Flooding is the most common natural disaster in the world today. Climate change, global warming as well as unsustainable water management and poorly planned development of cities lead to the fact that most areas that might have not seen floods in the past 100 years may soon join the gruesome statistics of this disaster. Floods in Mexico that have been happening throughout the Fall of 2021 are one of the brightest illustrations of why flooding is happening so often today. Moreover, they prove that the whole North American continent should start revising its flood risk management and prepare for massive disasters.
Ironically, Mexico City is among those spots on the map that is being flooded regularly, while people who live there experience a severe shortage of drinking water.
In this article, we shall try to understand why the recent floods in Mexico happened, their probable consequences, and why this disaster is so meaningful for North America.
Floods in Mexico would have happened anyway.
Experts can speculate for hours about the reasons for natural disasters that happen worldwide. However, all those reasons can be technically divided into 2 groups:
- Natural causes;
- Man-made conditions.
In other words, floods can happen due to a natural cause of events, and there is basically nothing people can do about them except for don't their best to protect from raging water. Also, the flooding can result from mismanagement or miscalculation that leads to a misbalance of the water cycle in the area.
For example, the powerful earthquake that strokes the area around Acapulco resort was an entirely natural event, which is pretty standard for the area due to its geological peculiarities.
However, the floods due to river overflow that happened after the series of strokes and have affected over 30,000 people all over the region are partly a result of man-made circumstances.
Mexico city is one of the brightest illustrations of how water mismanagement can lead to flooding and severe water shortage in the area. While a densely populated megapolis takes its water from an underground aquifer, it does not manage to refill at the same pace as it is being drained.
Since most of the city's area is covered with concrete, asphalt and other materials that don't conduct water and prevent it from soaking into the soil, rainwater simply runs off towards the nearest rivers, lakes and ponds.
On the way, it collects all the chemicals, pesticides and other contaminants, poisoning those water bodies and making them unsuitable for drinking from.
Therefore, already overflowing, those rivers and lakes instantly turn into flows of raging water after even the slightest earth stroke, not to mention a 7-magnitude earthquake that happened in September 2021 and was clearly felt 370 km around its epicentre.
Floods in Mexico are not unheard of, and this fact makes the disaster even more devastating. Although those floods happen primarily due to natural causes, peculiarities of the landscape and movement of tropical cyclones in the Pacific that bring heavy rainfall, global warming and climate change stimulate the process significantly, and they are primarily man-made factors.
Coronavirus and floods in Mexico.
Seems like Coronavirus has affected every aspect of our everyday life and work. Unfortunately, this disease has, in a way, contributed to the victims' count of the recent earthquakes and floods in Mexico.
According to the official reports, the flood has affected a hospital in the Hidalgo state, killing 17 people. Later on, the governor of the state said that almost all of those people were patients who suffered from a severe condition of Coronavirus and were attached to the ICU ventilators at the moment of disaster.
While the Pandemic of Coronavirus is still in action, Mexican hospitals are filled with COVID-19 patients. Most of them are in severe condition and cannot even walk, not to mention evacuate from a flooded hospital building.
This tragedy reveals a severe problem that exists worldwide today. With floods happening more and more often, places and institutions like hospitals, nursery homes, schools, community centres, etc., may occur ultimate death traps of their inhabitants and visitors. Since people who attend and spend time in those places are mostly physically not capable of acting fast, climbing on roofs or evacuating the site efficiently, it is essential to provide sufficient flood control solutions that would make those buildings safe for people who occur inside them during floods.
There are lots of efficient and time-tested anti-flooding solutions, such as sandbagging. But most of them take a lot of time to deploy and require some additional manpower or skills.
The modern flood barriers have demonstrated their efficiency in numerous households and private businesses all over the world. They can be deployed and adjusted for any passage or gate in a matter of several minutes. They also don't take much storage place. They can be used multiple times, making flood barriers ingenious solutions for organizations, facilities and institutions that need to optimize their budgets.
Floods that have been happening in Mexico are a warning for the whole continent. The country is like a gate for the tropical cyclones that affect weather in the entire continent. The change of temperatures leads to hurricanes, storms, and therefore floods are penetrating America more and more intensively.
The earlier the continent takes the necessary precaution measures, the higher are the chance to prevent massive victim count from the next disaster, which can happen in the observable future.
Contact Dam Easy and learn about our Flood Barriers and other solutions that will help you seal your house, business or any other residential or commercial building, preventing water from getting inside. Our experts will be happy to answer all your questions and create a personalized anti-flooding kit precisely according to the property's measurements.
We guarantee that you will be fully protected from the subsequent flooding in your area and many more to come with our fast worldwide shipping.
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