Posted on 08/29/2017 10:17:42 AM PDT by Mechanicos
Hmmm. If you have several events in 50 years they are not 500 year events, sort of by definition, right?
So maybe THIS is the 500 year event? Or at least the 100 year event. 1900 in Galveston was pretty hard on Houston some have said.
Awesome. Absolutely, positively Awesome.
Thank You Lord for folks like these.
Tatt
And another at Sweeny and Chocolate Bayou,etc. Freeport sits right beside the levee. Funny area where the Brazos dumps out. I used to take the kids to Freeport Beach.
Actually the question becomes how much beating they can take.
IOW, just because it breaks, doesn’t mean the storm is 1000-year, etc. It may be the levee just has withstood too many “500-year” in a short time and honestly, should be replaced. Perhaps. Maybe maintenance isn’t enough anymore.
Might make more sense if they called it a ".02% Flood"
Well pouring 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,998,765,432,101.33 Gazillion Yards of Concrete (and Asphalt about the same)leaving about 27.3 Square Inches of soil for the water to drain down to the Water Table certainly did not help. They won't admit it but all those Highrise Office Buildings are REALLY GIANT RAIN GAUGES!!!
Right, so if you have say, 5 of those in 67 years then your probablility was way off. Looking backwards you could say it appears that that is about a 1 in 12 year chance of that event, so the right probability would have been an 8.3% chance.
Or you could just say “I was right and it’s just freakish that something that only should happen 0.02% happened 8.3%.
But, that would be backwards reasoning, so the right thing to do was say: “oops, our model / guesstimates were way off”.
The odds of flipping a coin 12 times and getting 12 heads is 0.0244140625% .
The odds of doing that you did that 5 out of 65 attempts?
Infinitesimal.
The towns are responsible for public saftey. Maintaining pumps, planning evacuation protocols and keeping dams maintained are the proper function of a city Government. The infrastructure and planning in Houston are an indictment and facetious comments about escape boats will not deflect blame from the mayor & prior mayors although they may confuse the unwary or unthinking.
Anyway, a lot of jokes are posted about California and earthquakes, but local government here is very serious and responsible about public safety, unlike the charlatans in Houston. For instance, City employees appointed and trained with emergency survival gear stowed at every San Francisco public building, backup communications networks, medical training and regular drills. We're ready for any earthquake disasters here. Seems like Houston doesn't take storms seriously because they allowed things to fail hugely. Calling it a hundred-year storm doesn't excuse them (seems like the 3rd hundred-year storm or so in the last decade).
Yes, I know, but I get that way when people die.
I have a slow burn going at the way Government officials are cavalier about the citizens and then the citizens pay the price. I think they need to be held accountable for their actions.
The only excuse for Government is that it acts in the interest of the entire community building roads, maintaining police and fire and disaster planning. They want to control all the little things they should not have their hands in and the major responsibilities are too much work for them.
Faugh.
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