>>>>>Hey! Watch it! My dad was a WAG.
>>>>
>>>>What's that - a Women's Army general?
>>>
>>>No Sir. He was a Wireless Air Gunner.
>>
>>I've looked around, and the air in our street is also wireless (the cables are underground, which is a rarity in this part of the world), but no gunners around. Could it be a Canadian thing?
>
>Growing up in Wisconsin we had underground cables. I was surprised to see all these wires everywhere when I moved to North Carolina. I was told it was because of the level of the water table here -- too close to sea level. Probably why we don't have too many basements either and those that do, typically flood!

Rubbish. I'm in the 100yr flood zone here - had to pay flood insurance for three years, during the mortgage - there's a creek across the street where the water level is no more than 2-3 m below our floor. I guess if we dug three shovels deep we'd hit water. Still, all our cables are underground. Two sets of fiber/coaxial (from two competing companies), one set of phone lines, electrical. Plus, of course, water and sewers.

As for flooding basements, there are additives to the concrete. Our basement back home was dry for years, until the inevitable happened, the soil in the streets was beaten down by traffic, so the natural flow of underground waters was interrupted, plus the influx from many septic tanks, and when the pressure built it had nowhere to go but up. Our basement filled 15cm deep - through the door. The floor and walls held.