In the scheme of things, natural disasters are going to occur, such as in hurricanes, tornados, floods, high and violent winds, earthquakes, and so on and so forth. These natural disasters in and of themselves can be catastrophic but almost always they also can be amplified by mankind's neglect, incompetency, or laziness. For instance, though high and violent winds as well as inclement weather could be the cause of a given bridge collapsing, in most cases, such a bridge collapses mainly because of design or construction flaws, and/or neglect of proper maintenance. So too, hurricanes cause damage through the sustained impact of very high winds, in conjunction with the rising of flood waters that inundates communities, in which, such hurricanes and the locations so impacted by it, often have historical records that demonstrate that a particular area is much more vulnerable to the occurrence and negative impact of a hurricane, yet, construction is still made within that area. Additionally, dams and levees have been built all over America, in which some of those structures are exceedingly old and in need of replacement or remediation, so when very bad weather is combined with a structure that is already failing, it isn't any surprise that such a structure is no longer able to bend, but breaks.
In all of the foregoing, natural disasters have occurred, in which, mankind is usually culpable to some degree to the damage incurred as well as the human life so lost. It isn't fair and reasonable to expect that bridges, causeways, tunnels, dams, roads, homes, buildings, high voltage lines, sewage, and levees are able to always sustain themselves when confronted with catastrophic weather or other events, without regard to the proper maintenance and if necessary, replacement of such. It is one of those unfortunate things, that people, communities, and governments too often expect that things will sort of keep on keeping on, when, in fact, the unexpected will always occur somewhere at sometime, in which those that are not prepared for it, will suffer from that lack of preparedness. Further to the point, while America does an overall stellar job of responding to emergencies, such emergencies could often be ameliorated quite a bit, if the infrastructure was inspected and subsequently rectified as needed, much more often, beforehand.
The thing is that remediation and the doing the necessary work behind the scenes in order to maintain and to augment things such as our bridges and dams, is one of those areas, that necessitates money, equipment, and personnel, and doesn't seem for many people in government or communities, to be the type of expense and maintenance which is often pushed to the top of the list of things that must be done, and though it is often something that is acknowledged that needs to be addressed, a mere acknowledgement does not get the work done.
Too often in America, what needs to be done today to protect our citizens from the inevitable natural disasters that will occur is put off until tomorrow, and consequently when those natural disasters do come, the price that is paid is often a much heavier price than really needs to be paid; of which more governmental bonds should be issued by State as well as Federal authorities to take care of these infrastructure issues so that we as a people are better prepared to thereupon face those natural disasters which invariably do come.