Hurricane Harvey

[LOL!]

We really couldn't stock up as many shelves were picked over.

It is sometimes funny what gets sold and picked over and what is left.

I lived in a place that had a radiation cloud from Chernobyl pass over. I could use my Geiger counter and see what was "hot." Outside ground hot; inside floor not hot.

In the grocery stores, usually the canned goods kinda sat by themselves while fresh produce was picked over, bought readily, and resupplied. But that month the veggies and anything else fresh sat unsold while all the canned goods were cleaned out.

I do quite a lot of backcountry wilderness camping, so there is always something to eat in the pantry. We even have some shelf-stable milk bought a while ago. And it's unlikely I would boil water since there are other ways to disinfect it.

But I can see how folks would panic and just buy junk food.

 

[aja8888]

Kind of hidden in the news is that the Golden Triangle (Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange) which is along the TX/LA border, had 24" or rain last night as Harvey moved along it's path. Not a pretty picture in that area but the news coverage is still focused on greater Houston.

BTW, I got to the Med Center today once the Hardy Toll Road opened up. I had to work my way along the west side of Houston and slide in from the south. I pulled up to the hospital around 12:30 PM and I was the only car at the valet station. DW was released around 4:00 PM as the hospital was very short staffed. Her duty nurse has been in the complex since the weekend. The nurses were taking turns sleeping and covering for each other.

 

[W2R]

Kind of hidden in the news is that the Golden Triangle (Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange) which is along the TX/LA border, had 24" or rain last night as Harvey moved along it's path. Not a pretty picture in that area but the news coverage is still focused on greater Houston.

BTW, I got to the Med Center today once the Hardy Toll Road opened up. I had to work my way along the west side of Houston and slide in from the south. I pulled up to the hospital around 12:30 PM and I was the only car at the valet station. DW was released around 4:00 PM as the hospital was very short staffed. Her duty nurse has been in the complex since the weekend. The nurses were taking turns sleeping and covering for each other.

So glad your wife has been released from the hospital! Bet she is glad to get home.

 

[Moemg]

AJA , So glad that you & your wife are safe and she is on the way home.

 

[Meadbh]

BTW, I got to the Med Center today once the Hardy Toll Road opened up. I had to work my way along the west side of Houston and slide in from the south. I pulled up to the hospital around 12:30 PM and I was the only car at the valet station. DW was released around 4:00 PM as the hospital was very short staffed. Her duty nurse has been in the complex since the weekend. The nurses were taking turns sleeping and covering for each other.

Glad to hear DW is well enough to leave the hospital! Not an ideal situation to come home to, but the risk of staying in the hospital also increases with time (infection) and staff exhaustion (errors).

I hope your house remains dry, your daughter's house will get power restored soon and that DW continues to improve steadily.

 

[aja8888]

Thanks for the above well wishes. DW is more than glad to be home!

DD's house has power back and the generator I gave her that "took up too much room in the garage" (according to her ), did just fine keeping her fridge on and some lights during the power outage.

I'll have to say, the 100+ mile run to the hospital and back was a real eye opener as I saw lots of homes with piles of wet furniture, torn out sheet rock, etc along the way. And I just saw a very small fraction of it from the freeways.

 

[Fermion]

Speaking of power loss, for the last 40 years, subdivisions where I am have been built with underground power cables and ground mounted transformers. I would think the same is done everywhere.

So, in a flood, I would think there's a big problem with distribution transformers getting flooded. And the old way of having electrical lines on poles in the back alley has the usual problem with the wind taking the poles down.

How does one mitigate these problems? Much of the outcome depends on luck, it appears.

One would think this is a problem but in our house on a river in Washington state we would routinely get flooded each fall or winter where the road and underground power/transformers were covered with 3 to 5 feet of water. Power never went off and I never heard of anyone getting shocked. I actually would paddle the canoe from our front door down the road to a high area where we parked the truck so we could go to work. Salmon swimming right alongside me in the street too.

I have some pics I kept from the worst flood back in 2006. Our neighbor's house is in the pic, I am shooting from our house which was 3 feet higher concrete foundation than his. I think in this pic he was getting worried a bit...we were in our hottub on the back deck with fishing poles trying to catch a salmon.

 

[NW-Bound]

One would think this is a problem but in our house on a river in Washington state we would routinely get flooded each fall or winter where the road and underground power/transformers were covered with 3 to 5 feet of water. Power never went off and I never heard of anyone getting shocked...

Interesting. I do not worry about people getting shocked. The transformers are inside a steel box which is grounded, and that makes them safe even when wet.
Rather, it's how the ground transformers can work being submerged.

I saw on the Web that pad-mounted transformers are usually hermetic and oil-filled. That's good stuff. However, how about terminal connections and fuses that may get wet? It seems to me it's not good to have the terminals wet, because that will cause corrosion down the road.

 

[Breedlove]

Finally got to get out and drive around a bit . We went down Barker Cypress and were stopped . The road was closed due to the controlled flood . Lots of evacuations still going on there , Just 5 miles from my home.

The Cypress area held a BBQ / picnic in one of the dry parks . I didn't realize the different rescue groups in my neighborhood . We had National Guard , Cajun Navy and Cy Fair Fire Department . A neighbors was showing photos of a group of doctors from Austin that came down with their boats . One had a jet boat , I don't know nothing about jet boats but they said he hardly needed any water to skim across.

Tomorrow I go to work helping neighbors down the road . I will tear out carpet cut sheetrock . Sounds like a long day , the crew I am assigned to has 11 Houses in Barker Lakes . My family and me are so blessed to not be flooded .
I am Texan

 

[Katsmeow]

You know it is funny how things turn out. At times, my husband has said that he wished we hadn't sold our house in Twin Lakes. That was about 11 years ago. It is a complex issue - under our circumstances at the time selling was right as the home didn't meet the need. But, had we made other choices those circumstances wouldn't have existed.

Regardless, I just realized that he will probably never say that again. Twin Lakes is directly north of Addicks Reservoir. I haven't seen pics of Twin Lakes but have seen pics of Lakes on Eldridge which is across the street and a little farther away from the reservoir. It looks like a lake.

I read an article where it was suggested the homes in those subdivisions and nearby other subdivisions may have water in them for weeks since the reservoir is still releasing. And, it was suggested severe damage might be done to them due to the long length of the water exposure. It was even suggested that people might not be allowed to rebuild!

We did not have flood insurance when we had that house. It wasn't recommended at all. We went through Rita in that house and numerous other flooding events where there was a lot of water in the reservoir and in Bear Creek Park but nothing remotely came close to our house. It never even crossed my mind to get flood insurance for that house.

I am so, so, so glad I don't own that house now.

And, ironically, our next house after that is in an area in Ft. Bend that I saw on a list of threatened subdivision. It wasn't in an evacuation area but was within a few blocks of it.

Our current house? We never even came close to having water in the house even with all the rain and being only a few miles south of Lake Conroe.

 

[Alan]

BTW, I got to the Med Center today once the Hardy Toll Road opened up. I had to work my way along the west side of Houston and slide in from the south. I pulled up to the hospital around 12:30 PM and I was the only car at the valet station. DW was released around 4:00 PM as the hospital was very short staffed. Her duty nurse has been in the complex since the weekend. The nurses were taking turns sleeping and covering for each other.

Great news, really good to hear that you have her home.

 

[W2R]

It's sunny with blue skies and gorgeous here this morning. Harvey is just a tropical depression and far north.

So, I think we are DONE with Harvey, at least here in New Orleans.

Hopefully Houston's flood waters are starting to drain off.

 

[Big_Hitter]

Hopefully Houston's flood waters are starting to drain off.

Looks like it may be weeks before some of the water recedes.

My friend's parents live off of Gessner and Briar Forest and they still have water in the house.

 

[NW-Bound]

Well, we may have other perils here in the SW, but large-scale flooding is not one of them. Occasionally it rains hard enough for some streets and freeway underpasses to get flooded, but water entering people homes is rare.

And then, I am on the foothills about 200 ft above the rest of Phoenix. It's not that the people in the lowland have anything to worry about, but my neighborhood streets are never flooded, even in torrential rains.

Now, insufficient water, and possibly electricity in the summer can hurt, but it won't destroy your home.

 

[NW-Bound]

Congrats to aja for bringing home DW safely.

 

[Big_Hitter]

Well, we may have other perils here in the SW, but large-scale flooding is not one of them.

Houston never really had "large scale" flooding even in TS Allison

This is the first time that ALL of the low lying areas got hit at the same time, horrible.

 

[REWahoo]

Great news, really good to hear that you have her home.

+1, that really is very good news!

I took my new RV into the dealership this morning for some warranty work. While I waited I was talking with one of the managers about all the activity going on in the new trailer lot. Found out they were hurriedly prepping 11 new travel trailers to send to Houston later today. FEMA placed an order for 100 trailers with them and they only had those 11 on the lot that met FEMA specs. They ordered the other 89 from the factory to be delivered ASAP.

FEMA told them they were to house relief workers, not flood/hurricane victims - at least not yet. Hope the RV industry does a better job furnishing non-toxic temporary housing for Harvey than they did for Katrina.

 

[LOL!]

Here is an article with many photos of your favorite businesses in Port Aransas and Rockport:
Here's how well-known Port Aransas, Rockport businesses fared after Harvey - San Antonio Express-News

I think most of them will be closed for business in the next couple of weeks, but some places seem OK.

 

[W2R]

Doesn't look too bad at all, "LOL"! I hope these are representative of the degree of damage (or lack of same).

I need to warn any that are thinking of requesting FEMA trailers, but aren't sure if they need one. What I am about to describe was the usual situation, not something unusual; this was experienced by the vast majority of people here that I knew, who had FEMA trailers. This is something that anybody at all who actually lives here could tell you, but nobody else would, and it was never stated in the news or admitted by FEMA AFAIK.

Once you get a FEMA trailer, it is against the law to move it yourself, even to take it back to FEMA. The penalties for moving it are enough that I don't know anybody who dared violate that law. When you call them and ask for them to come get it after you are done with it, that process can take years and years (maybe 5 years?), even if you work on getting that done every week for the whole time. I guess FEMA was unable to find enough space to store them, although I don't actually know if that was the reason.

So anyway, when you ask for a FEMA trailer, be sure you want that junky old moldy [-]piece of junk[/-] FEMA trailer to be sitting on your lawn for years and years.

 

[Texas Proud]

There were a number of places they took them to store....

Here is a pic of one place...

MODULAR HOME BUILDER: UNSAFE FEMA TRAILERS SOLD AT AUCTION



I remember seeing a pic of an old airport that was covered with them... similar to above... heck, might be the same place taken from a different location...

 

[Texas Proud]

More info on the intensity and scale of this event....

Harvey is a 1-in-1,000-year flood event that has overwhelmed an enormous section of Southeast Texas equivalent in size to New Jersey.
​

• At least 20 inches of rain fell over an area (nearly 29,000 square miles) larger than 10 states, including West Virginia and Maryland (by a factor of more than two).
• At least 30 inches of rain fell over an area (more than 11,000 square miles) equivalent to Maryland’s size.

Harvey is a 1,000-year flood event unprecedented in scale

 

[W2R]

Right, I heard they stored most of them in Arkansas after Katrina. They take a lot of space. Actually I think most of them were stored in the yards of people who didn't want them there.

JUST WARNING Y'ALL - - there really IS a huge down side to ordering one so unless you are desperate (as many were), think twice. Then think again. Remember they are smelly, moldy, and emit formaldehyde fumes, and basically unlivable and disgusting. These are not luxury vacation trailers. Not that they should be! But public perception in other parts of the country, was that they were nicer than they were.

If you need one, and can afford it, just go a few states away and buy a nice one on your own dime.

 

[W2R]

More info on the intensity and scale of this event....[*]At least 30 inches of rain fell over an area (more than 11,000 square miles) equivalent to Maryland’s size.

That's a tremendous deluge in such a short time!!!

I think we got less than 10 inches of rain during Katrina, which was nothing special for us since our climate here is normally very rainy. For example this past summer we got 40 inches from June 1 - Aug 31 (a period many times longer than Harvey, of course). So my point is that 10 inches from Katrina was nothing for us. I don't even remember it raining at all and wondered if it even rained during Katrina; got this info from Google.

 

[meierlde]

Re emergency housing, rather than purpose built travel type trailers, why not use modified shipping containers? They are already water proof, and a number of places sell them and some preppers use them as shelters. There are a lot of these sitting in LA, but perhaps they are being saved for the coming earthquake. It should be noted that to start with shipping containers are very strong, and could work thru windstorms, and aftershocks.

 

[Breedlove]

Did my four hours today , get a tetnus shot then go pull carpet and drywall. Not my home but homes of people in our area . The ladies from the churches had a big breakfast for us and a really great lunch at the community center . We will have a dinner at 7:00 PM .
Our crew consisted of all ages . Grand fathers sons and grand sons. about 20 per house . Yes we were walking over each other but our team did one 2500sq ft house in four hours . Our effort had 5 houses working at the same time.
Some people were furniture movers some were carpet pullers some were drywall pullers . The house we worked in had 8" of water in the house . The couple that owned was in tears as they were flat overwhelmed by the disaster.
We noticed in the neighborhood we were working in ( badly hit ) that there were volunteer groups from all up and down Barker Cypress . I have never seen people work together like this and in such a positive way.