[throwaway1X2]

And what precisely do you mean by "seeing and avoiding"? Ugo the caveman sees a slowly rising river, Ugo runs to the village, village safely runs away? Erm, no. When you see a flood wave several stories in height, you may have a few split seconds to start videorecording on your phone, maybe the phone will be found afterwards and handed over to your surviving out-of-town relatives, it will make a nice clip in evening news...

With floods, you rely on authorities and early warning systems just as much as in radioactivity, actually you can buy a cheap dosimeters/Geiger counters and there are enthusiast networked detectors - but did you put a webcam with trained CV model on all surrounding flood paths? Did you put chemical sensors around all railway tracks in the neighborhood or do you just as well rely on "seeing, understanding and avoiding" a chlorine gas cloud?

It is just the prehistorical evolutionary parts of the brain speaking - we see flood, radioactivity we don't, danger, quickly bash it with a stick!