Houston is Flooding....

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I saw an article that Mattress Mack has opened his store as a shelter. Was even sending out delivery trucks to help people come in.

That guy drove me crazy with his "Save you Money" TV commercials, but he has been a consistently good citizen, so far as I can tell. Always supporting the Rodeo's scholarship fund and other philanthropy that I've largely forgotten. The first time I went into his store it was little more than a collection of houses hastily connected to one another and some cheap warehousing. Now when I drive by it is unrecognizable.

Good to hear that he is still working to make the city a better place. I imagine he will lose some money on the damaged furniture, but he will recoup far more from the goodwill of his neighbors. Smart man.
 
Bob001 said:
Question: A lot of the Houston flooding is outside recognized flood-prone areas, and many residents would not have bought -- or seen any reason to even consider -- flood insurance. Will ordinary homeowners'/renters insurance cover any of their losses?
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I always had flood insurance when I lived down there, even if my insurance agent said I didn't need it.

At that time in my professional career I was a young engineer running hydrology models that spit out lots of numbers. I would take those numbers over to a large map and try to plot them out as best I could. A senior engineer would adjust my plots based on experience and his far better understanding of both the models and topography. For hilly areas it was a pretty easy task, but for Houston's Bayous it was a real bitch. There were times where there wasn't five feet of elevation change across a whole section map. The crown in the street was the dominant elevation change in the area. We would draw thick lines on those maps and then FEMA would print them out with fancy labels declaring that magic line the 100 year flood plain.

So, when my insurance agent showed that I was a good two or thee blocks from the 100 year flood plain and didn't need to buy flood insurance, I smiled and got flood insurance. I knew where those maps came from.
 
Dr. Keith said:
I always had flood insurance when I lived down there, even if my insurance agent said I didn't need it.

At that time in my professional career I was a young engineer running hydrology models that spit out lots of numbers. I would take those numbers over to a large map and try to plot them out as best I could. A senior engineer would adjust my plots based on experience and his far better understanding of both the models and topography. For hilly areas it was a pretty easy task, but for Houston's Bayous it was a real bitch. There were times where there wasn't five feet of elevation change across a whole section map. The crown in the street was the dominant elevation change in the area. We would draw thick lines on those maps and then FEMA would print them out with fancy labels declaring that magic line the 100 year flood plain.

So, when my insurance agent showed that I was a good two or thee blocks from the 100 year flood plain and didn't need to buy flood insurance, I smiled and got flood insurance. I knew where those maps came from.
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It's clear that the maps have to change, floods that happen every 10 years or so are no longer 100 year floods. The flood that is happening now should happen less than once every 500 years. How does this work? Here in Austin, properties within the 10 year flood plain that are inundated can be bought out by the County. If all those houses in Houston are redesignated, you are talking about tens, or even hundreds of thousands of houses, too many to buy out. What do you do, you can't just tell them to take a hike.

Of course, this flood is the largest flood in the history of the United States, and it's not even over, so it's hard to put a number on it.
 
I'll admit I'm scared how bad it's gonna be when the waters recede enough for Search and Rescue to do a more proper house by house level search.

I doubt we're gonna anything resembling the numbers from Katrina (New Orleans was a, no pun, perfect storm. Houston is flood prone, but you'd be hard pressed to design a city from scratch that was more flood prone than New Orleans) and I really hope I'm wrong, but if the total number is still in the double digits I'll consider us lucky.
 
JoeBentley said:
I'll admit I'm scared how bad it's gonna be when the waters recede enough for Search and Rescue to do a more proper house by house level search.

I doubt we're gonna anything resembling the numbers from Katrina (New Orleans was a, no pun, perfect storm. Houston is flood prone, but you'd be hard pressed to design a city from scratch that was more flood prone than New Orleans) and I really hope I'm wrong, but if the total number is still in the double digits I'll consider us lucky.
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Keep in mind Houston has 7 times the population. I don't know what the death toll will be, but the damage will be much, much, higher.
 
We had our own major floods back in 2011 in Brisbane, one thing that made me wonder about town planners was the street down the bottom of the hill.
It was about half old queenslanders up on 10-15ft stilts, and the rest modern brick and tiles on concrete slabs.
Now that street flood as the locals colloquially put it 'every time a dog lifts its leg', so much so that one house has been rebuilt three times since those floods- in one case they hadnt even finished re-walling the interior before the next flood turned them all to mush again.
Surely council approvals should insist on if you are in a major flood risk area, you should build houses on stilts (or some people are now advocating 'floating houses' that actually do float off the ground when flooding occurs)
http://inhabitat.com/uks-first-amphibious-house-floats-itself-to-escape-flooding/
 
Dr. Keith said:
It just depends on where and when the house was built. I've lived in a house that backed up to levee but never had flood water come close to the levee. I lived in a very nice neighborhood that had street flooding all the time but never in the houses. I lived in a more mixed neighborhood that never even had street flooding. My lat office building in Houston was good through a big storm, the building next door had their basement breached. You have to weather a few storms to really get a feel for where it floods and where it doesn't.

One large problem is that Houston has grown so much since the last big storm. There are lots of people in Houston who have never seen a big storm and won't know what to do or how bad their are can get.
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So nobody's responsible for providing something as easily accessible as this?
 
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To put things in a Great White Northern perspective --
One inch of rain equals 10 inches of snow. If we had gotten as much as parts of Texas, we'd be under more than 40 FEET of snow.

That's the height of a 4-story building.
 
Information Analyst said:
So nobody's responsible for providing something as easily accessible as this?
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As JoeBentley points out FEMA does create flood maps. They are accurate as of the time the data they are based on was collected. But development around a city like Houston is constant and there is very little interest in redoing the entire flood map for a large bayou system every time a new building is built.

The solution is to make sure that each new development does not increase runoff speed or volume for the lot it is built on for a predicted 100 year rainfall. I don't remember the exact numbers, but that would have been something like 20 inches in 24 hours. So, you build a new apartment complex in an old field and you provide detention in or under the parking lot for 20 inches in 24 hours. Great. That just doesn't count for much when you get a storm well in excess of the predicted 100 year rainfall, say 40 inches in 48 hours.
 
Dr. Keith said:
As JoeBentley points out FEMA does create flood maps. They are accurate as of the time the data they are based on was collected. But development around a city like Houston is constant and there is very little interest in redoing the entire flood map for a large bayou system every time a new building is built.
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Lazy brats!
 
Marcus said:
It's clear that the maps have to change, floods that happen every 10 years or so are no longer 100 year floods. The flood that is happening now should happen less than once every 500 years. How does this work?
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Here is a pretty good discussion of what is meant by 100 year rainfall. The data used is updated, but even then a 500 year rainfall still has a 1 in 500 chance of happening each year.

Here in Austin, properties within the 10 year flood plain that are inundated can be bought out by the County. If all those houses in Houston are redesignated, you are talking about tens, or even hundreds of thousands of houses, too many to buy out. What do you do, you can't just tell them to take a hike.
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Federal flood insurance is set up so that you have to either rebuild above the flood line or no longer be eligible for coverage if you make a claim for over 50% of the value of the structure. People know this and game the system by limiting their claim to 49.5% of the value of their structure. It is a broken system that needs to be fixed. There is no reasons we should subsidize rebuilding in areas that have been flooded multiple times.

Of course, this flood is the largest flood in the history of the United States, and it's not even over, so it's hard to put a number on it.
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Indeed. I was surprised to learn which of my former homes were flooded and which were not. I don't have a complete report as I've lost touch with some of my old neighbors, but one house that often had water up in the yard while I lived there did not have water in the house. There had been some flood control and drainage improvements in the area since I left, but I was still shocked.
 
Argumemnon said:
Lazy brats!
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It is fun to spend months working on a project knowing that your results are completely accurate as of the week before you got the first data related to it. I know they have much better systems now than when I worked on this stuff with a sharpie on paper, but it still takes time.
 
http://wtvr.com/2017/08/30/port-arthur-texas-flooding-tropical-storm-harvey/

Houses built ‘inside a lake’ could degrade

Controversy has surrounded the placement of houses near Houston’s Barker and Addicks reservoirs — especially since floodwater overflowed the latter.

“They allowed them to build homes inside the reservoir. And these homes are flooded — 2,500 homes are flooded, some of them up to 5 feet deep,” CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said Wednesday. “They built homes inside a lake.”

And those homes “will be inundated for several weeks,” said Jeff Lindner with Harris County Flood Control.

“The closest comparison that I can draw to those homes … is Hurricane Katrina,” Lindner said.

“When water sits in a house for several weeks, the house begins to degrade.”

Lindner said those residents will be able to return after several weeks, but “we are not sure what the condition of those homes are going to be.”
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When I lived in Houston it seemed that Harris County Flood Control was underfunded and intentionally hobbled so that it wouldn't interfere in development. I wonder if they will be blamed for these issues or if they will be given the budget and authority to better deal with them. My money is on blamed.
 
Dr. Keith said:
When I lived in Houston it seemed that Harris County Flood Control was underfunded and intentionally hobbled so that it wouldn't interfere in development. I wonder if they will be blamed for these issues or if they will be given the budget and authority to better deal with them. My money is on blamed.
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Do you think it is a matter of "build it and they will come"...and fix it?

The US Army Corps of Engineers handles the big reservoirs but has no authority on the development. The County handles smaller projects and development but has no resources for the multi-billion flood projects. (I may be wrong here as I could not find it spelled out clearly)

So, build it out, flood more, then force Congress to fund the big projects they would not have approved simply to enable more development.

Perhaps it isn't so intentional, but it seems that is what will happen now rather than repeated billions in emergency relief.
 
Sherkeu said:
Do you think it is a matter of "build it and they will come"...and fix it?

The US Army Corps of Engineers handles the big reservoirs but has no authority on the development. The County handles smaller projects and development but has no resources for the multi-billion flood projects. (I may be wrong here as I could not find it spelled out clearly)
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When I was familiar with HCFC it was often referred to as Harris County Mow 'n Go. Externally it was because the only outward signs of activity were the mowers maintaining the massive ditch network. Internally it was a fatalist mantra that made sure that nothing more substantial was attempted. This was decades ago, though, so I would hat to think that mindset is currently relevant.

So, build it out, flood more, then force Congress to fund the big projects they would not have approved simply to enable more development.

Perhaps it isn't so intentional, but it seems that is what will happen now rather than repeated billions in emergency relief.
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It is not intentional. It may be avoidable. But that would be expensive.
 
Estimates: 100 Billion in damages. It always amazes me how much we spend to fix and how little we spend to prevent.
 
Macgyver1968 said:
When I lived in Houston, the remnants of a tropical storm dumped 10 inches of rain in about 2 hours. I got my first experience of flash flooding...and I do mean flash. I was driving my car and the water went from being a couple of inches deep to a couple of feet deep in a matter of minutes. I was stuck on the road, and couldn't get off, because the water was deeper in the right lane than the left. Eventually, my car started floating and deposited itself on the sidewalk. I couldn't open the door, so I had to escape through the hatchback. It was bad then...I can't imagine how bad it is with 3 times as much rain with more to come.
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Yeah. My wife and my kids were almost caught by a flash flood along the Guadalupe River while I was deployed overseas. Flash floods most people are not ready for.
Dr. Keith said:
Typically you lose power first. Then you wait to see how high the water will get. If it messes up the water treatment system at all you then have to boil water for a few days.
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Yeah, that too.
KatieG said:
From a post on FB:

Things non-Houstonians need to understand:
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Nice post, Katie.
Dr. Keith said:
Neither of you are wrong. They are not within the basin, but releasing more water into the basins at this point will add to flooding well outside the basin. Has anyone mentioned that Houston is really flat?
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So is the entire Gulf Coast of Texas. :D
Dr. Keith said:
I always had flood insurance when I lived down there, even if my insurance agent said I didn't need it.
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Good call. Even without a hurricane, cloudbursts in Texas often dump a crapton of water in a short period of time, and rivers flood. (See Wimberly recently).
Information Analyst said:
Because wet Americans makes better news than drowned brown people....
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Go grind your ax somewhere else.
Dr. Keith said:
When I lived in Houston it seemed that Harris County Flood Control was underfunded and intentionally hobbled so that it wouldn't interfere in development. I wonder if they will be blamed for these issues or if they will be given the budget and authority to better deal with them. My money is on blamed.
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I'll bet on the blame.

Just got off the phone with Tricky.
He's OK, as is his bride, but the house not so much. We are OK, but if the hurricane had hit the coast a few miles in another direction maybe not. (Not in Houston, but further south, and I'll point out that it is not very often that Victoria, Texas, has a hurricane reach it while still blowing hurricane force winds. Go look at a map of Texas, and find Victoria).

Have some friends who live in Rockport. They are now homeless. Have other friends in Portland. Houses intact, but damaged. Have friends and family up in Friendswood and League City. Not looking good for either.
 
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Darth Rotor said:
Yeah. My wife and my kids were almost caught by a flash flood along the Guadalupe River while I was deployed overseas. Flash floods most people are not ready for. Yeah, that too. Nice post, Katie.
So is the entire Gulf Coast of Texas. :D
Good call. Even without a hurricane, cloudbursts in Texas often dump a crapton of water in a short period of time, and rivers flood. (See Wimberly recently).
Go grind your ax somewhere else. I'll bet on the blame.

Just got off the phone with Tricky.
He's OK, as is his bride, but the house not so much. We are OK, but if the hurricane had hit the coast a few miles in another direction maybe not. (Not in Houston, but further south, and I'll point out that it is not very often that Victoria, Texas, has a hurricane reach it while still blowing hurricane force winds. Go look at a map of Texas, and find Victoria).

Have some friends who live in Rockport. They are now homeless. Have other friends in Portland. Houses intact, but damaged. Have friends and family up in Friendswood and League City. Not looking good for either.
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Do a lot of people carry flood insurance around Houston?
 
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