Flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which smashed into the Gulf Coast on August 25, has left scores dead, thousands in need of rescue on rooftops or in boats, hundreds of thousands more without power, and tens of thousands in need of shelter.

Yet characterizations of the carnage by the National Weather Service as “historic,” “unprecedented” or “beyond anything experienced” should not be conflated with the spurious claim that the devastation wrought by Harvey is “unpreventable” or “unexpected.”

The outcry by advocates, experts, and activists against the unplanned, for-profit development of cities like Houston has been consistently ignored by city officials, leaving millions — especially the poor and people of color — in the fourth-largest city in the US in a death trap.