The Costly Damage of Flooding

“Johnstown flood” is a short story written by David McCullough. This story talks about the miraculous survival of a little girl named Gertrude. Gertrude’s sheer luck got her up the hill safely. Of course, with the help of several people she met along the way. I think that this is an extraordinary act of how worked together and some people put his/her life at risk to save a small child that they didn’t even knew. I fell that this is a great example of how human beings come together in times of need and extreme danger and in the way that we try to protect ourselves from disaster.

Levees were implemented as the primary form of protection from the bodies of water surrounding the city. Moreover, officials recognized these structures were critical to protecting the city’s inhabitants given the city’s topography. However, a confluence of factors led to projects that were more immediately profitable being a top priority while simultaneously allowing the infrastructure critical to protecting the city deteriorate. Because of decisions to postpone upgrades and maintenance, the city’s chances of withstanding a hurricane of Katrina’s magnitude were decreased. Ultimately, the levee breaches caused the city’s destruction.

History will affirm that from the beginning of the settlement of New Orleans in 1717, it was then and continues to be a location destined to periodic flooding caused by the Mississippi river and rising storms. Throughout time, New Orleans would challenge nature by primarily fortifying the river’s natural levees to periodically engineering levees to combat issues of flooding, only to return to reinforcing or rebuilding according to damages inflicted as time progressed. Each attempt to fight nature from overwhelming New Orleans kept setting engineers back. Refusal to abandon the coastal areas became more costly over time; the intent to preserve the coast became more valuable than the value of life and property.

In 1987 an atmospheric river heated Los Angeles ,the consecutive rain for more than 5 days made this the largest Flood that had happen in Los Angeles. This is best know as the California Great Flood. Houses, infrastructure, landfill were under water and hundreds of people die. This Flood has been the most expensive flood recorder in Los Angeles history. Billions of dollars were the total sum of losses left by the Flood as a result the entire state of california was declared in bankruptcy. Los angeles is not a place where hurricanes are generated due to its location but it is affected by El nino and atmospheric rivers that year after year are increasing its power. Is a vulnerable city where flood can occur at anytime , due to it topography

On August 12th, 2016, the southern part of Louisiana was flooded do to massive rain fall. I feel this is a big topic that should be talked about because of the eye opening things that have happened such as damage and the record breaking water levels recorded. This stuff really should be talked about but isn’t.

The current problem which the city of New Orleans is experiencing is flooding which is caused by heavy storms as well as hurricane Katrina. For instance, August this year, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards acknowledged a state of emergency since city’s failure of water pumping system exposes the residents of the city to the greater menace of tainted –weather flooding. This was less than a week where a flash flood had completely overwhelmed the city's water pumping system, and the city officials were struggling to make some repairs to the fire-damaged equipment which are at a power station plant and also shore up its drainage system. Therefore several residents were inundated by this incident. However, hundreds of homes as well as businesses

A flood can be defined in many depths but is simply water where it isn’t wanted. In late 2010 Queensland was affected by major flash flooding this continued on into the beginning of 2011 and ¾ of Queensland was declared a disaster zone.

The typical upper course of a river is narrow in width, shallow in depth and slow in velocity. The load size is very large and therefore, less of it. The bank gradients are steep and the discharge levels are low. All these features gradually change as the river flows downstream. This is shown in figure 2

On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 the US House of Representatives passed the 21st Century Flood Reform Act (HR 2874) with a whopping 237 to 189 vote. If passed by the Senate and the President, the bill would extend the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for another 5 years. The NFIP, which saw another devastating year of flood claims, is set to expire on December 8th.

Information that was used to develop my conclusions were relative to the history of Clearwater River such as the average normal discharge of 40,000cfs, the fact that the river can accommodate 55,000cfs before flooding will occur, and that with every increase of 2600cfs the river rises one foot. For example, this information helped to determine that four of the thirteen noted Peak Flood Discharges listed on the worksheet were not at flood stage as the river is able to accommodate discharges less than 55,000cfs. However, nine of the thirteen Peak Flood Discharges listed on the worksheet were at flood stage or drastically above; with the maximum rise of 17.77 feet above and a discharge rate of 101,200cfs. The average discharge rate of the top three noted floods per information on the Stream Gauge Data of Peak Flow Discharges is 93,613cfs, which is resourceful later in determining the extrapolated 75-year flood.

I honestly can't blame anyone for it for the devastation of hurricane Katrina. It was a hurricane. You can't really stop a hurricane from coming. Sure, you can prepare for it by making levies and stocking food. But, you can't stop it. If we could we really wouldn't need weather forecasters.

Imagine walking outside your front door and there being a dead body on your front lawn well that could have happened if you lived in Hardin,Missouri 1993. The reasoning for this is because a huge storm caused Missouri river to overflow. The rain started in the spring and ended in the fall. The floodwater covered over 20 million acres of land. Fifty people died from this and 55,000 homes were either damaged or destroyed. The great flood of 1993 is one of the worst natural disasters costing more than 15 billion dollars in damage!This is the craziest part,coffins begin to break open. The remains spread as far as 18 miles away! There were at least 600 residents buried in the Hardin

Following, a Puls flood routing method was used to simulate the event again with theoretical values. The relationship between discharge and discharge with storage over time was obtained and used to calculate theoretical values of discharge and water Level. These were compared with experimental results and a strong correlation was observed.

The problem at hand is the mitigation of man-made disasters, and the lessening affect on humanity by natural disasters. Many man-made disasters are instigated by a natural disaster that a population is well aware of, yet they choose to ignore the risk because they are not personally involved or think it will not happen to them.

A reservoir is a place, either natural or artificial for storing water and this storage may be drawn from for use, often to meet the uneven distribution of water in space and time. The natural flow of rivers and streams differ significantly with the change in weather throughout a year and may lead to overflows (flood) or low flows (droughts) in various regions (Postel and Richter 2012; Poff et al. 2007). Under such conditions, water reservoirs play an important role to alleviate these natural disasters by holding water during periods of floods, and allowing steady release of water during periods of droughts. In addition, these are widely used as the source of water for drinking as well as irrigation. Therefore, accurate forecasts of reservoir water level is highly essential for optimizing the various water management issues.