Tropical Storm Fay Floods Jacksonville
(http://www.metrojacksonville.com/photos/thumbs/lrg-6307-p1140863.JPG)
Tropical Storm Fay has left her mark on Jacksonville. Neighborhoods around the city are now struggling with extensive flooding.
Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/882
Wow, looks pretty bad... Here over in Tallahassee we got rain all day today, but I think we missed the brunt that Jax endured.
Man....Jax has to build some kind of protection or something. These flood look a lot worse than last years.
Great Pics!! Makes you really scared when you think what will happen when JAX gets hit with a real hurricane that is a level 3 or 4.............
What made it worse, was this darn storm just sitting and dumping all that rain. Not to say that the city would do well if struck by a major hurricane...in my opinion...we certainly wouldn't!
thats a lot of flooding. Wow!
Makes you think Venice...
opps....corrected typo :-\
Good gracious! That's pretty, pretty bad. Yeah, if a CAT 2 or above hit, Jax would really be in trouble; and especially if they are slow moving like Fay. Y'all pray that you never get hit with the big one! And if you do, hope and pray they skirt along at around 25 miles an hour vice 2 to 6 miles an hour like Fay.
Heights Unknown
Quote from: stephendare on August 23, 2008, 02:05:07 PM
We have had absolutely no planning and no forethought going on for the past few years.
The Delaney Administration had a pretty awesome guy, Chip (Patterson?) who was supposed to be one of the best guys in the country for emergency preparedness working for them, but apparently hes gone.
We would be even more wiped out by a category 5 Katrina event than New Orleans was. shoddy buildings, no planning, no sea walls, even a regular sustained bout of rain and we lost power for 1/8th of the residents.
With a little more windpower and some collateral damage, we would be screwed right proper, and there isnt even an ongoing process to prepare for it.
I found this out while trying to gather information for what would happen if the city had to deal with chronic flooding in the future if sea levels were to rise even incrementally.
We are making no plans at all. We are not even making plans to make plans.
And thats not just because that right now, the Builders Association pretty much controls the political process in this town, and anything which would impede rapid development is discouraged, but primarily because we don't have any real vision or thinking about the future going on anywhere in the city.
:D :D :D
BTW, Katrina was a Category 3 when it scored a glancing blow on New Orleans. The problem there was not mainly wind damage but the flooding caused by the overtopping of the levees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
Also, in New Orleans there was the not insignificant fact that much of the City is below sea level. That is not something which is true of Jacksonville.
Not to say that the flooding was insignificant, but it's not like every street flooded. I live in Avondale (another older neighborhood), and had no flooding issues whatsoever. The stream of water on either side of the street towards the drain was never more than two feet wide.
With that said, we need to figure something out in some of these areas.
Quote from: Midway on August 23, 2008, 03:05:20 PM
Quote from: jbm32206 on August 23, 2008, 08:55:16 AM
Makes you think Vienna
Makes me think of Venice.
Guess I was hungry or something....I corrected my typo...thanks... :-\
Quote from: stephendare on August 23, 2008, 02:39:28 PM
no kidding Steve. And for the city as a whole.
Are you kidding that the place functionally collapses after a little rain?
With that said, I'd hardly call this "a little rain" We got more rain than some places get all year. There to me are two issues at play - the river spilling over, and unbelieveably bad drainage. We tried to work Friday, but we had to leave because we would have been flooded in. We are nowhere near the river, our street just served as a westside retention pond. That to me is crazy.
In addition, in any tropical storm, the city is going to have to shut down, because of the bridges - this city frankly can't function without the bridges, which close at the minimum tropical storm force winds. In addition, this storm was extremely hard to predict. Look at the Weather Channel - 65 meterologists on staff and they missed about three times on the path of this thing, and nobody expected it to go so slow - had this thing gone at about 8 miles an hour (which is about normal for a tropical storm), it wouldn't have been nearly this bad - the city would have been closed Thursday, and back opened Friday.
Quote from: Steve on August 23, 2008, 03:31:08 PM
Quote from: stephendare on August 23, 2008, 02:39:28 PM
no kidding Steve. And for the city as a whole.
Are you kidding that the place functionally collapses after a little rain?
With that said, I'd hardly call this "a little rain" We got more rain than some places get all year. There to me are two issues at play - the river spilling over, and unbelieveably bad drainage. We tried to work Friday, but we had to leave because we would have been flooded in. We are nowhere near the river, our street just served as a westside retention pond. That to me is crazy.
In addition, in any tropical storm, the city is going to have to shut down, because of the bridges - this city frankly can't function without the bridges, which close at the minimum tropical storm force winds. In addition, this storm was extremely hard to predict. Look at the Weather Channel - 65 meterologists on staff and they missed about three times on the path of this thing, and nobody expected it to go so slow - had this thing gone at about 8 miles an hour (which is about normal for a tropical storm), it wouldn't have been nearly this bad - the city would have been closed Thursday, and back opened Friday.
We should have taken Norfolk's route and build a couple of our bridges as tunnels instead.
You all really need to take a step back...
1. In reality, no cities storm water facilities are planned for flash floods... its not cost feasible, and it just isn't possible.
2. Cities are planned to handle what happens most of the time (occasional storm, and they do that fine)
3. Blaming the city of jax on poor planning is wrong. nobody could have planned for this system or any other tropical system, you do the best you can, and when something like this happens you tough it out, and clean up afterwords.
Quote from: RiversideGator on August 23, 2008, 02:11:32 PM
Also, in New Orleans there was the not insignificant fact that much of the City is below sea level. That is not something which is true of Jacksonville.
Yes. Jacksonville is
at sea level, so you won't have 20-30 feet of water in a hurricane, only about 5 feet. Thats much better.
Midway:
Stephen said:
QuoteWe would be even more wiped out by a category 5 Katrina event than New Orleans was.
I never said we would have no flooding from a Katrina type storm. I said that we would be better off than New Orleans was because our geographic conditions are more favorable.
BTW, Jacksonville's official elevation is 16 feet but of course this varies based on where you happen to be in the City. In any case, we are on average sitting on much higher than does New Orleans.
Quote from: TD* on August 23, 2008, 08:44:18 PM
You all really need to take a step back...
1. In reality, no cities storm water facilities are planned for flash floods... its not cost feasible, and it just isn't possible.
2. Cities are planned to handle what happens most of the time (occasional storm, and they do that fine)
3. Blaming the city of jax on poor planning is wrong. nobody could have planned for this system or any other tropical system, you do the best you can, and when something like this happens you tough it out, and clean up afterwords.
You're right. There was nothing the city could have done to keep the river from overflowing its banks or keep excess water from settling at the lowest spots in the region.
People need to understand that while this was "only" a tropical storm, it was a significant to borderline generational rain event that lasted for the better part of 5 days dumping nearly 30 inches in Duval county. Most hurricanes could slam us with winds and surge and wipe out coastal and low lying areas because of it, but really, the rain with most hurricanes wouldn't be as significant. Hurricane Andrew, for instance, was a devastating cat 5 storm but only dropped about 5 inches of rain. The wind and surge (and gun toting criminals) were the killers.
Its important also to realize, New Orleans flooded not because of the rain, but because the levy system failed, due either to the surge, or President Bush (which ever you prefer).
Duval doesnt have a levy system, and is highly republican, so I think we might fare a bit better than did New Orleans.
Quote from: stephendare on August 23, 2008, 11:41:39 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on August 23, 2008, 10:37:54 PM
Quote from: TD* on August 23, 2008, 08:44:18 PM
You all really need to take a step back...
1. In reality, no cities storm water facilities are planned for flash floods... its not cost feasible, and it just isn't possible.
2. Cities are planned to handle what happens most of the time (occasional storm, and they do that fine)
3. Blaming the city of jax on poor planning is wrong. nobody could have planned for this system or any other tropical system, you do the best you can, and when something like this happens you tough it out, and clean up afterwords.
You're right. There was nothing the city could have done to keep the river from overflowing its banks or keep excess water from settling at the lowest spots in the region.
actually there is. Its called 'drainage'.
Also available are riverwalls and pumps.
We can drain all we want and spend a trillion dollars on installing 10' high levees along the riverbanks throughout Duval. Excess water will still settle at the lowest elevations in certain areas. No one should be shocked about areas like McCoys and Hogans Creek flooding. They were originally swamps.
If some people would also take 10-15 minutes to clean out the storm drains as needed throughout the storm we wouldn't have seen all the street flooding (away from normal sources of water) either. Several of us around our neighborhood went out and cleaned the drains as they became full of debris and TRASH. Especially TRASH, these are some trashy people...I don’t know how many times I grab little debbies and owl wise chip bags, oh and Crystals bags, cups, boxes out of storm drains. I cruised through North Jax yesterday and it still had standing water, still tons of debris, and storm drains still plugged up, but hey they got priority....everyone was grillin and chillin.
Spend as much as you like, but someone has to clean out those drains as they clog, and the city can't clean every single one of them, contrary to popular belief in some neighborhoods. The pumps in San Marco didn;t help much did they? Perhaps that moeny would ahve been better spent on the lochs at Hogan's Creek? Also did you see the pictures of the "Castle" in Springifeld? The city did a great job with the bridge and filling in the ponds over there, that house is flooded every time it sprinkles...no I think if they do anything at all, they should educate people on how to keep their darn storm drains clean. After 30 inches it is bound to flood, but maybe not so bad it can sink a car.
During the first break in the heavy downpours, I was out there, along with another neighbor with rakes and a push broom to move the debris...which is all it took, and the street drained in no time. Although the majority of it was limbs and such. I'm proud to say that my neighbors and I do a great job with keeping this block clean.
I agree this was not "just" another tropical storm. This was in fact a very unusual rain event. Ask Melbourne about it. Fortunately we did not have hurricane force winds, a fact that the NEFBA is grateful for. But the rain amounts were unprecedented. i'd like to see the last time we received this much rain in such a short time. I'm living in mobile at the moment but my wife stated that we received about 25 inches of rain in about 2 days on the westside off will branch creek. She had to drain our pool at least 4 times. There simply isn't much the city can do in this situation. The response seems reasonable to me. Low lying areas are always going to flood, the city can certainly try to improve the drainage.
Also living in Mobile, Ala, gives me a great appreciation of bridges, the big complaint here is that fact that they only have tunnels crossing mobile bay. They are investigating building a bridge. The tunnels create horrible traffic jams constantly, small fender benders basically bring traffic to a stop, plus in storm situations the tunnels are closed due to potential flooding. There is no easy answer to the situation, you can always by pass the tunnels on us 90 but that takes you all the way around the city.
I doubt that the 3 storms we had in 2004 dropped as much rain as this storm did.
also cleaning your street gutters is one of the most important things you can do to keep the water down. I'm amazed that the city doesn't advertise that more. In 2004 when we had the 3 tropical storms, my neighbor and I spent the evenings going around and clearing the street gutters.
Quote from: downtownparks on August 23, 2008, 11:32:36 PM
Its important also to realize, New Orleans flooded not because of the rain, but because the levy system failed, due either to the surge, or President Bush (which ever you prefer).
Duval doesnt have a levy system, and is highly republican, so I think we might fare a bit better than did New Orleans.
Puleeze... How about appropriatly placing blame on the mayor of NO and Guv of Louisiana
Bridge, It was tongue in cheek.
Quote from: downtownparks on August 24, 2008, 01:26:01 PM
Bridge, It was tongue in cheek.
:D :D OK... I will remove foot from mouth... :D :D
Quote from: stephendare on August 24, 2008, 12:06:24 AM
what is there to correct? the solidness it unquestionable. Thick and dense in fact.
Of course, our drainage and infrastructure is fine, as proven by the pretty pictures. Now if we can just sort out which canals and retention ponds are republican or democrat, the picture would have as much depth as its formidable density.
Stephen: What you dont understand is that it is probably not financially feasible to engineer a system to deal with such infrequent huge rain amounts. Sure we can do things to improve drainage but the bottom line is we live along a river and the ocean in a low lying area. Lots of rain will accumulate in areas and cause flooding no matter what we do.
Quote from: stephendare on August 24, 2008, 01:43:24 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on August 24, 2008, 03:42:17 AM
Quote from: stephendare on August 23, 2008, 11:41:39 PM
Quote from: thelakelander on August 23, 2008, 10:37:54 PM
Quote from: TD* on August 23, 2008, 08:44:18 PM
You all really need to take a step back...
1. In reality, no cities storm water facilities are planned for flash floods... its not cost feasible, and it just isn't possible.
2. Cities are planned to handle what happens most of the time (occasional storm, and they do that fine)
3. Blaming the city of jax on poor planning is wrong. nobody could have planned for this system or any other tropical system, you do the best you can, and when something like this happens you tough it out, and clean up afterwords.
You're right. There was nothing the city could have done to keep the river from overflowing its banks or keep excess water from settling at the lowest spots in the region.
actually there is. Its called 'drainage'.
Also available are riverwalls and pumps.
We can drain all we want and spend a trillion dollars on installing 10' high levees along the riverbanks throughout Duval. Excess water will still settle at the lowest elevations in certain areas. No one should be shocked about areas like McCoys and Hogans Creek flooding. They were originally swamps.
Lake, this was the exact argument that the good old boys used not to drain the northwest quadrant.
This is after all the state that drained the swamps to create real estate, and I don't know where this idea that we cant properly drain and pump comes from.
See: The Netherlands.
We arent being helped by being forced into building surface infrastructure like roads, police and fire stations to accomodate our wicked sprawl into the low lying areas.
And of course, for reasons unknown to God and man, our Electric Authority is apparently not designed to be waterproof.
These are things we can change.
1) Are you saying that they dont have floods in the Netherlands?
2) How many tropical storms and large rain events do they have in the Netherlands?
Well the city must be doing OK if we aren;t inlcuded in the disaster counties huh? Non need to spend gazillions of dollars afterall, just a couple thousand to save Corine's house!
Ahhh...but there is also the labor cost for filling, delivering, and placement. Unless it is just a given that Corine doesn't have to pay ;)
Since the bickering is reaching new heights for the site I decided to dig through the NWS and try to figure out how much rain we had in 2004, I certainly didn't remember anything approaching this level.
TS bonnie was tough to find good records but did find a map that layed out the rainfall on a general scale, showed jacksonville received 1 to 3 inches.
TS charlie, according the NWS 1.73" of rain.
Hurricane Frances is the one I think most of us remember most vividly, 9.71" of rain.
Keep in mind this is spread out over a month. Totals are no where near what the city received in just a couple of days. Most of the damage for these three storms was actually wind damage, trees and tree limbs, knocking out power and falling onto homes and vehicles.
I haven't missed much...Lol...anywho, I'm glad she got the sandbags. I know the city has a policy not to do ad hoc work on private property. It has to do with insurance and liability. Should somebody get fired, no.
Rain anyone?
Let's see, Donna hit the First Coast in 1960. Making landfall down in Fort Myers, she dumped 18" of rain in Live Oak, and similar amounts here. Storm surge was 8' above normal. For you beach-I'll just ride out the next one-types... Go out and take a tape from the highest tide, and add 8' to that. Then add some giant waves on top and you'll get an idea of what your in for. But Donna was just a warm up.
In 1964, Dora a large well defined category 4 storm headed toward Brunswick, the outflow from an off coast storm Cleo (if I recall) started to take her energy down. She slowed and winds started to drop, but she still packed a dangerous punch. Suddenly she veered west, and made landfall at St. Augustine, and a bee line for Jacksonville. The storm surge at St. Augustine was 12' above normal high tide. Needless to say, only the castle and the tops of the larger hotels were out of the path. She dumped 23.27 inches of rain over Mayo, Florida (just south of Live Oak). She took out the beaches like a giant aquatic bull dozier. In fact the damage in todays dollars would be 2 BILLION, in Jax alone. BUT, today we have 200,000 new homes and buildings in the lowlands of the Intercoastal and other parts of the city that would make that figure much, much higher.
These were the first storms since 1851 to hit the Jacksonville area, and they dispelled the myth that Jax is immune from tropical storms. So perhaps Fay was a good thing, sand bags and all... Perhaps we have seen the devil and better understand how to respond. Or perhaps her gentle blow, gave us another false sense of security?
An interesting sidebar, was noted before both of the above storms. 30 days before they came in, in BOTH cases a sudden and unexplained migration of sea turtles hit the beaches, headed INLAND! It got the attention of every science type in the land, the Seminole made a statement that the "ancients of Jacksonville, told them the turtle exit is a sure sign that a tropical storm will hit..." Of course the science types just blew it off. The NWS gave us 12 hour warnings, and in both cases the Native System gave us 30 days. The way I see it, it's NWS - 0 and Seminoles - 2! Wonder if this was seen this time? Was Fay too weak to count? Could it be there aren't enough turtles left to notice them?
OCKLAWAHA
OK. Given TD 7, and beyond, what were the lessons learned from fay as more are sure to come.
QuoteJACKSONVILLE IS FLOODED.; Water Reaches First-Story Windows of the City.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., May 13, 1903 -- The rain which had been falling incessantly since yesterday assumed about daybreak almost the proportions of a cloudburst, and when the citizens prepared to leave for their places of business many of them found their homes completely surrounded by water.
Full Article:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C04EED81F30E733A25757C1A9639C946297D6CF
8.5 inches in 24 hours... last paragraph describes Hogans Creek flooding...
There must be local accounts of this flood.
Quote from: Lunican on November 20, 2009, 08:52:30 AM
Full Article:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C04EED81F30E733A25757C1A9639C946297D6CF
forgive my ignorance, but why did you necropost a 1 year old topic?
Because it was topical. Many of our threads go on for multiple years.
Quote from: Lunican on November 23, 2009, 08:41:33 AM
Because it was topical. Many of our threads go on for multiple years.
Heh, sorry, I just come from online communities where a necropost gives you a boot to the head. ;p
You're the Reaper man right? Just punish him.