Greenwich, CT is a town that is very safe in terms of crime and normally natural disasters as well.The Nathan map confirms that natural disasters are not very common here. One category that the Nathan map did minorly include this area however was in the tropical rainstorms and tornadoes category. While this is true, these natural disasters are not very frequent in my hometown and I am very grateful for that. The Nathan map was very broad, showing information that does not specifically show certain towns and cities, but rather large worldwide maps. While this information is helpful, it would be even more beneficial if it were focused in on smaller cities or even just limiting it to only one country per map.

One disaster that interests me is the Flash Flood on Canal Street in Louisiana. The water was said to be swallowing cars and the roadways became waterways with water up to knee deep or tire high for some vehicles. The risk of such a disaster in Greenwich is very high as we already deal with flooding issues. The scale of this disaster is much higher because Louisiana has a much higher population (About 378,000) than Greenwich (About 62,000). More people could have been affected in Louisiana.There would be less of an impact in Greenwich because the streets are not as populated as Canal Street is. Different people in my town would be more vulnerable because there are houses on the bottom of hills and those on the top of hills. Those on the bottom would have a much bigger problem because the water would flow that way.

Based on my personal experience of living in Greenwich for 23 years and seeing numerous storms come through the area, the one natural disaster that we deal with the most is flooding. My family has a landscaping business and we also maintain people’s houses. Whenever we get a little bit more rain than normal, we always get calls from customers asking us to come and help them get water out of their basement. This is also an issue on the streets because they often flood. This causes problems for people trying to get from place to place and with the largest high school in CT in town, there are often a lot of new drivers trying to get around in these conditions which makes it unsafe for everybody.

Actions that can be done to reduce the vulnerability to natural hazards in Greenwich would be to add more drains. Flooding is one of the main natural disasters that occurs here and adding more drains along the roads would be very beneficial. In regards to the houses getting flooded, that is because the land is sloped towards the house. The land should always be sloped away from the house, which would reduce these problems dramatically. The best people to perform these actions are the town of Greenwich, builders in the area when they build houses, and landscaping or site development companies. I can help with this because of my background in landscape architecture and also because my family has a landscaping / site development company that deals with these types of situations. The issue is that people do not want to spend the money to change the grade of the land.