Well how is everybody in the path of the hurricane?

[Rick Kirchner]

Bill Manofsky has been posting pics of the area around Asheville. I imagine eastern GA, NC, and SC will be flooding today as the water makes its way downhill. Even my relatives in Speedway had trees down in their neighborhood.

[E1pix]

A best friend whose Dad ran D/SR in Cen Div in the ‘70s has a young son there — who is fine.

Really, just posting to say Nice Job, Rick — and hope all here that are connected to Asheville are okay.

We went through there last Fall after the Runoffs, shopped at Ingle’s, and seeing the devastation is… devastating.

[whadeduck]

This time we ended up very lucky. Some localized flooding and some wind, but nothing like the people to the North of us. We just had the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Ian and we're thankful it wasn't another one. Although the barrier islands are covered in sand once again. Sending good vibes to the people who were directly impacted by Helene.

[Farrout48]

Reporting from Sanibel FL. Helene brought us 18" of water in the house/garage underneath the main living area which is elevated. The winds and rain were nominal. Much better than Ian which gave us 8 feet of water in the house/garage.

Much sadness for the southern states who got much more than they had figured on.

[BLS]

Big mess and devastation in eastern NC and SC. I40 is likely out for a very long time, so travel across the NC/ Tenn mountains is going to be drastically different. I'm hoping they make hwy 25 automobile only. If they let the truck traffic on there it will kill travel for both truck and auto. Local truck deliveries only.

[provamo]

Warming

[Rick Kirchner]

Article in the NYT today about how the NC legislature torpedoed every attempt to update building codes to deal with flooding. Not that it would have mattered much here, as the majority of structures are much older, but it would make a difference in the re-building process. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/03/c...ing-codes.html

It also appears that despite several days of warnings, the TVA and other operators didn't try to draw down reservoirs to help handle the expected influx of water. A friend of mine in the area said they normally don't draw reservoirs down until November, while the hurricane season and fire seasons start in July-August. A 100 year-old dam had a million CFS going over the spillway!

Regardless, it seems like the area just doesn't have enough flood control structures. When I lived in Jacksonville, these hurricanes and tropical storms would drench us, and at the same time they would stall on the mountains, dump incredible amounts of rain, and two days later the water would get to eastern NC and flood out a lot of towns there like Fayetteville, Kinston, and Lumberton. I used to drive through Kinston on the way to DC, and after Hurricane Matthew the water marks on the buildings around the main intersections were more than 6 feet high. You couldn't get gas there for six months (they still use underground tanks) Things people don't think about - this happens enough that the state has a process - you haul all your water damaged stuff to the curb and the state comes along with skip loaders and dump trucks to haul it away. Can you imagine the size of the landfill that's going to be required for all this debris? Not to mention all the dead poultry and pigs floating around, along with the flooded out sewage treatment, septic systems, hog ponds, and chemical plants.

Back in the 90's I went to an airfield in Sealevel NC for an exercise. On the road into the base, there was a channel marker on top of a pole in a guys front yard. Evidently the channel marker ended up in his yard after a flood, and he put it on a pole at the height the water got to - well above his roof.

As much as Californians like to bitch about our nanny state (along with a lot of folks that have never even visited here) they do get the building codes mostly right. They don't do enough to limit building in high fire risk areas, and they don't do enough to prohibit trees close to houses (but the insurance industry is addressing that one - if we have an insurance industry left after Helene). I used to live about 10 miles from the epicenter of the last big quakes - a 4.0, 6.8, and 7.2 all within 36 hours of each other - and the only damage my house suffered was some hairline cracks in the stucco around the windows and a cracked driveway slab. One house had its garage burn from an improperly secured water heater and resultant gas leak. Other than mobile homes knocked off their jacks and a lot of non-reinforced landscape walls crumbling, that was pretty much it. On the other hand, the Navy base, built in 1942 through the late 50s for the most part, and with a lot of deferred maintenance (because if it's not haze grey and under way the navy doesn't like to spend money on it) suffered $3B worth of damage.

The fires in Paradise caused the legislature to require all garage door openers to have backup batteries and chargers, which doubled the cost of those - all because people didn't know to pull the lanyard and open their door when the power went out. I imagine it raised the cost of garage door openers across Nevada and Arizona as well as Californians add those to the list of things we need to buy on a road trip, like good brake cleaner, good paint, and freon. I'm bracing for the cost of a metal roof and enclosing my eaves with cement board.

The south is going to have to address these issues. IMHO, there shouldn't be a stick-built, ground-level house built within 20 miles of the coast or a mile of any waterway, and the need to find more flood control storage. Unlike tornadoes with a small footprint, hurricanes keep wiping out tens of thousands of structures every year and we just keep doing the same things over and over again and hoping for a different result.

[BLS]

There are no building codes, not here, and not in California, not anywhere, that will allow a building to stand up to a 20ft deep 40ft wide wall of water traveling down a mountain at 20 mph.

This was a one in several centuries storm, not just a wet weather event. Entire mountain towns have been gutted as most towns and roads are built along the rivers and streams.

As for moving everyone 20 miles from the coast - 40% of Americans live in a coastal county. 40%.