Known as a dike in European countries, a levee is basically a flood bank or slope that runs parallel to a river. Either natural or man made, a levee helps protect an area from being flooded by serving as a protective dam or wall to the rising river during heavy rains.  However, there are times when levees fail. Sometimes the water from the river is so strong that an actual part of the levee breaks resulting to a whole where the flood water rushes in. This kind of levee failure is referred to as …

About 80 years ago, one of the worst flooding in the history of the United States devastated seven states and placed more than 26,000 square miles of land under water. Affected were the states of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.  The 1927 Mississippi flood began a year before when torrential rains fell in the region. The area experienced extraordinary heavy rains during the summer of 1926 and went on through winter until spring. The record rains was t…

A lot of areas in UK are at high risk of being flooded. The series of floods that hit England and Whales these past few months is a testament to that fact. There are an estimated 5 million people and around 470,000 properties in England and Wales situated in flood risk areas.  Floods have always been a major issue in Britain because they happen quite frequently, affects a large number of people, wrecks considerable amount of properties, and are very very costly. June 2007 was one of the wettest …

Communicable diseases are, simply put, contagious diseases. They are any disease that can be spread through the air, by direct contact or through contaminated body fluids. Some examples of communicable diseases include diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, measles, pertussis, tetanus, meningitis, and hepatitis B.  How do these diseases relate to floods? Well, floods can readily increase the spread of communicable diseases, but not all of them. We can classify the diseases transmitted during…