It's funny how a similar rain pattern gets such a different response here. My town go over 2.5 inches of rain last week, but the official airport reading as about .75 inches. The .75 inch downpour made the front page, but the main point was that even with all that rain, we shouldn't get complacent, because we're still in drought and still about 40% below normal for the water year.

Sometimes it helps to 'downsize' the amount of foliage to reduce the number of leaves all breathing out water vapour. If the root mass is smaller than the foliage on top it can be a losing battle to keep the leaves turgid on hot/windy days. Definitely shading and a windbreak. Even something as unaesthetically pleasing as old net curtains or an ancient and dampened sheet draped over a sturdy frame can make the difference.

I'm just glad the nearest river is 6 miles in one direction and the next closest is 13 miles in another. Our flooding is all overland! ANy little creek or low spot is filled and overflowing pronto! DD and the boys got a reverse 911 call last night to inform them of two roads closed in her town. She lives 6 miles away from where she works, now has to drive a 30 mile detour to get to work,school and daycare because of washed out roads. The weather man assures everyone the water wont go down too fast because our ground is so saturated with the heavy rain we had last November, before we got this ton or two of snow! So it is slow going.

To me, flood plains (not planes) are somewhat different from other natural disaster-prone areas. Flood plains flood, that's a certainty. Other places may have a risk of natural disaster but with a lower level of likelihood than having too much water on a flood plain or in lower lying areas. To answer the question you posed but not to me - when people choose to live in certain places - low lying or poorly drained areas, or along the banks of a river or by a beach, or in tornado country - they can't ignore that they're subjecting themselves to risks of loss or injury that can be expected to occur with greater likelihood than if they lived elsewhere. I'm sympathetic about any human suffering but less so in these cases where the damage causing event was one that has happened before, could be expected to happen again, and yet knowing that their choice of location put them at risk. I agree completely with function's second paragraph.