MIAMI — Fort Lauderdale’s flood was worse than any hurricane in local memory, unmatched by anything on the record books and happened faster and harder than anyone planned or prepared for.
Rain filled the city’s underground tunnel, swamped the generator that kicked on at city hall and forced the sixth-largest school district in the country to close for two days. Roads turned to rivers and hundreds of residents fled their waterlogged homes, some to a shelter set up by the Red Cross.
Science — and the reality of government planning — suggest that it’s far too expensive and technologically complicated to build a city that can withstand 2 feet of rain in a single day.
