The Illinois town of Valmeyer had for centuries suffered from floods, but the Great Flood of 1993 – as it came to be known – was one of the worst in recent history, inundating 20 million acres (80,000 square kilometres) along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The flooding caused $15 billion in damage across nine Midwestern states, including Illinois, and destroyed 10,000 homes.
“Most people didn’t want to ever have to go through an event like this again, and they didn’t want their kids and grandkids and future generations to have to go through an event like this again,” said Dennis Knobloch, a county official who was the village mayor in 1993 and had seen his community through the flood and its aftermath.
So Valmeyer did what many vulnerable, disaster-prone communities around the world have considered: It moved to safer ground.
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