"The government used to see rock fans as something akin to a devastating flood or an invasion of savage beasts," said Mr. Zhang, a handful of whose events have been canceled by skittish bureaucrats since he pioneered the Chinese music festival in 2000.
In early June 2013, a devastating flood hit large parts of Germany.
The safeguard tariffs had been justified by the need to protect against a potentially devastating flood of imports, regardless of whether they were being unfairly subsidized.
To carry out this strategy, Morgan Sun, the executive director of King Kar's new charitable foundation, wanted to sponsor a campaign to help the victims of a devastating flood in 1992 in eastern mainland China, the ancestral homeland of many Chinese in Taipei.
Last autumn, a devastating flood hit the disputed region of Kashmir.
In spite of a devastating flood in 1909, the city continued to develop rapidly, particularly after the Inter-American Highway was begun in 1930.
This, combined with high tides, set off a devastating flood in the city, much of which is built on low-lying land reclaimed in the 19th century.
Although the Seine reached a threatening level in 1955, the possibility of a devastating flood was not broached by architects and officials in the 1970's and 80's when the Pompidou was built, the Gare d'Orsay became a museum, and the Louvre was expanded.
"First, this is still a pretty new country, so most places haven't been developed long enough to know about the historical risk of a devastating flood.
Still, the great lesson of floods past on the Red River, and especially from the devastating flood of 1997 in Grand Forks, an hour north of Fargo, is that big federal money for permanent flood abatement, and the local political will to support such disruptive projects, flows only where disaster goes.
