Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency Tuesday night for Midland County after both the Edenville and Sanford dams breached and urged immediate evacuations. "If you have a family member or loved one who lives in another part of the state, go there now,".
We’re about 15mi further south than any of the hardest hit areas but lots of friends and a few relatives impacted. One close friend is 1/2mi below the first dam that broke. Still haven’t heard if their house is still there.
Flooding is pretty common this time of year, but this has been something else completely. Lot of damage happening and going to be a long cleanup process.
Gov changed her tune pretty quick on moving around the state if needed. I’m sure she’ll be up for her photo op in a few hours.
I feel sorry for the people of Midland. They didn't need this on top of all the other issues going on today. This will be devastating for hundreds, more likely thousands, but at least the campfire will get a laugh over it. Some sick bastards here.
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
In a previous post I mentioned that flooding is an annual spring event in this watershed and every year it’s handled very well by the residents and businesses. This is being called a 500yr-type event based on the water levels achieved and it’s the result of two dams breaking which have never broken before. If they hold, no one is affected just like every spring.
And of the hundreds of people that I personally know up and down the river, nobody is crying for the government to save them.
With the numbers of rivers in the US susceptible to flooding like this at some point in their history, you’re suggesting we not live within 20mi of them to avoid a once-every-half-millennia scenario? Curious where your nearest river is.
Michigan has quite a few very old and earth dams.....they can only hold so mush water and will fail 5" of rain in a short period of time disaster will strike....
Originally Posted by The_Big_D
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
I have lived in what would be called a flood prone area the Great Lakes my whole life (65 years) we had high water in 72-73, 85-86, 95-96 last year is the 4th time we have had high water and yesterday was the highest I've ever seen. I sandbag have pumps running. And have never ever ask for one f$cking penny from anyone and neither has any of my neighbors that live on the island, we do what it takes to protect our property.
We put up and pay with cash and sweat to live on one of the greatest fisheries in the world. Guess I'll go out fishing in my backyard and catch a limit of walleyes (6).
What would you want everybody that lives in a area that could be flooded move. There wouldn't be anybody living anywhere near a ocean coast or miles of any river or lake.
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
Usually, it's because the price of the land is "right". Louisville, KY is built partly in a flood plain, and it's usually those houses that are most "affordable" to struggling families. They have gotten flooded out regularly over the years, due to unscrupulous builders who are supposed to disclose if a house is in a flood plain.
I grew up in rural Missouri, just uphill from a creek that flooded a lot (and it still does). Our house was up on the hill, as the bottomground was too valuable for farming to simply build a house there. In fact, NO ONE built their houses on good bottomground, and no one's houses flooded. But rural Missouri's population is pretty sparse, not like Michigan's, or Kentucky, where I live now. Sometimes, there's no other place to build a house, period.
I live in a floodplain aka creek bottom but I’m 277ft higher than the gauge at the boat ramp 18 miles away. People ask how in the hell did you flooded? Intensity baby!
Our May 3 2010 flood was a 500 year event. Whatever egghead came up with that, ok fine.
Creeks get mean when you get 10.8” of rainfall inside of 24-30 hours.
No water in the house but did get our crawlspace flooded. Had to pull out all the ductwork, bleach it and wrap with insulation. I tool my 5ton trane and my 2-1/2 package unit down to the carwash on a trailer and blasted them out and disinfected them. Water never got as high as my control boards in the units.
Flood ain’t no joke, especially when you’re watching it creep up the bricks on the side of your home an inch every 10 minutes.
This is my home area, though I don't live there now. I do have a lot of family and friends in the immediate area, 3/4 of which had to evacuate. Thankfully, all family had friends already accounted for - property damage is unknown.
I've fished above and below these dams and boated and these lakes. The devastation is stunning and heart-rending. Videos of entire houses being carried on the currents. Dams that were once 30' above their downstream level are now flowing flush from lake level to outlet level. It's awful.
Interesting to note that the actual concrete structure of these dams, one built in 1925 and the other in 1926, are still mostly intact, but the earthen berms have given way.
I feel sorry for the people of Midland. They didn't need this on top of all the other issues going on today. This will be devastating for hundreds, more likely thousands, but at least the campfire will get a laugh over it. Some sick bastards here.
Sad stuff with good people displaced. Gonna be an awful lot of change on the landscape when this is all over.
Not made easier by our governess by any stretch. Her draconian policies will multiply the bad effects of this upon those residents for years to come.
I understand she's reduced a few of the sanctions..............so as to be presentable by going to Elk Rapids this weekend & having a graduation party there for her daughter...................say it ain't so guv'ner.
My office parking lot runs along the Saginaw river. Maintenance just taped off the half, closest to the river. We are expecting it to rise quite a bit by Friday. Not been this ugly around here since the "86" flooding.
I guess if I had a car or truck I did not want I could park it along the fence LOL
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
And of the hundreds of people that I personally know up and down the river, nobody is crying for the government to save them.
Quite a difference of opinion from someone that actually has experiences in the matter...
Originally Posted by The_Big_D
Originally Posted by LeroyBeans
Originally Posted by The_Big_D
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
Figure it out, idiot.
Maybe they are idiots? Not like there is a shortage of space in these united states...
That really isn't how it works....
I grew up along coastal regions that often flooded, it just wasn't as big a deal as it's made to be today. Hurricanes were our demons, every few years you were gonna get wet from tidal surges, you just got everything as high and dry as you could either taped or boarded up the windows and headed inland. More often than not, someone was going to be hosting a "Hurricane Party" at a safe home and everyone would get together and get drunk while watching the news.
Most help I really recall was the local authorities and sometimes even the National Guard would do their best to patrol the evacuated areas to keep looters at bay. After the storms would pass they would clear the roads, sometimes it took bulldozers to push all the sand off to make them passable again, then we would all return home.
The dry out process began, rip out the carpets if ya had them (terrazzo floors ruled the day for a reason) and toss whatever else wasn't worth saving, open all the windows and doors, give the place a bleach bath and hose it out and then do your best to make the place livable enough while the dry-out was taking place, large fans would be spinning everywhere...
A few days go by with the more typical storms and you were back in business, home sweet home on the beach. A larger surge could require a two to four foot sheet rock rip through out and some new wire and outlets and maybe some new cabinets but that was rare and still not a devastating, life changing event. It could all be accomplished rather quickly and without all the drama attached as it seems to be today.
Fast Forward 20 Years
I'm hanging in Everglades City, lower than low country, hurricane Wilma makes a direct hit....
It wasn't like we didn't know it was coming, we prepared. Everything off the floors, even the grocery took everything off the bottom two shelves, windows were boarded up and people took refuge were ever they saw fit.
The winds weren't all that bad, some weaker carports and porch roofs were damaged but we took 2 feet of water across the island, there was no power coming to the island..
Early the following day, cleanup began, everyone kicked in. The roads were chainsawed open first thing, every door in town was open pressure washers were screaming, the inside and outside of everything was washed. It's a fishing town, the crabbers fired up their boat generators and back fed a few homes, extension cords were everywhere.
It just took a few hours and the power company trucks started rolling into town, they knew the drill, they knew these people would have the roads open so they could get there.
Food was being prepared where the the crabbers had provided power, gas grills were lined up..everybody ate, including the guys from the power company. The phone company had seriously damaged lines and equipment, they set up a dozen temporary phones in front of the court house.
The lights were back on by days end, the stores were open for business and life somewhat resumed.
The following day, FEMA showed up with a truck load of food and staged a food give away at the church, Budweiser and Miller both showed up with truck loads of water, in black and white generic looking cans that hosted their names. The church refused to let them off load, they had to stack the water out along the roads..........I still have some of those cans.
People showed up for the food giveaway, they always do, it was mostly for novelty more so than for necessity.
Miami and Naples Were in Peril
Even though they hadn't taken the hit Everglades City had, Naples was crying for FEMA.
Their power was out for the better part of a week, the prestigious Royal Palms that line their streets had blown over blocking their paths. They couldn't get their Rolls Royce's to their country clubs for brunch....they found being one of our nations wealthiest communities didn't offer them shelter from a storm and also didn't get them priority with the power companies.
Their pussys were sore beyond belief, they whined and cried but they didn't hit the streets to help clear the roads, they didn't offer the workers free lunch, I just have to wonder why it took soooo long to get their power back on????
Miami also lost power for the better part of a week, they saw 85 mph winds, I can piss that hard.....
They robbed and thieved in the dark and all was chaos.
I had a friend there, he had 3 generators stolen from him during the power outage.
First one was on his back deck and gone within an hour of him starting it. He fired up the second one but locked it in his garage, they waited until he left the house the next day to steal that one.
He managed to buy a third but kept it locked in his van running in his driveway...they stole the van.....
Who cares what happens in Miami........................
September 2016
I still own some flood prone coastal Florida homes, I got hit with a storm surge in 2016, 21 inches of water in the house.
I was in Alaska at the time, had some friends that went over and took the wet schit outta this house and opened the windows....
I left Alaska a few days after the storm had hit (Hurricane Hermine) and proceeded to Montana for a few weeks, it was early elk.....
By the time I got around to going to this flooded home the front door was covered with notices from FEMA, call us, call us, we have help for you.... I just blew it off, did what I needed to do to get the rehab under way and kept going.. About a week later I was there working and there was a knock at the door..
It was a young guy from FEMA, he wanted to see the inside of the house.
I wanted nothing to do with him, I figured they would be considering condemning the place or something but by then I had the place in pretty good order and he was a persistent little prick.
I let him in, he brought an IPad and a laser tape measure. He wouldn't talk except to ask me if I had a TV in each room he entered. I left him alone.
About 20 minutes went by and he came and asked me where I was living, I told him I was back on the mainland in a house, he asked if it was a rental, I said yeah but I owned it.
He was making me more than nervous, his next line of questioning was over the top. He wanted my SS and banking info. I paused but by that point didn't have much of an out.
As he left he said I would be hearing from them within a week.
In 4 days there was a deposit for 10's of thousands of dollars made to the checking account I had given him.
I was dumbfounded, I let the money sit for a couple of months, FEMA kept calling me. First, they wanted me to get a SBA loan @1% to make the home flood proof, it'd take like $50K, I told them I wasn't interested, this was just a winter fish camp for me. They kept calling, first it was an inquiry to see if I needed more rent money and of course they always mentioned the possibility of a SBA loan, I turned them down on everything, told them I wasn't even employed and probably wouldn't qualify for their loan just to blow them off.
They said if I didn't qualify for the loan they would just give me a grant....
These calls went on for almost a year, I always thanked them for what they had done but wasn't interested in any of their gracious offers of free cash.
The last call finally came and they just laid it out to me. They said when they sent me the first money a $50K account had been opened in my name and there was a residual balance and the easiest way to close out the account was to apply the money to my needs......
I told them right then and there to do what they do when they don't do than and not call back.....
This is what is wrong with FEMA, it's their method of application of their programs. I was left feeling like I had be reversed mugged.
It's harder to avoid their free cash than to take it....
But take it I did, the first money they put in my account anyway. I finally took the money outta the bank and bought another flooded waterfront house with it that a old retired guy didn't want to mess with drying out, he sold it for a song, he was just overwhelmed by what he thought it'd take to fix it and he'd collected from his insurance company for it anyway.
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
Usually, it's because the price of the land is "right". Louisville, KY is built partly in a flood plain, and it's usually those houses that are most "affordable" to struggling families. They have gotten flooded out regularly over the years, due to unscrupulous builders who are supposed to disclose if a house is in a flood plain.
I grew up in rural Missouri, just uphill from a creek that flooded a lot (and it still does). Our house was up on the hill, as the bottomground was too valuable for farming to simply build a house there. In fact, NO ONE built their houses on good bottomground, and no one's houses flooded. But rural Missouri's population is pretty sparse, not like Michigan's, or Kentucky, where I live now. Sometimes, there's no other place to build a house, period.
My dad once worked for a US Senate Committee that legislated relief for areas that had been flooded - frequently along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. He'd visit the areas and help assess the amount of flood relief funding necessary. He often suggested that the displaced take the Federal money and relocate to higher ground and was angered by the "good" folks in Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, etc. who would joke that if they moved, they couldn't afford new furniture and carpeting every 6-7 years.
And, these were people who considered themselves conservative and resented government!
One of the dams, which the National Weather Service said saw “catastrophic” failures, had been under scrutiny by federal regulators since 1999.
The Edenville dam, where there is a hydropower project, is about 140 miles north of Detroit and was built in 1924. Federal regulators revoked the project’s license in 2018, after warning for two decades that it was vulnerable to significant flooding.
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
Figure it out, idiot.
I don't mean to be a jerk but he's right. Town I live in half the town is down the hill and considered flood plain even though it hasn,t flooded in a century. Guess which side of town I didn't look at houses in. Same as the guy on The weather Channel in LA and had his third house lost from hurricanes and flooding. At some point its your fault.
That [bleep] storms runs right through the heart of Dow chemical. If Dow has a breach...kiss the Great Lakes good bye. Their silence is deafening. That would be major issue
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
Figure it out, idiot.
I don't mean to be a jerk but he's right. Town I live in half the town is down the hill and considered flood plain even though it hasn,t flooded in a century. Guess which side of town I didn't look at houses in. Same as the guy on The weather Channel in LA and had his third house lost from hurricanes and flooding. At some point its your fault.
Well, there is that. Wisconsin has had something a little north of 40" of rain this year to date. I lived thru 50" in 2 weeks some years ago, nobody drowned or lost their houses/huts. Denial is a poor premise for site selection for a home or business. 100/500 year storms do not arrive on any particular schedule. Back in 1950 Hurricane Easy dropped a hair shy of 40" of rain on Yankeetown, FL in 24 hours. Chitt happens, be prepared or move somewhere else. And don't trust engineers with your life and welfare re: dams.
every 10 or 20 years there's an unexpectedly heavy rainfall somewhere around the state, no warning and random location, 6-8 inches. in this case, it happened to be around a couple dams, which would not have been designed or maiintained to withstand this kind of rain. Regardless, this event would cause flooding, dam or no d_mn dam
hard to understand why people chose to live in flood prone areas.... Then they come crying to the govt for help when their homes get wet!
In a previous post I mentioned that flooding is an annual spring event in this watershed and every year it’s handled very well by the residents and businesses. This is being called a 500yr-type event based on the water levels achieved and it’s the result of two dams breaking which have never broken before. If they hold, no one is affected just like every spring.
And of the hundreds of people that I personally know up and down the river, nobody is crying for the government to save them.
With the numbers of rivers in the US susceptible to flooding like this at some point in their history, you’re suggesting we not live within 20mi of them to avoid a once-every-half-millennia scenario? Curious where your nearest river is.
I feel for them and pray for a speedy recovery. My property floods all the time but fortunately i live on top of a hill, while my land goes scuba diving, my house is dry.
That [bleep] storms runs right through the heart of Dow chemical. If Dow has a breach...kiss the Great Lakes good bye. Their silence is deafening. That would be major issue
Dow chemical is fine. The plant was successfully shut down, rail cars are secured and non-essential personnel were evacuated. The brine pond and a waste water pond was breached by Titabawassee river floodwaters and the Coastguard is on scene. Only one dam is gone, the Sanford dam is still intact but the structure is questionable. There hasn't been any concern about the Dow dam. Water level peaked around 3:00pm and are receding. Floodwaters were 3' over the max which was in 1986.
That is good news. Lots of customers calling today to see how bad it was, if the people they work worth were doing okay, and if there would be a gap in their ability to get product after this.
Did not know that there were earthen dams still in use.
Might be a good time after this is sorted out to get it built better.
Hope no more folks lose their homes or lives.
The Pebble Project near Lake Illiamna in western AK plans to build the largest dam in the World for a copper and molybdenum mine. Not only are they planning on using earth they plan to site it on a 2,500' deep( thick) tundra sponge.
That [bleep] storms runs right through the heart of Dow chemical. If Dow has a breach...kiss the Great Lakes good bye. Their silence is deafening. That would be major issue
Dow chemical is fine. The plant was successfully shut down, rail cars are secured and non-essential personnel were evacuated. The brine pond and a waste water pond was breached by Titabawassee river floodwaters and the Coastguard is on scene. Only one dam is gone, the Sanford dam is still intact but the structure is questionable. There hasn't been any concern about the Dow dam. Water level peaked around 3:00pm and are receding. Floodwaters were 3' over the max which was in 1986.
Did not know that there were earthen dams still in use.
Might be a good time after this is sorted out to get it built better.
Hope no more folks lose their homes or lives.
The Pebble Project near Lake Illiamna in western AK plans to build the largest dam in the World for a copper and molybdenum mine. Not only are they planning on using earth they plan to site it on a 2,500' deep( thick) tundra sponge.
That [bleep] storms runs right through the heart of Dow chemical. If Dow has a breach...kiss the Great Lakes good bye. Their silence is deafening. That would be major issue
The country needs to come together to save Dow Chemical. The company has done so much for society. They gave us the silicone breast implant. We need to keep that plant running and expanding!
That [bleep] storms runs right through the heart of Dow chemical. If Dow has a breach...kiss the Great Lakes good bye. Their silence is deafening. That would be major issue
Dow chemical is fine. The plant was successfully shut down, rail cars are secured and non-essential personnel were evacuated. The brine pond and a waste water pond was breached by Titabawassee river floodwaters and the Coastguard is on scene. Only one dam is gone, the Sanford dam is still intact but the structure is questionable. There hasn't been any concern about the Dow dam. Water level peaked around 3:00pm and are receding. Floodwaters were 3' over the max which was in 1986.
You good?
Yup. I'm a mile from the river and about 35' above its high datum level. All of the road bridges that cross the Tittabawassee have water flowing over them and are closed. We can't go west unless we take I75 south down to 69 and then west.
The country needs to come together to save Dow Chemical. The company has done so much for society. They gave us the silicone breast implant. We need to keep that plant running and expanding!
Dow Corning is NOT Dow Chemical. Do pay attention.
More dumbfuktitude from the left. The lesbian tag team of half-whit/nessel strike again. Will they sue each other for killing millions of fresh water muscles?Dam Failure
I attended Northwood University right along the river in Midland . Campus is flooded pretty bad. Double wammy for students between the virus and the flood.
The Pebble Project near Lake Illiamna in western AK plans to build the largest dam in the World for a copper and molybdenum mine. Not only are they planning on using earth they plan to site it on a 2,500' deep( thick) tundra sponge.
Don't forget all the local seismic activity there...
Dynasty will build that containment pond when hell freezes over......
More dumbfuktitude from the left. The lesbian tag team of half-whit/nessel strike again. Will they sue each other for killing millions of fresh water muscles?Dam Failure
More incompetence by the leftist coven of witches "running" the state. In typical fashion for their type, they shirk their responsibility and look to blame others.
![[Linked Image from media.graytvinc.com]](https://media.graytvinc.com/images/810*455/Flooding27.png)
