Posted on 01/21/2018 5:44:53 AM PST by Elderberry
“The moral to this story is that where ever you live just because your mortgage does not require flood insurance, that does not guarantee a catastrophic flood will never happen”
When mere inches separate the 100 and 500 year storms 100 year flood plains don’t mean much.
In my 30 years of living in the Houston area I learned that 12 inches of rain in 24 hours is not unusual. When I lived there I built on a small hill waaaay out NW at 260 feet and about 60 feet above the invert of the nearest major drainage, Spring Creek. It was a long drive but no flooding ever.
As you suggest, there are no magic safe lines. The hazard evaluation of flooding is a product of risk and consequence. Water in your house is a high consequence event if you don’t have flood insurance. Mere inches separation between the elevation of the Base Flood Elevation and your front door step is a high risk location to flooding. The risk is compounded by change from subsidence, pavement and saturation.
So true ... and has been repeated many times, including at Love Canal where Union Carbide engineers did all they could to prevent the city from approving a residential development atop a former hazardous waste landfill.
Well said.
L
Guilty as charged.
It’s times like this i wish I’d listened to what my mother always said.
Why, what did she say?
I don’t know, I wasn’t listening...
Usually something like,
“Well, let me tell you how it really is.”
The Challenger disaster.
NOT ONE Morton-Thiokol engineer would approve the launch.
NOT ONE!
Management signed off on it.
Need Another Seven Astronauts...
Often. They don’t allow me to talk to customers...
A wife asks her husband, a software engineer...
“Could you please go shopping for me and buy one carton of milk, and if they have eggs, get 6...”
A short time later, the husband comes back with 6 cartons of milk and no eggs.
The wife asks him, “Why the hell did you buy 6 cartons of milk?”
He replied, “They had eggs.”
Indeed. All the right people made their money, and that’s all that matters.
Bhopal: Whole neighborhood dead.
Anyone who hasn’t yet had their basement flooded would do well to heed the implied advice of your statement. Those who didn’t heed the advice wished they had.
Charles Glen Crocker, then 38, had learned that the footprint for Barker Reservoir was bigger than the land owned by the government, placing future homeowners in the Cinco Ranch and Kelliwood subdivisions within what engineers called "flood pools." The reservoir, dry much of the time, could fill during a major rainstorm and spread into the homes of unsuspecting residents.
His resulting letter, written on July 6, 1992, was a warning to county officials: "...recent rainfall events and weather conditions have shown that many areas considered relatively safe from rising waters have been flooded."
The land in the reservoir was sinking, "subsidence" in engineering terms. Houses were being built at a level lower than the water level the dams were designed to hold. A long period of rain could mean trouble in the two massive planned communities.
How wonderful this good man lived long enough to see his concern AND effort were justified. It'll give courage to others who will need to stand in his shoes in years to come.
Nobody has basements here.
In Florida we bought house at 170 ft ASL, closest lake is at 92 ft ASL.
I've spent my life(except my Navy time) within a mile of Sims Bayou and my homes have never flooded.
I've been surrounded by flood waters. And have had to drive thru a lot of it.
But my homes have never flooded.
Another data point supporting my thesis that federal flood insurance guarantees are the reason for much of the current building in floodplains, with the resulting catastrophic losses - which I and others subsidize!
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