It is long past time to stop calling events like Hurricanes Sandy, Katrina, and now Harvey and Irma, natural disasters. There is no such thing. These may be natural events. But many of the costs of recovery—and who pays those costs—are the results of decisions people make. There is nothing natural about the catastrophic consequences of these choices.

Planning (or the lack thereof), underfunding the nation's infrastructure, and a wide range of public policies and private practices that concentrate low-income and non-white families in vulnerable communities are just a few of the “unnatural” factors that have shaped the events unfolding in Houston now. Twelve years ago, Americans saw those same unnatural factors on display in New Orleans and southern Louisiana.

That Houston has experienced its third “500-year” flood in the past three years should tell Americans that something is amiss with such projections. Houston is not alone. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had a 500-year flood in 2008 and then a 100-year flood in 2016. The National Weather Service reported six 1,000-year floods between 2010 and 2015. Such patterns hint that climate change is a contributing factor: Most scientists agree that human activity has played a role in these bizarre meteorological events.

Communities that have long suffered from poverty and uneven development experience the most significant disaster impacts. Brown University sociologist John Logan found that of the New Orleans neighborhoods most severely damaged by Katrina, 46 percent of the residents were black and another 21 percent were poor. Conversely, black residents comprised 26 percent of the population in undamaged areas, while only 15 percent were poor. The images of citizens stranded at the Superdome in 2005 just scratched the surface of the immediate, longstanding, and continuing racial and class disparities revealed by Katrina: A 2015 Kaiser Foundation report found that in 2010, 31 percent of African Americans reported being behind in their rent or mortgage payments and having trouble paying for food in the previous 12 months. Only 8 percent of whites had experienced those economic problems.

The disparities in damage caused by Harvey no doubt will be dwarfed by the unequal resources various groups will bring to the recovery effort.

Strong storms do wreak havoc. But devising environmentally appropriate local zoning laws and putting into place community development initiatives can mitigate damage and better assist recovery. Preserving more land for green space to absorb the water in Houston generally would have mitigated the damage. More democratic participation by all affected communities in local development initiatives can encourage more equitable distribution of community development resources generally and recovery resources in particular.

Read the full article about unnatural disasters by Gregory D. Squires at The American Prospect.