6/10: Houston flood

[Undertoad]

Houston got 20 inches of rain in a single day, and 40 in a single week - leading to some remakable sights. Didja ever think you'd see a tanker submerged up to its last two feet of height? (Are those signal lights ON?)



The truck in the center there CAUGHT FIRE despite all the water surrounding it! This road must have been built on an old floodway or something - it looks like there was a flash flood down it, leaving everyone surprised.

[Chewbaccus]

Makes one wonder what the truck was hauling to let it go ablaze despite the water...

~Mike

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by Chewbaccus
Makes one wonder what the truck was hauling to let it go ablaze despite the water...

Remnants from Lake Erie near Cleveland, circa 1980?

[CyclopONE]

<i>The truck in the center there CAUGHT FIRE despite all the water surrounding it! This road must have been built on an old floodway or something - it looks like there was a flash flood down it, leaving everyone surprised.</i>

If you mean the dark soot-like area on the top of the trailer, I think that's just from the exhaust pipe. By the way, nice forum. Image of the day is the only place I go to.

-Cyc

[jaguar]

Someone should slap civil engineers upside the head who are stupid enough to build roads in such a stupid places, its at the bottom of a bloody hill, its similar in contruction to many rivers!
Stupid stuff, i mean christ, thats DEEP water.

[CyclopONE]

<i>If you mean the dark soot-like area on the top of the trailer, I think that's just from the exhaust pipe.</i>

Well, I just did a double take, and my bad, I didn't see the melted down cabin. As for how that cabin caught fire...I dunno, the driver could've been smoking and somehow, some extremely flammable material in the cabin caught the heat of the cig.

-Cyc

[Undertoad]

Thanks for the kind words Cyc!

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by jaguar
Someone should slap civil engineers upside the head who are stupid enough to build roads in such a stupid places, its at the bottom of a bloody hill, its similar in contruction to many rivers!
Stupid stuff, i mean christ, thats DEEP water.

A good idea, jag, but high water can't necessarily be predicted...perhaps when the roads were built years ago, high water wasn't an issue. I would think that now, in 2001, that it is easier. But as an example...

My parents live in St. Louis's south end. St. Louis is built mostly on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. However, there are a few low points, including the south end of the city. There is a large drainage canal behind my parents' house. It starts as a creek 15 miles north, and collects rainwater...it empties into the Mississippi, about 1 mile downstream from my parents. The canal, which was built in the late 1950s, is approximately 50 feet deep, and rarely fills. The first time it got rather high (35-40 feet) was in 1982.

Then came the Great Flood of 1993...

Because of the heavy amount of rains in the midwestern US that year, the Mississippi surged from its banks, wiping out homes and towns in its wake. The water backed into the River des Peres canal to a point of 52 feet high. Countless hours were spent trying to sandbag to protect homes on both sides of the canal. In the end, only street flooding along with some basement flooding occurred. No one lost their home thankfully.

The point I'm trying to make is that something such as this is not always forseeable. Houston is relatively close to the Gulf of Mexico, and I can't remember the last time that Houston got hit so badly (I believe it may have been hurricane Alicia in the early 80s, but don't quote me on that). But with our new technologies, perhaps we can attempt to prevent the damage from either happening again, or being minimal. After the floods of 1993, St. Louis built several pumping stations and redid sewer lines along the River des Peres canal to help minimize flooding.

[tw]

Originally posted by sycamore

A good idea, jag, but high water can't necessarily be predicted...perhaps when the roads were built years ago, high water wasn't an issue. I would think that now, in 2001, that it is easier. But as an example...

The last Johnston PA flood was only a result of a 10 inch concentrated rainstorm. 20" and 40" are quite extraordinary. But who were these truckers who thought they could drive though anything?

Fire is easily created as water rise. One need only short the batteries.

I've done a lot of things with surprising no damage. One was to have an auto battery explode directly in front of me.

[jaguar]

Originally posted by tw
But who were these truckers who thought they could drive though anything?
[/b]

By the look of it (angle, concentration) they were swept there by floodwaters, coz there is a large number bunched together in wierd directions...

Probably abandoned as waters rose then got swept while the truckers weeped...

[zeddicus]

Just wanted to say that I love Image of the Day, it's very neat.

Being from Houston, I know a little bit more about what happened, and I can tell you that the area that was flooded in the pictures, I-10, has flooded a couple times before, but never to that extent. There was no case of bad engineers or anything like that. The flooding that we received was the worst that we have EVER had. Worse than Hurricane Alicia, worse than a pretty bad flood we had I believe in 92 or 94. Places that were not even in a flood plane, and had never considered the notion of being flooded, got flooded. Parts of downtown are still shut down over two weeks later because of it.

It was that bad.