sewage laden floodwater doesn't carry any cost