Don't mean to sound rude, but...

....I am a bit surprised by the number of people in Houston caught out by a massive flood for which they actually seemed to have a fair bit of warning.   I get the impression that we seem to do precautionary evacuations a bit better than what we're seeing in Texas.

I mean, there would be quite the scandal in Australia if nursing home residents were shown like this:

even if they were all eventually rescued.

I'm reading that Houston is a flood prone city:  perhaps that makes the residents lazy about evacuation warnings?    But then, so is Brisbane, and while you had people caught out in the 2011 flash floods of the Lockyer Valley, I don't know that you had all that many people in Brisbane city needing rescue from their homes as they did have some hours warning.

Update:  Oh yeah, I forgot that I had linked  two years ago to Andy Revkin's lengthy piece about  how Texas and its famously relaxed zoning laws had led to lots of housing on flood plains.   Another case of "Yay for minimal regulations!" [sarc].