You, Rain & Deep Time
This is a rare mid-week Ask the Builder newsletter. The inspiration comes from Mother Nature and Hurricane Debby.
Several days ago I reached out to my good friend Loren. He and his wife Susan live in Bluffton, SC. They're just miles
from the state of Georgia as well as a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
They're hunkered down under the thick gray clouds at ground zero for the lazy Hurricane Debby. She's dumping rain like confetti falling in a ticker-tape parade.
Loren told me that in the past 24 hours he's had 10 inches of rain at his house. Medium branches from 100-foot-tall pine trees are littering his rear
yard.
Move Valuables
Are you in the forecast path of Debby? I am here in New Hampshire. She's going to be up here in three days.
I shouldn't have to tell you to move valuables in your home if there's the threat you'll get flooded.
Here are a few true tales from twenty years ago. I used to do a call-in home improvement radio show on WGRR in Cincinnati, Ohio. The morning-drive DJs were Chris and Janeen Coyle. They retired from radio eight months ago. They had one heck of a run.
They lived in a quaint home in Mason, OH. There was a shallow ditch next to their home. One day there was a terrific thunderstorm that caused an overland flash
flood.
The ditch filled with water and rose up against the side of their foundation. The force of the rushing water broke a flimsy single-pane basement window. They told me their basement filled with water to the bottom of the floor joists within 90 seconds.
Had someone been in the basement, it's possible they would have drowned had they not been able to get to the staircase to the
first floor.
A similar thing happened to other friends I knew in Amberley Village. They purchased a cozy ranch house on a street that looked like a kid's roller coaster. The street had some humps and dips in it as it followed the contour of the old farm pasture.
My friend's house was at the bottom of one of these dips. Little did they know but a 5-foot diameter storm sewer was under
their driveway. No one ever told them this and it wasn't visible.
Once again, there was a huge storm that pounded Amberley. The water not only filled the storm sewer, but it also started to run overland.
So much water came so fast that it filled the dip to a depth of 8 feet. The garage doors of my friend's house collapsed and their basement filled with water just as fast as the Coyle's
house.
"Tim, So What? What Does This Have to Do with Me?
In both the above cases the homeowners NEVER THOUGHT they'd be flood victims. They had never seen water flow next to their homes.
My college degree is in geology. It's a fascinating science.
We humans have a major disadvantage when it comes to geologic processes. Our lifetimes are TOO SHORT. We don't have enough life experience to understand massive events in geologic history. Some of these events happen over tens of thousands of years. Some happen in hours.
Layer on top of that the dense fog of
complacency.
Most of us don't have a crystal-clear memory of events of the past.
Take Cincinnati, Ohio for example. Less than 100 years ago the Ohio River experienced a catastrophic flood. Look at this photo of a building owned by my very good friend Nick:
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