Like many kids who grew up near a beach, I spent considerable portions of summer vacations building sand castles at the water’s edge.

Friends and I would begin construction during low tide, surrounding our fortress with a wall reinforced by stones we excavated with plastic shovels and buckets.

As the tide started sweeping back in, we hurriedly dug a moat, but soon waves lapped over this rapidly filling trench and ate away at our ramparts.

“More sand! Higher walls!” we cried while working frantically, but we knew it was a lost cause. Sure enough, the sea eventually rose above our collapsing structure, and we watched hours of labor wash away.

The next day we started over again.

Sadly, this futile cycle reflects the way many of this nation’s coastal cities have been built, with far more disastrous consequences.

The monumental catastrophe that has spread throughout southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey this past week reinforces the continuously tragic folly of unchecked residential and commercial construction in flood-prone regions — especially when weighing irrefutable evidence of rising sea levels and storms of increased intensity caused by warmer oceans. The temperature of the Gulf of Mexico rose to an unprecedented 87 degrees as Harvey roared ashore as a Category 4 hurricane, drowning some cities in more than 4 feet of rain.

Compounding the absurdity of building and rebuilding in low-lying hurricane targets has been a National Flood Insurance Program that facilitates irresponsible development by failing to charge high enough premiums to cover massive federal payouts to inundated policy holders.

CNN reported this week that, because of flooding caused by such major storms as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the program is roughly $25 billion in debt and will sink considerably deeper in the hole after covering billions more in losses from hundreds of thousands of homes damaged by Harvey.

The issue is heading for a perfect storm on Capitol Hill because Congress must decide by Oct. 1 whether or not to reauthorize the program, and if policyholders should pay higher premiums. Facing a similar dilemma five years ago, lawmakers voted to increase premiums, but that provoked such an outcry they decided two years later to cap the cost of coverage. Since then, the underfunded program has had to borrow billions from the U.S. treasury to remain solvent — money that eventually might have to be paid by taxpayers, as CNN pointed out.

No doubt watching this drama closely are shoreline residents in southeastern Connecticut who could face a difficult choice: Pay more to insure their waterfront homes against flood damage, or take the gamble of dropping their policies in hopes they will escape the next big storm. Either way, it’s a bad bet.

Earlier this week, authors of a study on Waterford’s preparedness for potential future flooding urged town officials to consider taking such measures as tightening zoning regulations and raising road levels. Similar suggestions have been made in other local towns as they anticipate more serious climate-related adversity, and those of us who live and work here must begin preparing for these changes.

Meanwhile, the federal government must do what it can to try to make the victims of Hurricane Harvey whole. They deserve homes and schools and businesses and jobs at least as good as those lost in the storm — but probably not in the same locations.

Beyond the loss of lives, so many have lost everything — all their possessions — and now must deal with unimaginable misery: exploding chemicals, downed power lines, venomous snakes, alligators and swarms of fire ants, all swept up in toxic water in no hurry to recede.

It will be interesting to see how President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, responds to this crisis. Just two weeks ago, he signed an executive order decreeing that the government must not consider the potential impact of global warming on the levels of new roads and other infrastructure improvements.

Such myopic vision virtually guarantees that sometime in the future — likely sooner rather than later — this nation will suffer another Harvey-like disaster. It would be bad enough to waste so much money on new highways and bridges wrecked by flooding, but unconscionably immoral to allow homes with people inside to be swept away like so many sand castles.