The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have teamed up to highlight flood risk with their Flood Safety Awareness Week. In many ways, flooding is the most-damaging natural disaster facing the United States, noted Dr. Louis W. Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service (a branch of NOAA).

“Flooding is dangerous and costly, killing nearly 100 people and causing an average of eight billion dollars in property damage in the United States each year,” said Dr. Uccellini.  “A weather-ready nation is a prepared nation; one that will reduce flood losses by planning ahead, staying abreast of weather forecasts and heeding the warnings.”

The agencies’ goal for the week is obvious: improving awareness of the risk and how citizens can stay safe.

FEMA’s Ready.gov site has several more tips to preparing for times before, during and after a flood, as does NOAA’s website, which offers information on its “Turn Around Don’t Drown” campaign. This campaign is something NOAA has been been highlighting for years, pushing those who encounter flood conditions on the road to head the other way rather than get stuck in water — or worse, if the road beneath is washed away.

According to NOAA, more than half of flooding-related deaths occur when people are driving.

It remains mystifying how many people don’t understand that the foundation of the Industrial Revolution, the combustion engine, relies on, ya know, combustion to work. And combustion — a fancy word for fire — requires oxygen. Which, I’ve heard, is not plentiful underwater.

In short, don’t try to drive through a lake.

One other interesting facet of this year’s advocacy is the focus on the 100-year anniversary of The Great Flood of 1913, something local survivor Bishop Milton Wright called a flood “second only to Noah’s.”

In late March of 1913 rain fell in such an excess over the Ohio Valley that no river in Ohio and most of Indiana remained in its banks. Bridges, roads, railways, dams, and property were washed away.

In its wake, at least 600 lost their lives, a quarter million people were left homeless, and damages were estimated in the hundreds of millions, making it at that time one of the worst natural disasters the United States had witnessed.

When disaster struck this part of the U.S. starting Easter Sunday, 1913 and lasting for weeks, it had a ripple effect across the entire nation. The damage to roads, railways, telephone and electrical lines paralyzed commerce in and out of the region.

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This affected people across the country, unlike previous disasters where impacts were primarily localized.

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As a result, there was national outcry for state and federal governments to reevaluate their role in flood control.

Through it has been a century since the disaster, it remains one of the largest tragedies in U.

S. history.

Still, those who lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods may be able to take solace in the fact that they helped prompt a larger discussion of the risk. This nation’s history is spotted with catastrophes that helped spark change and this was one of the first in terms of increasing disaster preparedness.

Now, if only more people will heed those lessons.