Cardude in Harvey bullseye

[Baker]

Originally Posted by MurrayM

How are the levees/reservoirs upstream of Houston doing?

They are doing what they were designed to do. THe problem is that they were never designed to handle this sort of pressure. The Addicks Dam is the one with the "uncontrolled release". That means it is just wide open with no metered release. It is supposed to be that way until Sept. 20!!!! IOW, you will have to suffer the coverage of flooding for at least another 3 weeks. Hopefully they were overestimating that. I did hear this morning that there is a small "anomaly" with the damn. One of the gate structures is leaking and potentially compromising the damn. They are already evacuating the people that would be affected be a total breach. But it would be catastrophic for sure.

XSBank....good to hear you have a bit of redneck in you!!!! Thanks for the kind gesture!!!

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by Bigsfish

Coming out of an ice age one would expect to have some warming. I know everyone gets their panties in a wad but things have to play out. But then I think government intervention should be minimized as most things they screw up: post office, congress, VA, taxes, ect come to mind.

It seems that for some folks, climate never changed prior to the discovery of carbon as a tax revenue source. Others are aware of the fact that we have been in an inter-glacial period for 9,000 years where temperatures have varied +/- around 3.5 degrees C. Prior to that, the range was closer to 20 degrees C. It was warmer 1,000 years ago than today, colder 1,200 years ago than today, warmer 600 years ago than today. Following the end of the last little ice age around 1780, it has consistently warmed with an interesting and unpredicted hiatus for the last 20 years even though atmospheric CO2 levels have increased. Weather events like hurricane Harvey are just that - weather events. They happen and will happen again. Where I live, sometime around 1700 the amount of water flowing through the Skagit River (7th largest in the country) surged 10 fold from what a 100 year flood looks like. The valley I live in was essentially a lake for a couple of months. Presumably this event had little to do with Indian camp fires, and I suspect that hurricane Harvey has little to do with Indians (or anyone) driving SUVs.

Whatever its cause, you just have to cry at the devastation the folks in Texas are having to deal with. So sad.

[BandB]

Originally Posted by Seevee

BandB

Absolutely not. There should be NO requirement to have insurance and NO forcing people to have flood insurance because that's the only product available.

Let the free market prevail and let folks decide what risk/benefit products are appropriate for them.

Requiring insurance often has a negative effect.

And one can easily argue that flood insurance is a very poor use of dollars. One would be better off if they put the premiums in a piggy bank.

I didn't say a thing about requiring insurance. Just that homeowner's policies include flood coverage. Now most lenders will require insurance and most houses do have mortgages.

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by BandB

I didn't say a thing about requiring insurance. Just that homeowner's policies include flood coverage. Now most lenders will require insurance and most houses do have mortgages.

Surprised at that. In Washington State, floods are always an exclusion, although water backing up through sewers is covered. I thought these exclusions are why they created the National Flood Insurance program, which policies are required here for any building in the flood plain. The insurance totally sucks, by the way, and is expensive for what you get. I used to have to buy it on acres of greenhouses, not because greenhouses can be much damaged by just flood water, but because any building in the flood plain had to carry it if you had a mortgage.

[BandB]

Originally Posted by Baker

They are doing what they were designed to do. THe problem is that they were never designed to handle this sort of pressure. The Addicks Dam is the one with the "uncontrolled release". That means it is just wide open with no metered release. It is supposed to be that way until Sept. 20!!!! IOW, you will have to suffer the coverage of flooding for at least another 3 weeks. Hopefully they were overestimating that. I did hear this morning that there is a small "anomaly" with the damn. One of the gate structures is leaking and potentially compromising the damn. They are already evacuating the people that would be affected be a total breach. But it would be catastrophic for sure.

XSBank....good to hear you have a bit of redneck in you!!!! Thanks for the kind gesture!!!

The Houston flood control systems were designed to a certain standard of rainfall and flooding. It has been shown in the last few years that more is needed. However, they were definitely never designed for the amount of rain received in this storm nor should they have been. Normally you'd design up to record levels. You might then allow for an additional amount, perhaps 10%. You don't normally design to 50% above the all time record. We talk all the time about 100 year plans but not about 500 years. It's like building design now to handle 150 mph sustained wind. That's Hurricane Andrew type design. If we suddenly had 180 mph sustained winds, then all bets are off.

Now that this has happened, Houston will need to go back to the drawing board and beef up in some areas as they now have a new record to look at.

[BandB]

Hopefully Congress is able to avoid politics and move quickly. After Andrew, they passed a bill in 10 days. After Katrina, it took them 6 days. After Sandy, it took 66 days.

Also, note that the Flood Insurance program is scheduled to end on September 30.

[Seevee]

Originally Posted by BandB

I didn't say a thing about requiring insurance. Just that homeowner's policies include flood coverage. Now most lenders will require insurance and most houses do have mortgages.

BandB,

Sounds fair, but if the policy includes flood and there's no choice, then one is stuck with it.

And, requirements for insurance can be governmental and lenders. I'm totally against govt requirements, but the lenders have the right to require it, but feel it should only be on the building, not the land (however, it doesn't affect me).

I could argue options for the homeowner that wants reasonable coverage without going bizerk.

[Seevee]

Originally Posted by Bigsfish

I should also add that I only buy liability insurance on my properties.

Bigsfish,

That's probably the best use of your money.... and I could argue to eliminate liability in some cases to... however, it's usually dirt cheap. The vast majority of liability claims on property are people just not being responsible.

[Seevee]

Originally Posted by O C Diver

I'm not interested in taking away federal flood insurance from those who have it or homes built before my proposed change. I'm interested in stopping new construction that needs to be federally insured against flooding. If the banks and insurance companies say it's too risky without a federal guarantee, then the USA tax payer doesn't need to be guaranteeing it.

Alternatively, I could see limiting flood insurance to $100,000 per house and contents. Some times the poor have limited choices. If you're rich and want to build a McMansion on a sand dune in a flood plane, well then you can afford to self insure.

Ted

Ted,
Totally agree... get the feds out of here, they usually screw it up and costs us more.

[Seevee]

Originally Posted by Art

Seevee... Seems you do not understand the totality that is approaching regarding the global scope of climate change. As ocean waters warm, atmosphere increases its overall temperature, humidity continues to up-tick, trade winds alter their trajectories and oceanic currents sway their courses... well, unfortunately... we ain't seen nothing yet!

Art,

Good point, and climate change will happen. So what can we do? Lots of things, but we don't need to rebuild all the house nor put absurd rules in place to make housing prohibitive (and it's heading that way).

I'd rather see folks have the option of making reasonable repairs and additions to improve their property than to do nothing and let it go downhill, and that's not a small problem.

And, yes, over time we will have to deal with climate changes, and just water rising could be a major issue. Probably not in our lifetime, but will happen... unless the next ice age starts up somehow.

[BandB]

I read all this talk about flood areas and flood plains and building in areas subject to flood and yet there are very few places, if any, in the country not at risk of a flood. Floods happen along rivers and they happen inland where there are no rivers. Even desert areas have been subject to floods on occasion. And, if we're suddenly going to say don't build where floods are a potential, then what about tornadoes, and hurricanes, and earthquakes, or droughts?

I understand having building standards based on location. For instance, earthquake standards in San Francisco, Hurricane standards in Miami, Flood standards in Slidell. I believe there are perhaps a few places where lakes are used for flood control that their shores shouldn't allow building. There are areas where standards for new construction need to be changed. But it is impossible and undesirable to say we're not going to build in any area that has the potential of natural disasters.

[roguewave]

Originally Posted by sbu22

My favorite is the 5 ton military surplus wrecker, owned and manned by 3 Israeli Defense Force vets (yamalkas and all), operating effectively as a high water rescue vehicle.

I'd love to find that article

[BandB]

Originally Posted by roguewave

I'd love to find that article

They were shown on the Weather Channel.

[roguewave]

Between family members and ourselves we have probally 10 properties (some homes, some commercial) in Houston. Most all are water damaged. When things settle down, it will be time to roll up your sleeves and go to work. It's what you do...

[BandB]

Originally Posted by roguewave

Between family members and ourselves we have probally 10 properties (some homes, some commercial) in Houston. Most all are water damaged. When things settle down, it will be time to roll up your sleeves and go to work. It's what you do...

Have your properties suffered damage the last two years?

[Art]

Originally Posted by Seevee

Art,

Good point, and climate change will happen. So what can we do? Lots of things, but we don't need to rebuild all the house nor put absurd rules in place to make housing prohibitive (and it's heading that way).

I'd rather see folks have the option of making reasonable repairs and additions to improve their property than to do nothing and let it go downhill, and that's not a small problem.

And, yes, over time we will have to deal with climate changes, and just water rising could be a major issue. Probably not in our lifetime, but will happen... unless the next ice age starts up somehow.

Previous multi thousand year phase of humans owning Earth has been layered with uncontrolled, helter skelter, do-as-you-please antics. Nothing really wrong with that - Cause, after all ...civilization was recently [few thousand years ago] in its cave dwelling infancy. We're just now emerging out of childhood... becoming mid teens! What an inventive party our last couple hundred years have been. We became pass-out drunk on the inventive successes we developed and utilized.

The next phase of human race "ownership" ... regarding this beautiful planet we live on:

Humanly-assisted "positive prone" manipulation of climate temperatures and weather conditions by atmospheric content regulations that help stabilize Earth's seasons, storms and temperatures.

Earth is our "House". We can control its environmental conditions... and we need to if we want civilization to prosper for thousands of years longer.

We've already controlled many environmental conditions... however we did so by blind actions that created "negative prone" manipulation. That is what greatly assisted Earth's climate and ecosphere to become tenuous at best for continued long term life giving environmental opportunities.

Human race is at a turning point. Either we own up to the need for us to "inventively" work alongside [in coincidence with] Earth's inherent nature conditions for maintaining life-giving eco-systemic properties or else we will likely perish.

That's it in an nut shell folks! Grin and bear it. We can accomplish assistance for maintaining Earth's "Natural Living Conditions"... and, this all will have resoundingly great results. But, it will take some clear actions as well as work... for many decades into the future. Much employment will be created and new global industries will spring up.

When I'm free to let you all know more about what I have and do I'll open things up. Currently other persons and I are strictly held in trade secret abeyance.

[roguewave]

Originally Posted by BandB

Have your properties suffered damage the last two years?

No, not the last 30 years

[HopCar]

I don't remember what the weather was like a thousand years ago. I do remember the scientists and the media getting all worked up, back in the seventies, about the coming ice age that should have been here by now.

I don't know if the current increase in global temps is a result of mans actions or just a natural fluctuation. That said I wouldn't mind if we cutback on the release of CO2 into the air. I kind of prefer plain old O2.

[Bigsfish]

Art

I was reading what you wrote above and when I reached "Human race is at a turning point. Either we own up to the need for us to "inventively" work alongside [in coincidence with] Earth's inherent nature conditions for maintaining life-giving eco-systemic properties or else we will likely perish."

I looked back to see where you are and when I read San Fransico it all made sense.

[kev_rm]

Pulling hydrocarbons out of the ground and burning them faster than they are regenerated is not sustainable no matter what causality of climate change you subscribe to.