One could easily assume, when quickly glancing over such news, that “Switzerland is a mess” when it comes to bureaucracy. And if your assumption is that, you will find it easily confirmed and bureaucracy is blamed once more. There are certainly instances, where bureaucracy is abused for the wrong purpose, but it remains to be seen whether such article writing is just another way of filling more ’summer gaps’ in the media.

It may be interesting to realise that first of all, not all cantons are equal in terms of bureaucracy, secondly, high risks are harder to deal with than low risks, and thirdly, living next to a big Swiss river is a liability not to be estimated too lightly.

There are some cantons that have an extremely high risk of flooding, and there is simply no easy fix. Those have been, unfortunately, hit hardest. The harder a risky terrain is to set up so damage is limited in times of heavy rains - engineering wise - the more money is required, and the more money some fix requires, the higher the bureaucratic obstacles. That is also sensible. Why is that sensible? Because evaluation is necessary. It is problematic to invest a lot of money AND still have water damage; one of the best things Switzerland could do to stop floods was to simply blast away the mountains, but then it wouldn’t be “Switzerland” any more.

There are some cantons - Zuerich, for example - which do have an emergency setup in place run under the cantonal police; relatively, Zuerich’s flooding damage has been moderate, but this was a result of our geography, and at the same time, of swift regulation of the water flow of our bigger rivers since the rains had started. The canton of Zuerich is not a high risk canton, and the remaining present risks have been comfortably managed by an extremely alert and well prepared team.

There are yet other places - take the Mattenquartier in Bern, for example -, where one lives at about the ‘average’ level of a river (Aare) that drains a large alpine area (Berner Oberland). That’s a bit like trying to sleep in a tent on a bigger highway in Los Angeles. I’m not entirely sure if one could sensibly put all of the blame for THAT on ‘bureaucracy’, while I am sure that anyone will attempt just that. That’d be like standing on top of a mountain during a thunderstorm and blaming bureaucracy if lightning strikes: tragic all the same, or even more.

The article quoted is probably largely about that situation in Bern, which is where SRI (”Bern Radio Local”) is based. I am not sure whether one sided reporting of local issues in Bern really help understanding the underlying problems of Switzerland; just because SRI reports it, does not mean it’s either well researched, correct or even relevant; rather, a cynical, stereotypical and rather uneducated view of the fluff-word ‘bureaucracy’ is perpetuated.