Watching the flood coverage in Quebec, Manitoba and the Mississippi river basins, I noted the time and effort required to build sandbag dikes and wondered if there was a better way.

Over the last 40 years shipping containers have transformed the shipping industry and there are millions of those containers around the world. I would suggest that they could be used to create instant 10-foot-high dikes. You can either weld the doors shut, and cut a hole in the top and fill with sand or plastic bladders could be installed and filled with water. Either way miles of dikes could be created very quickly.

Marc Rowan

Quebec, Canada