ohmyfuckinggodwhat?
?? https://www.propublica.org/article/storm-drains-keep-swallowing-people-during-floodsThere’s no official count of how many Americans get pulled into storm drains, pipes or culverts during flood events, but ProPublica identified 35 such cases since 2015 using news accounts and court records. Twenty-one of those people died; nearly half of those lost were children. Thirteen of the deaths happened in the past three years alone. The numbers are likely an undercount, since reports of flood deaths often don’t give details other than the fact that someone was swept away.
Despite records of horrific cases that span the country and stretch back decades — and the scientific consensus that climate change will only worsen flooding — federal, state and local government agencies have failed to take simple steps to prevent such tragedies from happening, ProPublica found, after more than a dozen interviews with government officials, engineers and weather experts, as well as a review of documents including death investigations, government meeting minutes and emails, and academic papers. Officials are not surveying the nation’s aging stormwater drainage systems, which are being taxed beyond capacity by record downpours, to flag openings that could pose a hazard and install grates to prevent people from being sucked in.