You Do Not Soon Forget A Flood
This is probably the worst US flood storm ever, and I’ll never be the same, Eric Berger, Ars Technica
“As a forecaster, what do you tell people when their whole worlds are washing away around them, and things are only going to get worse? I cannot really explain what it was like to walk outside on Sunday morning, in the aftermath of historic rainfall and devastating floods, and contemplate that at least three or four more days and nights of the same rains must come before the Sun will shine again. From a mental health standpoint, the uncertainty this brings adds considerable stress to an already unbearable situation. For many people in Houston, Harvey will be a defining event in our lives. A time when Mother Nature forced a hard reset on us. There are our lives before Harvey and after Harvey. The next time rain clouds form we will ask ourselves, is this really happening again?”
Keith’s note: This is a remarkable piece by Eric Berger. I highly recommend that you read it. I’ve been through a flood as a child where my family’s home was hit and with water up to my waist. Lots of important possessions lost and we were not certain if our home was damaged beyond repair. The flood was limited to a small area but it was a flood none the less. There is something relentless about the rising water – it comes out of nowhere and you are utterly powerless to stop it – until it and it alone decides to leave. One of the things we lost were nearly all of the slides and photos of me and my brothers when we were younger. The flood water eroded them before my eyes – all I could do was look at them and remember a few of them (I still do) as they dissolved. You do not soon forget a flood.
I organized a conference at LSU in 2007 “Risk and Exploration: Earth as Classroom” with Sean O’Keefe and spent a lot of time in Louisiana in the prior year. I toured New Orleans a few months after Katrina with local resident Paul Pastorek. Mile after mile we drove past houses that had been stripped of everything inside. Appliances and bathtubs and lumber sat in huge piles in public parks. And that brown water line was everywhere – on everything. I later told my Dad that I had an idea what it was like to be in Europe after the end of World War II. I also spent some time with the folks who manned the pumps at NASA Michoud while their own homes flooded. I asked one guy why he stayed on the job while his home was in danger. He said in a most humble way “It was my job, sir.” Paul and I were quite taken with this man and his coworkers and later featured their efforts in our conference at LSU.
Despite the debris and gas lines filed with water and abandoned cars on the streets of New Orleans people were lining up to buy their Mardi Gras bling in a store where the sheet rock had not even been replaced. In and among the devastation you’d see new trailers up on blocks with gas generators or solar panels working for people who decided to fix their homes – like homesteaders in an urban wasteland or brightly colored weeds growing up through the forest floor after a fire. People just do things that go beyond what you expect in such situations. I am certain that this will be the case this time in Texas.
People are just amazing. But as Eric notes this is a life-altering event for millions of people. And this event will exact a toll – even as it inspires people to be the best people that they can be.
I am sorry for your lost.
The thing about floods is that the damage is preventable IF communities make aggressive use of zoning to limit activities on flood plains while building systems that are able to move the flood waters to where they may be safely impounded. In short all floods are a failure of civic planning and civil engineering.
It never made sense to me that Houston had major underpasses or freeways below ground level, basically inviting water to fill them, not just during hurricanes but even during normal rain storms. Or that the University of Houston would have parts of its library underground or that downtown buildings would have parking garages below ground level basically inviting both to flood. Houston is built on swampland, not high ground like Denver or Dallas, you shouldn’t be building like water will never come.
When I was in Hilo I saw how they learned the lesson of the tsunami they had in 1960. All the region open to the tsunami was turned into a park, nothing for future tsunamis to destroy except the parking meters, public restrooms and picnic shelters. Hotels on the shore use the two ground floors for parking garages, making it easy for the water from a tsunami to flow through without damaging the building. Guests shelter on the upper stories where the rooms are. By contrast California hasn’t learned that lesson. Santa Barbara is built right up to the ocean. If they have another tsunami like in 1811 everything within a half mile of the ocean will be gone.
BTW when the Spanish built their mission there they listened to the local village leaders and built it well inland. It survived with no damage from the tsunami which was strong enough to push a sailing ship a half mile inland.
Las Vegas also had a major flood event in the 1990’s. They learned and built a flood management system that has prevented major damage even though they have had larger storms since then.
Hopefully Houston will learn like Hilo, and Las Vegas, will rebuild to reduce the impact of future floods which will come someday.
They won’t.
“…all floods are a failure of civic planning and civil engineering.”
Strictly speaking, flood _damage_ is a failure of civic planning or engineering (or water management.) There are some very natural causes of floods, which no amount of planning or engineering can prevent. The same can be said of many other natural disasters such as earthquakes. You can’t stop them from happening, but you can design and build to minimize the damage.
Tom, while I pretty much agree with you, the prospect of the Houston economic/body politic ‘learning’ is low. In my fifteen years living in Houston and northern Galveston county, including living thru several hurricanes and my subdivision flooding for a full week, losing my roof yada yada, all the politico/economic forces in Houston were intent solely on short term interests, and just about never considered the long-term good of the region. In fact, they considered such long-term proposals as direct threats. As the saying goes, hard to convince someone of the truth when their paychecks depend on them not becoming convinced.
What Thomas says makes sense, but I predict that the conversation will go something like: “Nothing—no amount of flood planing—could have saved Houston from Harvey; that being the case, why bother?”
The assumption that Harvey’s effects were so extreme that no planning could have saved Houston is arguably true, of course. The second part of the argument regarding future planning? Not so much.
Sadly true. I remember in the 1990’s when I was on the American Society of Civil Engineers NEO impact mitigation subcommittee. We discussed a number of civil defense measures, modest in cost and mostly requiring pre-planning, that could reduce casualties from a small size impactors with only a day or so warning, but no one was interested. They just assume nothing could be done and it was a waste to try. So sad….
On the other hand: every single county has an “Emergency Manager”. Back when I was active in amateur radio, I’d attend meetings and drills. The main reason I gave up participation with the county? These managers really managed nothing except information.
We already knew how to setup a net to handle traffic when cell towers are down.
And nowadays, information is available about everywhere. But they still have huge rooms full of gear, and they have mobile stations that are enviable. Dunno why.
Yes, in Las Vegas it was the opposite. The casinos were not happy the Strip was flooded and so the owners told the city to fix it so it never happened again. When the casino owners speak in Las Vegas, the city leaders listen, or they won’t be city leaders long 🙂
In principle, I agree. Of course, that civil engineering, like all engineering, is ultimately built on assumptions. Those assumptions are generally founded on history as a predictor the future. That’s a generally well-founded and well-accepted method, right up until an unprecedented event blows the assumptions out of the water (pardon the pun). Mathematically, they’ll always be some event which falls outside your assumptions/models. The real difficult part is finding that happy medium between cost, amenity and risk control, and ultimately you can only find the answers through experiment.
Urgency and Emergency, when combined, allow for the temporary dissolving of the illusion of humanities separateness from each other. You see the impact of this ‘oneness’ within the heroic Harvey stories of rescue. Sadly, this is only a temporary phenomena, as once urgency and emergency fade, people return to the illusion, and we see the strife and rage expressed at each other over statues, politics, sports fandom, etc.
Great leaders know how to create a context in which teams, organizations, and even agencies, operate as one, experiencing the same generosity, fellowship, and heart for each other, as we see in the Harvey rescue stories, only without an urgent emergency.
Be well Houstonians, as you grapple with your losses, as you are doing the rest of America a great favor by displaying such love for each other.