Hurricane Ian was less a natural disaster than a human-made one.

We must stop
building on swamps

This article is more than 3 months old

Arwa Mahdawi

As millions of Floridians can confirm, there are better places for homes than
wetland in a hurricane zone

The aftermath of Hurricane Ian in San Carlos Island, Florida. Photograph: Giorgio
Viera/AFP/Getty Images

Wed 5 Oct 2022 07.00 BST

Remember when Donald Trump reportedly suggested that we nuke hurricanes in order to
stop them hitting the United States? That idea was obviously ludicrous and got
rightly ridiculed. Ultimately, however, Trump’s ideas weren’t much more absurd
than the accepted status quo in the US – which is to build large amounts of housing
on land vulnerable to natural disasters. Fantasies of nuking hurricanes are
ultimately just as ridiculous as fantasies that millions of people can move on to
paved-over swampland in the most hurricane-ravaged state in the US without disaster
striking.

I’m talking about Florida, of course. In 1960, about five million people lived in the
Sunshine State. Now, that number is about 22 million. During the past few
decades, Florida has seen a construction and population boom, with millions of
people occupying land that is wholly unsuitable for settling on. “The story of
Florida is the story of development happening at times and places where it
probably shouldn’t,” a member of Florida Conservation Voters, a non-profit
organisation that focuses on environmental issues, recently told Politico.

Son saves mother trapped in flooded home after Hurricane Ian

As Hurricane Ian has shown, that is an understatement. At least 103 people have
died, thousands of people are unaccounted for, and 1.8 million people have
been driven from their homes because of Hurricane Ian. It’s the fifth most powerful
storm to hit the US mainland and could be the most expensive storm in Florida’s
history.

My heart goes out to everyone affected. But thoughts and prayers aren’t enough at
a time like this. If we want to prevent this sort of devastation from happening
again, we must admit that Hurricane Ian wasn’t so much a natural disaster as a
human-made one.

As the environmental media outlet Grist has documented: “The root of south-west
Florida’s vulnerability is a development technique called dredge-and-fill.
Developers dug up land from the bottom of rivers and swamps, then piled it up
until it rose out of the water.” Swampland was turned into pricey real estate.
Growth, growth, growth was pursued no matter the cost. Now the bill has come
due.