Spring is Flood Season.
Salty and I were driving home in a heavy rain. It was a ridge-top road, passing just barely downhill of one cornfield and uphill of the next. We drove into what looked to be only an inch or two of water coursing across the road. And the car floated off into the next lane, as what had looked to be an inch or two was more like six or eight, and that was enough to float our little car. Fortunately our momentum carried us across the watercourse before the water got us off the far side of the road, but I’ll never forget That lesson about respecting the power of running water.
There are other risks though, less obvious than being washed away. Salty and I talk over some of them in this podcast:
‘Hundred Year Flood’ doesn’t mean “It won’t happen here”.
I’ve lived through two ‘hundred year floods’ already… and NO dangit, I’m *not* that old! Quite. My point is that extreme events will absolutely happen from time to time (and more often than people like to admit). Plan for those, and don’t put any building you don’t want to get wet in a potential flood plain — even if it would take a ‘hundred year flood’ to bring the water that high.
If you must build low, you can reduce risk by having them run the power higher in the structure, including the outlets. For shed-type buildings, having big doors on both ends oriented so they can be opened to allow the water flow to go right through reduces the chances of your building taking a vacation to the Gulf of Mexico or wherever the river ends.
This is what can happen when you build on a floodplain. (It was a ‘hundred year flood’. The second in my lifetime.)
Have you scoped your escape routes for low spots?
Being as you’re hanging out on a prepper website (Welcome, by the way), I’m hoping you’ve already got a primary route and one or two alternates for how you’d leave if you had to in a hurry. You should know where likely choke points and traffic jams are. One thing you may not have considered, though, is whether those route will be open in high water.
This might not be as much of a problem in a big metropolitan area, but if you’re going anywhere rural, it’s a serious consideration. The Place (our country retreat) has about four routes in. One (the shortest) is impassable if a deer has peed in the creek upstream — it’s a badly designed little bridge that goes under several times a year. Then there are a couple of ‘not if it’s been raining for five days’ routes, leaving us one route that doubles our travel time to get in or out during flood times.
Even the big roads can go under. In the Flood of ’93, there were no open bridges across the Mississippi for hundreds of miles.
The next time it’s flooding in your region, you might travel your routes and see how the water’s looking. Are all the bridges (and more troublesome, their entries and exits) still safely above the waters?
Not an abandoned track, this is a well-used BNSF run between Iowa and St. Louis
The biggest killer in floods worldwide
… isn’t getting washed away or drowned. It’s disease. The floods overrun sewage systems and wash unfiltered waste into the flood waters. Any diarrheal diseases in the region get spread like wildfire, not only to persons drinking untreated water, but even those just moving in the water to try and rescue their neighbors, livestock, or possessions.
The good water treatment plants in the U.S. reduce our risk here, but still, in the flood of ’93, those of us sandbagging along the Mississippi in Missouri were being encouraged to get vaccinations for things like hepatitis when the waters overran treatment plants in Des Moines. Major outbreaks of things like cholera kill thousands in areas with less safe water systems … and how safe would ours be after a major emergency?
When water overran Iowa in 2008, untreated sewage entered the river. It happens here. Thanks Oscar Sanchez/U.S. Air Force for the image.
The Takeaways
Big floods are becoming more common as weather extremes get, well, more extreme. We should be ready. Not building in low spots is a great start. Work high water into your exit plans, especially in rural areas. Those of you in the desert areas, please keep in mind how amazingly rapid and forceful the flash floods can be in areas with hard-packed dirt and little vegetation.
If there is a flood, view the waters as if they just washed through someone’s toilet; because they probably did. And last but very much not least — don’t drive through running water unless you’re Stone Cold Sure how deep it is, how fast it’s running, and that your vehicle will Absolutely make it across.