After lessons learned from super-storm Sandy, US telcos weather Hurricane Matthew

Re: Level 3 made extensive preparations in advance of Hurricane Matthew

Possibly. It ain't over yet for the people of South Carolina, who get four more days of flooding before the rivers pass the "crest" point. Not sure how much wet has arrived, but judging by the pictures the floods are about one Toyota midsize car deep.

That'll ruin your day if you have electrical equipment nearby, and eventually one pole has to fall which is the whole shooting gallery. Forget the lines laid underground. Those lucky folks with undergroundwater wires are now suffering from the shard and froyder of those whose power poles fell in Sandy. When the water gets one car high, the pressure plays hob with the waterproofing.

But having weathered the ugly aftermath of Sandy in a temperate climate racing towards winter, my sympathies go out to those faced with being made homeless further south, where last year snow fell in abundance for the first time in some people's memory.

What I *don't* understand is that when faced with repeated catastrophic flooding, and not being in a position to relocate, the people of Galveston lifted their city out of the way of the water. That was over a hundred yeas ago, using crude plant and shovels. Why the much-touted "investment in infrastructure" can't be centered around doing the same for (for example) those areas of New Orleans deep (ahahahahaha) in the floodplain of the Mississippi using the best that the twenty-first century diesel and hydraulic engineers can bring to bear.