the smartest guy in Texas right now

[Trigger Mike]

I was watching the news out of Texas and they showed a street where the flood waters went a few feet up the walls inside the homes on this particular street.  Then they showed a house beside it who had gotten some flood damage during last years bad flood.  This man had raised his house a few feet off the ground so that the flood waters only got to the top step and no flood damage to his home.  I'll bet that man's wife is thankful and I bet that man is telling his wife, "see honey!  I was right!"  see how smart I am?!"  I did not know you could raise a house like that but I'm impressed.

[Pat Riot]

When I buy  home I go out of my way to find one well above any possible flood zone. Sometimes that doesn't work out for folks but so far it has for me. I have seen too many homes damaged or destroyed by flooding. Not only homes get destroyed but lives as well as keepsakes.

 

You can have your home raised but it costs quite a bit and if I remember correctly, insurance may not cover damage if something goes wrong. I may be wrong about that but that is what I was told. My Dad was a contractor and we raised barns and houses to repair the foundations but only just enough to do repairs. Nothing like raising one to put it on stilts.

 

But I would bet that guy is happy he did do that. I wonder if any of his neighbors thought he was nuts?

[Warden Callaway]

The 500 year flood on the lower Missouri River in 93 and 94 changed the landscape. Small towns were relocated.  Large tracts of valuable farm land were converted into wetlands so, I assume,  to allow flood waters to disperse.  Many buildings that remain in the flood plain were elevated up on mounds or to a second story with a carport under. 

 

Massive floods are a traumatic experience.  Things you don't think of like caskets floating up out of the graves.  In one case, a graveyard was discovered when the water receded.  Turned out to be a slave graveyard from the pioneer days.  Water rushing over US54 made a 200` deep hole on the down stream and swallowed a trackhue.  The demoralizing thing about the 500 year was that the river just kept rising over months,  crested and went back into its banks over months.  It waa months before the basic infrastructure was restored.  

[Sedalia Dave]

24 minutes ago, Warden Callaway said:

The 500 year flood on the lower Missouri River in 93 and 94 changed the landscape. Small towns were relocated.  Large tracts of valuable farm land were converted into wetlands so, I assume,  to allow flood waters to disperse.  Many buildings that remain in the flood plain were elevated up on mounds or to a second story with a carport under. 

 

Massive floods are a traumatic experience.  Things you don't think of like caskets floating up out of the graves.  In one case, a graveyard was discovered when the water receded.  Turned out to be a slave graveyard from the pioneer days.  Water rushing over US54 made a 200` deep hole on the down stream and swallowed a trackhue.  The demoralizing thing about the 500 year was that the river just kept rising over months,  crested and went back into its banks over months.  It waa months before the basic infrastructure was restored.  

 

Having grown up in West Central Mo and knowing what the landscape looked like before the 93 floods, I was left speechless at the vastness of the flooding.  I personally knew 2 people that had family homesteads that had been in the family for over 100 years that had never come even close to flooding as they were miles from the nearest major stream. They watched helplessly as the waters slowly engulfed everything on their 500 plus acre farm. Eventually the water crested just below the roof line of what once had been a beautiful two story house.

 

Fertile land I had helped farm was left barren of top soil and scoured bare of every living plant including some massive trees.

 

Most farmland between the inner and outer levees along the Missouri River was stripped of top soil and left unsuitable for agricultural uses. The State and Federal government bought a lot of it and turned it into conversation areas. Eventually trees and grasses reclaimed it. It is also dotted with large and small ponds that the water carved out of the flat landscape. Today it is an excellent place to hunt as it is teeming with wildlife.

[Loophole LaRue, SASS #51438]

When we demolished our old cottage at the beach and rebuilt from scratch, we raised the house so that the 1st floor was 3 feet above the 100 year flood mark.   Several of my neighbors mocked my caution.  With every passing year, the high tide level has risen, and my waterfront neighbors across the street can be seen looking wistfully at the height of my foundation.....

 

Folks next door just followed our lead; their rebuilt foundation is the same as ours.

 

Global warming may be debatable, but the rising of sea level, no matter what the cause, is a physical reality.

 

LL

[Smoken D]

The very reason I have this house 150' above the lake on a bluff. Insurance asked about flood and I just laughed. Ifen I get flooded, Missouri is in big trouble along with the mid-states.

[Trailrider #896]

They are calling this a 1,000 year flood!    The only thing that could be worse than this would be if Irma hits the same area!  Or, if the New Madrid fault causes a massive earthquake the like of which hasn't occurred since the 1830's or so, long before the current civilization grew.  Of course, there is also the potential for California to fall off the West Coast.  Horrible! Horrible!

[Dawg Hair, SASS #29557]

Saga Bay is an upscale subdivision in the Perrine area of Miami-Dade County, Florida.  It's right on the bay.  After Andrew it suffered catastrophic damage from flooding and became known as "Soggy Bay".  One of the residents raised his house on stilts by eight feet.  This was quite an engineering feet because we are talking about a two story, close to +3000 sq fet, house, but the idea took off and a bunch of home owners in the area followed suit.  Initially these houses looked really weird but the stilts were eventually closed up and they all look very nice.  I am very familiar with the area because my brother in law and another cousin lived there.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

Village of Corning, Ohio.

Perry County, in the Southeast Ohio hill country.

Far from river and ocean but prone to flooding, Sunday Creek is crooked as a Washington politician and Glouster floods if you flush the pot twice in Corning.

State came through and straightened good old snakeback Route 13 years ago.

They filled in a great strip to hold up the roadway, which reduced the flood plain to less than half of what it had been.

One old timer immediately began raising his house until he had a full story of space between his hacienda and the ground beneath.

He was ridiculed as a coot and a cook ... until the next flood.

Hills and hollers and narrow valleys make for impressive, fast moving floods.

Funny how nobody regards him as a coot or a kook anymore!

[Lorelei Longshot, SASS #44256 Life]

Residents of Meyerland subdivision (expensive homes) on North Braeswood in Houston along Braes Bayou have flooded multiple times.  I remember in the 70s a guy raised his house about 3 feet and was lucky until Harvey.  One guy just finished raising his house on North Braeswood about 5 feet after the June 2016 flood, and he came within 1 inch of getting water in the house.

 

I think I heard that if your house floods a certain number of times, you either give up and take a loss or you can get some government assistance to raise the house.  Don't know where I heard it or if it is true.  There is usually flooding along the San Jacinto River during bad rains and when they release from Lake Conroe.  That's where they were talking about getting government help to raise homes.

 

Understand that it has got to be very expensive raising a concrete slab with a 3,000 square foot or greater one story house.  Don't know if I would do it, but then again some of these people have lived here since the 50s and the house has been paid off for years and cost probably $15,000 back then and now worth well over $500,000.

 

This new house I moved into in August, 2016, was in the process of being built when the Brazos flooded to 54.8 in June, 2016.  My street didn't flood at all, but all the streets into the subdivision and most of the neighborhood streets did flood.  Some houses got water then.  This time many, many homes got 4-5 ft of water.  

 

The Brazos riverbed is 27.94 ft.  My lot is 87.25 elevation. This time the Brazos was originally predicted to crest at 59.0 feet. So 27.94 +59.00 = 86.94.  I would have been very close to flooding, but luckily it crested at 55.7 ft. on 9/2 and started rapidly going down. 

[Dawg Hair, SASS #29557]

Glad you made out alright Lorelei, we have some very good friends in League City that were flooded out, and lost nearly everything below four feet inside the house.   This is the third time they have been victimized by hurricanes

[Rye Miles #13621]

1 hour ago, Lorelei Longshot, SASS #44256 Life said:

Residents of Meyerland subdivision (expensive homes) on North Braeswood in Houston along Braes Bayou have flooded multiple times.  I remember in the 70s a guy raised his house about 3 feet and was lucky until Harvey.  One guy just finished raising his house on North Braeswood about 5 feet after the June 2016 flood, and he came within 1 inch of getting water in the house.

 

I think I heard that if your house floods a certain number of times, you either give up and take a loss or you can get some government assistance to raise the house.  Don't know where I heard it or if it is true.  There is usually flooding along the San Jacinto River during bad rains and when they release from Lake Conroe.  That's where they were talking about getting government help to raise homes.

 

Understand that it has got to be very expensive raising a concrete slab with a 3,000 square foot or greater one story house.  Don't know if I would do it, but then again some of these people have lived here since the 50s and the house has been paid off for years and cost probably $15,000 back then and now worth well over $500,000.

 

This new house I moved into in August, 2016, was in the process of being built when the Brazos flooded to 54.8 in June, 2016.  My street didn't flood at all, but all the streets into the subdivision and most of the neighborhood streets did flood.  Some houses got water then.  This time many, many homes got 4-5 ft of water.  

 

The Brazos riverbed is 27.94 ft.  My lot is 87.25 elevation. This time the Brazos was originally predicted to crest at 59.0 feet. So 27.94 +59.00 = 86.94.  I would have been very close to flooding, but luckily it crested at 55.7 ft. on 9/2 and started rapidly going down. 

Glad to hear you're okay!

[Lorelei Longshot, SASS #44256 Life]

Dawg Hair,

So sorry about your friends.  A good friend of mine is "not in the flood plain," but had flood insurance anyway until by accident she let it lapse.  She started the renewal process, but if it has lapsed, there is a 30 day waiting period just like the first time you apply.  The 30 day period was over Friday, September 1.  She flooded up to 4 feet last week so she wasn't covered.

 

Hundreds of thousands of Houstonians that have never flooded before got flooded this time.  Harvey dumped as much as 50 inches in a week. I heard that the chance of this happening was 0.00025.  Isn't that 1/100,000 chance? (I'm not good at math which is why I only taught elementary school.)  Wouldn't that be a 10,000 year flood?

 

For those of you that don't know about "Houston," when people talk about "Houston," it includes a bunch of small towns surrounding it such as Sugarland, Richmond, Rosenberg, Katy (Ft. Bend county), Tomball, The Woodlands  (Harris County), and Baytown, (?). People know approximately where Houston is, but won't know where Magnolia, Dayton, Angleton,  Rosharon, Pearland, and a bunch of other small towns are located.  Victims in all of these small cities got flooded and tens of thousands had to be evacuated.  It is predicted that this is the largest major U.S. disaster ever.  Much larger than Sandy in terms of number of people and dollars, and will affect gasoline prices and many other things because of the massive damages.

[Utah Bob #35998]

Floods suck.

 

[Dawg Hair, SASS #29557]

And now Irma.

 

The latest today shows more southerly trend which would make it hit Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, and Florida and maybe keep going to the gulf coast states.

 

I 75 and got a sick wife so I think I'll just put up the storm shutters and head up to my son's in Charlotte.   Looks like it's going to be another fun week in this Southern Paradise!

[Matthew Duncan]

Never could understand why folks build in lowland and then are surprised when flooded and expect Taxpayers to foot the bill.

[Trigger Mike]

i recall how in Atlanta builders would get counties and cities to allow them to build houses within 25 feet of a water source then in 2009 a major rain storm came and flooded subdivisions and the builders tried to stop counties from making them build 35 feet from a water source.  "if you build it, they will come" and many don't think about flood when buying a home.  the builders don't care as they will be gone by the time the flood comes

[Badlands Bob #61228]

Dad's home buying advice was alway to buy on high ground.  Most everything else is negotiable.

[Dirty Dan Dawkins]

On 9/1/2017 at 4:27 PM, Warden Callaway said:

 Things you don't think of like caskets floating up out of the graves.  

 

 I remember this happening down around Albany, Ga.

[Lorelei Longshot, SASS #44256 Life]

Matthew Duncan, many of us check the 100 year flood plain and don't buy homes there or if we do, buy flood insurance.  My home is not in the 100 year flood plain, but I do have flood insurance anyway.  This house didn't flood during construction in 2016 when the Brazos crested at 54.7, and the street didn't get ANY water.  With an elevation of 87.25 feet, if the Brazos had crested at 59.0 as originally predicted, I would be within an inch of the house flooding.  Brazos River bed is 27.94 ft. + 59.0 = 86.94 ft.  This was the second time in 15 months it crested so high.  We received 50 inches of rain in a week's time which is more than we normally receive in a whole year.  Most of us don't make stupid mistakes when buying a home. Some may be ignorant of the possibilities especially if they are newcomers to the coastal areas.  Would I ever buy a home in Galveston, Freeport, Corpus Christi?  NO.  Will people buy in these places? Yes, if that is where their jobs are.

 

Harvey is considered a once in 1,000 year flood. In addition Harvey did not behave like hurricanes normally do.  Normally they go inland and rapidly lose strength and die.  Harvey went in, came back out, moved upward along the Gulf Coast before finally going back in and continuing north/northeast over land.  I've never seen a hurricane do this .The area affected by his rainfall was as far north of the Houston area as Navasota, Bryan and College Station where the creeks and rivers drain into rivers that drain into the Brazos and then come downstream to Richmond and then out to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Trigger Mike]

You can't plan for every problem, last year a hurricane went across Florida into the gulf, turned up and came to my house in southeast GA as a Tropical Storm then a second hurricane skirted the GA coast so even though I'm 150 miles inland we got hit again.  minor damage mostly each time and the tropical storm caused more than the hurricane since we were on the hard side of the tropical storm as it passed north of us and the softer side of the hurricane.  I doubt anyone around here has flood insurance as it has been 50 years since a hurricane hit GA especially 150 miles inland.  Now Irma is coming and if it hits Florida we will get the rain and wind and if it turns it will possibly hit us.  Farms will be so inundated that recently planted turnips will rot or wash away.  another time we would be in a drought instead.

[Lorelei Longshot, SASS #44256 Life]

One of the stupidest things done in the West Houston/Katy, TX area is that they built homes behind Barker Dam which of course flooded very badly.  Then they had to release water into Buffalo Bayou and parts of Houston that have NEVER flooded, got flooded.  So two sets of homeowners got homes flooded.  Seems to me that it would have been better to only release a little water to keep the dam from breaking than to release so much to lower the water level of the already flooded homes.  But then again I'm not one of the Core of Engineers that make those decisions.  I think common sense was ignored twice, 1. don't build homes behind the dam in the flood zone, and 2. don't release so much as to flood a hold new area.