Messing With Mother Nature

There's a new housing development being built a few miles from our place. According to the signs it's going to be a swanky place. You've seen the ads, "Starting in the low $zillions$." That kind of stuff.
There had been an old house back in there before they started raping the land. The place was so wooded I didn't even know the house was there until they started ripping down the trees. This housing project will probably have some fancy name like Forests Forever. They scraped off all the topsoil so they can buy it back before they plant the lawns that will look like golf greens. They'll replant non-native species of trees in some monoculture that was never supposed to exist. Developers love to correct obvious errors nature has made.
But tonight we had a deluge. It rained as hard as I’ve ever seen it, except for a few years ago in Hong Kong when I watched in rain more than 16 inches in as many hours. That was scary. Today's storm was bad enough. Major flooding throughout the northeast Ohio area. When I stepped off my bus I could not see the street. Water, on a major thoroughfare was as high as the first step.
I got to my car, looking like the proverbial drowned rat and headed for home. Ooops, the road was blocked. Emergency flashers of various colors told the tale--no getting through that way. And that way was the only way I could go.
I waited in the parking lot of the strip mall, calling people on my cell phone in hopes of finding a sympathetic ear. Mostly I got laughs and "Wow. Must be bad." And comments referring to my mental powers and coming in out of the rain.
Finally the rain backed off, as did the rushing water. Through my binoculars I could see the cops were letting SUVs and trucks swim through the flood. Finally they let us little guys through. I was trying to figure how that particular dip in the road created such a flood. The water should have just drained into a creek that feeds into the river far below. This is the edge of a ravine, I thought.
Then I saw the problem. The huge scar on the land; the bald spot the construction people had created, when they chopped down all the trees and replaced a deer track with a ribbon of cement. It had all been had washed away. They had created the perfect, dehydrated landslide. All it need was for someone to add water. The huge mud slide that trees could have easily controlled, plowed the land, ripped up the man-made path, fancy signs and all. Even some construction equipment was washed nearly into the road.
I'll have to drop the developer a note and tell him to rename the spot "Mudslide Gulch." Seems more appropriate, now, however his marketing folks might not go for it.