Hurricane Harvey

[JAHS]

3 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I think the real issue is that it'd have put millions on the freeways creating an unimaginable traffic jam. Plus the freeways were often hardest hit - having that many people needing rescue often ignorant of basic submerged car safety would have significantly increased the mortality rate. It's hard to evacuate an area.

From what I heard the Governor of Texas was telling people to evacuate but the mayor of Houston was telling people to stay in place because of the terrible traffic jams that happen . People are running out of gas as they sit on the freeway for hours and can get flooded while in their cars. People who stay are taking care of each other just fine in their neighborhoods.  A lot of it depends on whether your house is in a low lying area or not.

[JAHS]

LDS Church says missionaries, Houston temple safe

"Hundreds of people are dealing with the aftereffects of deadly flooding in Houston, Texas, following Hurricane Harvey and unprecedented rainfall in the area.

On Monday, the LDS Church announced that all of its missionaries were safe and accounted for.

“All missionaries are safe, though several missions have been affected,” church spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a statement. “Significant precautions were taken before Hurricane Harvey’s arrival to help missionaries remain safe.”

Hawkins said missionaries were asked to gather enough food and water so they could remain inside their homes for as many days needed. Missionaries in areas with the greatest possibility for flooding were moved to other locations temporarily. Several other missionaries were impacted by the flooding.

“As flooding subsides and cleanup efforts begin, missionaries will be engaged in helping the communities where they serve,” Hawkins said. “As is customary in times of crisis, mission presidents have asked missionaries to contact their families by email to let them know they’re safe, and have provided updates to families, as possible, through the weekend."

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, JAHS said:

From what I heard the Governor of Texas was telling people to evacuate but the mayor of Houston was telling people to stay in place because of the terrible traffic jams that happen . People are running out of gas as they sit on the freeway for hours and can get flooded while in their cars. People who stay are taking care of each other just fine in their neighborhoods.  A lot of it depends on whether your house is in a low lying area or not.

There is always the fear of a repeat of Hurricane Rita where more deaths occurred in the evacuation then did from the storm. Many regretted leaving in that storm.

The governor also suggested evacuation Friday afternoon when it was too late to evacuate which makes it look like political cover. I can tell you based on that self-serving suggestion alone If he runs again I am voting for his opponent. Evacuating Houston is impossible. You could get a large number out if we started when the storm started to look bad on Wednesday but by Friday hunkering down was people's best bet.

[Calm]

Just saw a picture where the guy had kayaked into the Temple area and was standing by the front doors with water over his ankles.  Private email, so can't share.  Sorry.

Edited August 29, 2017 by Calm

[Calm]

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865687658/Tropical-Storm-Harvey-displaces-scores-of-Mormon-families.html

[bsjkki]

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865687657/Harvey-in-Houston-LDS-temple-threatened-meetinghouses-damaged-missionaries-safe.html "

"It’s a veritable river going past the LDS Temple," said Michael Boyd, a member of the church's Olde Oaks Ward in Spring, Texas, where the temple is located. "The temple is an island now."

Water is lapping at the temple's door, as seen in a photo shared on Facebook by a member of the temple presidency. The temple closed Saturday after the 11 a.m. session. Water has breached an adjoining building." 

[bsjkki]

[The Nehor]

The temple's first floor is probably going to flood.  

[The Nehor]

The Inverness reservoir is about to overflow. Evacuation orders have been in place for several hours in the anticipated path of the flooding.

Note this is not one of the big catastrophic levees I hope I am being overly paranoid about. Those are still rising and we may be about to find out if the untested spillway works on the largest early tomorrow morning.  

[Tacenda]

Sad that Pres. Trump voided proper infrastructures to prevent disasters like this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rolled-back-flood-protections_us_59a42d78e4b05710aa5dbeb0

[bsjkki]

3 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Sad that Pres. Trump voided proper infrastructures to prevent disasters like this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rolled-back-flood-protections_us_59a42d78e4b05710aa5dbeb0

Since the regulations were rescinded just two weeks ago,  they obviously were not effective and did not prevent the Houston disaster. I don't think this is an appropriate thread to bash the President with intellectually shallow hit pieces. This is a time to leave politics behind and support and pray for those in harms way. 

[The Nehor]

1 minute ago, Tacenda said:

Sad that Pres. Trump voided proper infrastructures to prevent disasters like this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rolled-back-flood-protections_us_59a42d78e4b05710aa5dbeb0

As much as I despise our President this one is not his fault (not saying you meant it was). This rollback could result in future disasters and his rollback of funds to FEMA and various monitoring agencies (NOAA in particular) designed to help track storms like this can be pinned on him. 

In the 60s when Houston's flood infrastructure was built the city was surrounded by farms with fields that could absorb a lot of water and the current dams were sufficient for even an event like we are experiencing. Now suburbs have replaced all the farms and their drainage systems are feeding into the problem and the infrastructure is just not good enough and other then sporadic maintenance and paltry upgrades nothing has been done. A lot of the blame falls on local and state governments. Texas has roughly one inspector on payroll for every 200 dams.

The political problem is no level of government wants to pay for this stuff. It does not win votes. Many deride these kinds of improvements as paranoid and wasteful. And of course they are only useful when catastrophes happen which means most politicians will not be in office when their infrastructure spending would save lives. Both parties have recognized the deficiency and there is bipartisan support at the national level to take steps to rectify it but it is low on the list of priorities. Will sink lower if Trump is really ready to take a stand on his stupid border wall and shut down the government. I kind of hope he does and his veto gets overridden.

[The Nehor]

Just now, bsjkki said:

Since the regulations were rescinded just two weeks ago,  they obviously were not effective and did not prevent the Houston disaster. I don't think this is an appropriate thread to bash the President with intellectually shallow hit pieces. This is a time to leave politics behind and support and pray for those in harms way. 

Nope. That is the kind of argument that means nothing ever gets done to fix problems. Yes, we need to deal with the situation but the "do not politicize disasters" is often a blame dodging game and shuts down discussions of improvement. When a flood wipes out a city looking into what our leaders are doing about safety measures is gauche and cannot be done.

Also you tried to turn this into a political hit piece yourself with your insinuation that the regulations failed. The repealed regulations were about new construction of flood control measures (and other things). The Houston infrastructure was mostly built in the 60s. It was not covered. The removal of those regulations does mean that we can build subpar systems now and our descendants can curse us in a few decades when they fail. So yeah, Trump is playing with lives. When you do that you cannot claim immunity and ask to "leave politics behind" to shield yourself from criticism.

[bsjkki]

8 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Nope. That is the kind of argument that means nothing ever gets done to fix problems. Yes, we need to deal with the situation but the "do not politicize disasters" is often a blame dodging game and shuts down discussions of improvement. When a flood wipes out a city looking into what our leaders are doing about safety measures is gauche and cannot be done.

Also you tried to turn this into a political hit piece yourself with your insinuation that the regulations failed. The repealed regulations were about new construction of flood control measures (and other things). The Houston infrastructure was mostly built in the 60s. It was not covered. The removal of those regulations does mean that we can build subpar systems now and our descendants can curse us in a few decades when they fail. So yeah, Trump is playing with lives. When you do that you cannot claim immunity and ask to "leave politics behind" to shield yourself from criticism.

I don't mind the debate but don't you think it belongs on a different thread or on a different forum?  I would have to study the specifics of the regulations to determine their worth but I read the posted article and found it shallow and I really didn't want not this thread to get shut down due to politics. I have liked reading your contributions to this thread and the knowledge you have shared about the Texas area and what is occurring. 

[bsjkki]

Update from the newsroom. http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/latter-day-saints-prepare-hurricane-harvey 

Rising floodwater as a result of Hurricane Harvey has breached the Houston Texas Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to the temple president.

“The creek became a river and the current is so strong that it’s been dangerous to even try and approach the temple," said Marshall Hayes, president of the Houston Texas Temple. He said nearby Cyprus Creek rose by more than 20 feet.

[The Nehor]

29 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

I don't mind the debate but don't you think it belongs on a different thread or on a different forum?  I would have to study the specifics of the regulations to determine their worth but I read the posted article and found it shallow and I really didn't want not this thread to get shut down due to politics. I have liked reading your contributions to this thread and the knowledge you have shared about the Texas area and what is occurring. 

I did not start the derail and do not plan on continuing. 

[The Nehor]

2 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

Update from the newsroom. http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/latter-day-saints-prepare-hurricane-harvey 

Rising floodwater as a result of Hurricane Harvey has breached the Houston Texas Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to the temple president.

“The creek became a river and the current is so strong that it’s been dangerous to even try and approach the temple," said Marshall Hayes, president of the Houston Texas Temple. He said nearby Cyprus Creek rose by more than 20 feet.

Uh-oh, I did not expect it to rise this fast. Looks like the spillways are going to be tested by dawn unless rainfall cuts off or slows soon.  

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

The temple's first floor is probably going to flood.  

There also has to be a basement for the font.

[Hamba Tuhan]

4 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

There also has to be a basement for the font.

Not necessarily. I've been in a number of ground-floor baptistries that simply have a 'well' for the font to sit down into. 

[mfbukowski]

3 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Not necessarily. I've been in a number of ground-floor baptistries that simply have a 'well' for the font to sit down into. 

Thanks for the reminder- you are right.

[The Nehor]

Lake Charles is now flooding. New evacuations.

I have been blathering on about reservoirs filling. Here is a visualization someone made of Ad****s, the most worrisome one:

It just passed 106 feet about an hour ago. I have not found a good update I trust since then. Once it hits 108 and starts leaking it will take more and more water to get to the next level so the good news is the rise should slow. The bad news is that water will be leaking out and causing further flooding.

In the image it is obviously not water. Kids play there on a normal day. It is a reservoir but normally it is kept empty. People bike along the edges. Right now the whole thing is water.

Things are looking a little better in terms of the storm. Storms recharge themselves with water (warm water charges faster) over the ocean and then dump their load when they hit land. Because of pressure systems in the east and the Texas panhandle the storm stalled. Normally the storm would still exhaust itself but now that Houston is over 50% water it can recharge itself pretty well there. The good news is it looks like the storm might be able to get out to the NE and then head NW. Not the storm will still be dangerous and will probably create tornados on the way out but Houston will hopefully get a break. The hope is that rain will taper off to light rain on Wednesday. This is a projection so it could be very wrong.

The colloquial saying about projecting storms like this is: "All projections are wrong; some projections are useful." Some projections show the storm staying.

Rainfall graphics are having to add new colors to show the level of rainfall from this storm. Most graphical representations did not have a scale this high.

Even if the storm does taper off Wednesday and leaves it will take months, probably two to three, to get the water out of the city and surrounding suburbs. There is also the possibility the levee might give way even after the rain stops. It has never been tested like this. It would be basically impossible and irresponsible to test it like this.Worst case is still Houston is basically gone but odds are still against that. I know one guy in the path of the catastrophic release who jokingly said he is willing to bet everything he has that the worst will not happen under the morbid and probably correct assumption that if he loses he will be dead anyways.

[The Nehor]

Okay, bad news. That good news I mentioned about the storm moving on is looking less and less likely. Not definite but Houston may get pounded for a while longer.

They are talking about an uncontrolled release from the Ad****s reservoir on the north side. Not sure what they mean at this point. Stay safe everyone.

[The Nehor]

Here is the text of a Twitter post from a Houston forecaster for the National Weather Service:

"Feeder band + deformation zone = bad. I'll be praying/crying the whole night as I sleep at the office again. I have no words to describe."

When the weather guy is using words like 'praying' and 'crying' it is not good.

Keep praying.

[The Nehor]

Going to bed. Even if the rain stops the reservoir is going to keep filling for some time faster then it is being drained. Some leakage is pretty certain before morning. Just praying the whole thing holds. Good night Houston and good luck.

[Tacenda]

4 hours ago, bsjkki said:

Since the regulations were rescinded just two weeks ago,  they obviously were not effective and did not prevent the Houston disaster. I don't think this is an appropriate thread to bash the President with intellectually shallow hit pieces. This is a time to leave politics behind and support and pray for those in harms way. 

Sorry about that, I shouldn't have brought that in. We'll keep politics out hopefully.