A Dark and Stormy Side of Life, Indeed

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May 13th, 2014 at 7:23:57 AM permalink
Face
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 61
Posts: 3941
This is what I woke to this morning...



The foreground right behind the fence is the crick. The bed is about 8' down and its depth is usually 8" to 12". The house in the immediate background is under 7' to 9' of water. It's a 2 story, believe it or not. Ditto that for the other 20 houses in this area



This is down town after the initial wave receded. Right now, all of this is underwater. I saw video of this spot and a truck drove by. You could barely see its wheels.



Smack downtown. 3' to 4' of water in the road. The flood mostly starts on the outskirts and settles here. By tomorrow, there'll be tens of thousands of tons of mud and silt to take care of.

This is I think the seventh time this has happened in my life, so about every 5 years. Now the stories in my fishing thread might make a little more sense.
Be bold and risk defeat, or be cautious and encourage it.
May 13th, 2014 at 7:36:28 AM permalink
Nareed
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 346
Posts: 12545
How's your house? more importantly, are you ok?
Donald Trump is a one-term LOSER
May 13th, 2014 at 7:50:16 AM permalink
rxwine
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 188
Posts: 18633
5 year floods are a little too often for me. Although I think maybe the area I'm in may get that much flooding every 10 years in some areas. As long as it doesn't reach high enough to come inside.
You believe in an invisible god, and dismiss people who say they are trans? Really?
May 13th, 2014 at 8:02:32 AM permalink
Face
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 61
Posts: 3941
Oh, the worst thing that happened to me is my new garden pond over flowed and now my porch is dirty =p. I and my home are completely fine. I live on a ridge over looking the valley and never suffer directly. And I stayed home from work today. I drove thru the last flood and my 5,500lb lifted truck floated down the street O.o

But I've lived here my whole life. Friends, friend's parents, old folks I've grown up with, they're all down there. Fortunately, as I sit here now, the sun is shining and the birds are chirping. The kids are still trapped at school, but no one is exposed and no one has yet died. My buddy's dad and his crew are already out with machinery unplugging the tree dams in the cricks and clearing the main roads of debris.

Small town living. I can almost guarantee we'll have the town drained before the sun sets. Clean up, that'll take weeks. And I wouldn't be surprised if even more houses meet the bull dozer. But no one died yet. Life goes on

Thanks for your concern =)
Be bold and risk defeat, or be cautious and encourage it.
May 13th, 2014 at 8:25:00 AM permalink
Fleastiff
Member since: Oct 27, 2012
Threads: 62
Posts: 7831
Were there warnings?
Is there any way to avoid this? More wetlands upstream to act as a sponge that will release water slowly?
Dredging your prized "crick" to make it deeper, wider?
Having a flood wall to protect downtown?
Having a "sacrifice area" that gets flooded early on to protect downstream property?

Do you get flood insurance in the area?
May 13th, 2014 at 8:35:43 AM permalink
beachbumbabs
Member since: Sep 3, 2013
Threads: 6
Posts: 1600
Yikes!
Never doubt a small group of concerned citizens can change the world; it's the only thing ever has
May 13th, 2014 at 8:43:46 AM permalink
AZDuffman
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 135
Posts: 18136
WOW, I hope all stays well with you. Looks like a nice downtown otherwise so I can see wanting to stay there.
The President is a fink.
May 13th, 2014 at 9:15:13 AM permalink
Face
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 61
Posts: 3941
Quote: Fleastiff
Were there warnings?
Is there any way to avoid this? More wetlands upstream to act as a sponge that will release water slowly?
Dredging your prized "crick" to make it deeper, wider?
Having a flood wall to protect downtown?
Having a "sacrifice area" that gets flooded early on to protect downstream property?

Do you get flood insurance in the area?


It's a very odd area, sort of a "perfect storm" nexus.

Coming up, the only floods I knew were spring, and in these types, there's not only warning but complete awareness. Springtime flooding is always the big crick. Upstream from my town is all canyon and rapids. When the thaw hits and the ice breaks up, it smashes and rushes its way through, no problem. But about the time it hits the rez some 10 or so miles downstream, it flattens right out. All that ice jams and piles up, and the water behind it gets trapped.

Those floods are just water damage. It just rises and rises and takes over the low side of town. Everyone is aware of it, the weathermen forecast warm ups and warn it's coming, there's often days to prepare.

These recent floods have all been torrential, at it's all because of one little stream. This stream has two sources, both of which are so small and so short I could literally ride my bicycle to either of them within a few hours. Driving, they're maybe 10-15 minutes away. One is a small pond the size of an Olympic swimming pool, the other is a vast, shallow swamp. The stream itself, whether one of the individual branches or after the branches converge, are things I'd think nothing of letting my 5yr old play in completely unsupervised.

But because of the topography, they occasionally run wild. Entire ridges run off into them when it rains, so while the sources might not even be 2 square miles in area, the run off covers hundreds. The Army Corps of Engineers has come in several times. All upstream, they've erected rebar and plate to sort of make waterfalls and slow the flow. All of the banks are constantly being rebuilt and reinforced with rip rap and insanely huge steel plate. But nothing stops it. Those hundreds of square miles of runoff hit town, and when it comes to the 90* bend in the crick, it just goes straight.

You can't really dredge anything. It's all slate bottom. And really, this crick is so small you could only get a Bobcat down into it. Even a small excavator wouldn't fit. It really is that small.

And you can't really have a sacrifice area. Anything outside of town is still uphill, and it'd just run down anyways. And once you get to the flat, you're smack in the middle of the village.

I take an interest in this stuff, and I've thought about it. But I can't see a way to prevent it. Just the geography of the place makes it impossible. You can't make the crick deeper OR wider, because it's either in a canyon, or it's smack in the middle of town. Outside of blasting through roads and no fewer than 30 houses and businesses, not to mention all the electric, gas, water, and sewer lines, there's no way to straighten it out. It's just a permanent fact of life.

Flood insurance is a long list of horror stories, from what I've heard. In the bad one of 2009 where my truck floated, entire houses were shifted off their foundations and were lost. I'm sure they collected. But those that just suffered rising water were often left holding the bag. If the water didn't enter the first floor, they were denied. So everyone who just had basement damage, from walls to washers and dryers to hot water heaters to furnaces, all of that was out of pocket.

Quote: AZDuffman
WOW, I hope all stays well with you. Looks like a nice downtown otherwise so I can see wanting to stay there.


I personally will be fine. Outside of a flood to rival that of Noah, I'll suffer no more than a soggy yard and ruined garden. Every building downtown will have to be under 50' of water to reach me lol.

And despite the bad eggs here, the rest of the town is typical small town living. Anyone with a pump is going door to door as we speak. Anyone with a wheeler or tractor is doing likewise, clearing muck from driveways and pushing it into the road. All of our little DPW as well as those from neighboring towns is out with the front loaders clearing the mud and debris from the roads. The water has stopped coming out of the storm drains and is now flowing the correct way, draining the town.

I'm just about to head down myself, but from what I've heard, there's no big calamity. No houses lost, no lives lost, no fires. Just another meter of mud to add to the history.
Be bold and risk defeat, or be cautious and encourage it.
May 13th, 2014 at 9:28:19 AM permalink
Fleastiff
Member since: Oct 27, 2012
Threads: 62
Posts: 7831
Perhaps some of those uphill areas have low lying areas beyond them... could you bore a drainage tunnel through the hill so as divert floodwater away from the town?
May 13th, 2014 at 9:57:35 AM permalink
Face
Member since: Oct 24, 2012
Threads: 61
Posts: 3941
Quote: Fleastiff
Perhaps some of those uphill areas have low lying areas beyond them... could you bore a drainage tunnel through the hill so as divert floodwater away from the town?


Impossible. See below.



I assume you're at least vaguely familiar with topo maps (you seem to be familiar with everything else =)) The red arrows denote the severe rises surrounding the entire town, as well as the cricks which feed through it. The blue #1 is the crick in question; the arrow points to the particular bend I showed in the first pic. As you can see, there's no changing its course. It's surrounded by development. And upstream, it is flanked on each side by canyon walls. If I were to follow it upstream, it would be flanked the exact same way until you came within a mile of its source.

#2 highlights the train bridge present in many of my fishing posts. That marks the end of the rapids and the start of the "low side" of town. That is were things flatten out, were you could begin to divert and send water to some sort of holding area. As the big crick runs in a NW direction, you can tell where the little ones head as well. And every way they run, everywhere you could think to send them to divert flow into a runoff area, is smack in the middle of town.

85% or more of the population lives in a legit flood plain. It's pretty much the only area of the entire crick, other than the mouth, where it can escape its banks. If I had scaled the pic back to see more, you'd see the canyon walls come back and flank the big crick for the remainder of the way to the lake. Really, from town, no matter which one of the 360*s you want to go, it's all uphill. From the crick bed, any way you go that's not town is all uphill. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There's just nothing you can do about it.
Be bold and risk defeat, or be cautious and encourage it.
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