The Brooks home will never be like it was before the 2021 floods in British Columbia. Two years ago, extreme rain filled the Similkameen and Tulameen rivers. Water burst over the banks through a dike and flooded siblings Dian and Danie’s property just outside of Princeton. The two rushed to save their animals and waited for two days in the second level of their home before a rescue boat came.
As Dian watched their homemade furniture bob in the deluge, she remembers thinking, “There goes our house. There goes everything that we have worked for our lives. We have just lost everything.” With help from volunteers, some funding from government and insurance they have since repaired some of the damage and are back inside.
This is hardly an unsolvable problem. But it IS expensive. The Netherlands has 17 million people and almost all of them live in a floodplane or literally under sea level.
You fix this by pouring billions of dollars into flood control. Build dykes, retention areas, meandering rivers and normalized deltas. It’s expensive and a lot of work, and people will need to move, or drown. It’s as simple as that.