some good ideas here.

I don't believe that any of America's major cities can be evacuated at the current time - not without major chaos and disastrous effects. Houston is no exception. This time they decided to "shelter in place". I'm not sure it helped, especially because a lot more rain is coming. Somewhere in America a group of city planners need to take on the challenge ... how to get a lot of people out of a city. Right now, no planners have a practical answer.

About houses ... I agree that single-story homes should have been banned. It would have been much smarter to build houses on stilts. Especially in the lowland areas. But all of that costs extra money. The explosion in city growth really equates to an explosion in city greed. Local politics are dominated by realtors and housing construction magnates. they pay off city authorities. They get themselves elected. They carve up all the land, and rake in as much $$ as they can. When a true disaster strikes ... they throw up their hands and say "Don't blame me. Nobody could have seen this coming". And then they look for more money with re-building programs.

It's no different in California. The realtors have sold housing tracts on top of the San Andreas fault. Literally, just yards from the fault line. All these houses will be bulldozed by the next great quake. The problem is widespread along a big section of the fault line. Everybody knows it's a ripoff, and the casualties will be high. But no-one ever holds them responsible. The problem is human greed, doled out in very big doses.