Kendra Schaefer 凯娜

Some heads are going to roll over the Zhengzhou flood disaster - "The State Council has decided to establish an investigation team led by the Emergency Management Department. The team hired experts to provide technical support for the investigation." 1/11 http://xinhuanet.com/2021-08/02/c_1127722617.htm …

"The team will investigate the disaster response process in accordance with laws and regulations... summarize experience and lessons, propose disaster prevention and mitigation improvement measures, and hold accountable [any responsible] for dereliction of duty." 2/11

But what has received less attention is that Zhengzhou was selected as a pilot "sponge city" in 2015 - and was five years into a 2017-2030 "sponge city" development plan when the flooding took place. 4/11 https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1598178903920054594&wfr=spider&for=pc …

Little background: A "sponge city" seeks to use green infrastructure to soak up rainwater and store it for re-use. But it is also a flood prevention measure. Zhengzhou gov had pledged to spend RMB 50+ billion by 2020 to implement. 5/11

Citizens have been criticizing the plan. Experts say criticisms are unfair, because the weather was extreme, "a sponge city is not a bucket city," and that you can't build infrastructure that will be underutilized for 999 years to prevent a once-in-a-thousand-year disaster. 6/11

While I agree that it's hard to out-engineer mother nature, the Zhengzhou plan specifically states that the purpose of several of its measures is to help prevent large-scale floods. To be fair, the plan was 10 years from being done, was not designed for such extremes. 7/11

That said, a well-built emergency response system, in tandem with a well-built "sponge city" system, should have helped prevent the loss of life. RMB 50 billion is a lot of money to spend on a system that doesn't. 8/11