If you read the news you might almost get the idea that storms and floods are an abnormal modern event. The news forgot about Noah. In fact, floods and storms are not only natural but beneficial in every way to nature's processes but injurious to human hubris and property.
For examples, when a river overflows its banks it delivers fresh silt and soil to the flood plain, rejuvenating it (eg the Nile, eg the Mississippi Delta). When a strong storm blows through a forest and knocks down miles of trees, it restarts the forest cycle providing fresh habitat for all sorts of species who live in forest openings. For the Indians, that was an excellent thing.
The disaster part is man-defined, not nature-defined. When people build on flood plains (eg Houston) or on sea-level marshes (New Orleans), big trouble is predictable. And when man covers those flood zones with asphalt and buildings, or alters rivers with canals and levees, it makes it all worse.
Excellent essay by Grunwald at Politico: How Washington Made Harvey Worse - A federal insurance program made Harvey far more costly—and Congress could have known it was coming.
Of course governments and benevolent souls have to step in when these "natural disasters" threaten lives, but a good way to think about it would be, in future at least, market pricing for flood and storm insurance. Let the actuaries figure out the real risk and cost of what people do and put a price on that.
