NYT: How Government Decisions Left Tennessee Exposed to Deadly Flooding

If all you read is the headline you’d think it was that satanic gubmint who are killing Tennesseans.

But if one reads the article:

[…]

The story of the disaster in Humphreys County, the hardest-hit area in the state, arguably begins in the late 1970s, when the federal government began offering communities around the country a deal: If they agreed to take basic precautions to limit the damage from flooding, the government would let people in those communities buy publicly subsidized flood insurance.

Most cities and counties said yes. But not all of them. Humphreys County declined to take part, federal records show. So did neighboring Houston County, which was hit as well over the weekend. (Some cities within those counties, such as Waverly, which was hit hardest by the floods, do take part in the program.)

A spokeswoman for Humphreys County said officials there were unavailable to comment. But in general, communities that decide to stay out of the flood insurance program typically do so because of an aversion to building restrictions, according to Roy Wright, who ran the program until 2018.

[…]

No building codes

As officials in Humphreys County spurned the federal government’s offer of flood insurance, they were shaping the future of the county in another way: by declining to adopt residential building codes.

The headline **ought** to be: “Locals who willfully spurned government officials now paying the price in floods”.

But no, that would have been too direct to the point and put the blame where it rightly belongs.