The front page articles of the Seattle Times, yesterday and today, make it sound as though the Howard Hanson dam is going to let go any minute now...
Which it is not. As Mrs. Drang mentions here, we attended an informational event in Kent's Showare Center ("Home of Lingerie Football!") Saturday, and all concerned--including the "Short Colonel" from the Corps of Engineers, and the reps from Kent's and King County's Public Works Departments, as well as the Kent FD Division Chief in charge of Emergency Management (who is a great guy, despite being a Buckeye), were at great pains to explain that
- The problem is not the dam itself. The dam is just fine.
- The right abutment of the dam is a hillside, which is the site of a 10,000 year-old landslide. Short version, it's leaking.
- There is at most a one in three chance of flooding.
- They are all working their tails off to raise the levees along the Green River by a minimum of three feet, or more in some areas. (That's about 40 miles of embankments.)
- The current El Nino year works in our favor, since El Nino usually brings a dry winter to the Pacific Northwest.
- Nevertheless, El Nino does not preclude a "Pineapple Express" dumping a metric butt-load of rain on us. Nearly impossible to predict.
LTC Rollins from the Corps of Engineers talked about past flood events. Last January the City of Pacific flooded; they had released the same amount of water under almost identical conditions at least once earlier last winter, with no flooding, so they said there should be no problem this time. Obviously, something changed, that they were not able to take into account. That anecdote was supposed to illustrate the difficulty of predicting events, but I fear that some in the audience took away the wrong lesson...
A lot of people seemed to be having trouble grasping details. Several local municipalities were represented1 but actually reading signs was apparently beyond some folks. Then again, the lobby of the Showare Center is poorly laid out for this kind of event.
Some folks were complaining about things like "They won't tell us what the evacuation routes are!", and having trouble grasping the fact that "We can't tell you 'Take 1st Avenue to B Street, turn left and proceed uphill on B Street for 2 miles' because experience tells us that we can't say for sure in advance that B Street will be passable." Similarly, they have shelter facilities figured out, but they are not going to publicize them in advance because "You'd be mad, and we'd look foolish, if we told you to go to a certain facility and, in the event, it wasn't usable as a shelter."
I'm glad to see that the local municipalities' employees are avoiding Nawlins Syndrome2, but, alas, some of my neighbors seem to be falling into that trap.3 I have avoided suggesting to any Emergency Management types that this might be a good chance to practice Natural Selection, but it's tempting...
Since the city of Auburn had representatives there, I prompted Mrs. Drang to ask them about the retirement home she and her father checked out last week. When she asked them about emergency preparations, they gave her a bland answer about fire/rescue service. In contrast, the lady from the city was enthusiastic: She said she had never seen a facility which was so well prepared. They are on a hill, but the Green River flows along directly below it; as of last week, they had plans for every possible thing that could go wrong except for "what if the sewers back up", and were working on that.
Anyway. This is something that I've been following for a while, between planning in the Amateur Radio community and at work, so I actually learned little. I'm glad I dragged Mrs. Drang to it. I hope our neighbors make the most of the information, and, if the worst does not happen, doesn't revert to Grasshopper (as opposed to Ant) mode.
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The next "Are You Flood Ready?" event for the City of Kent is planned for October 8th, from 6 to 8 PM, at the Showare Center. If you live in one of the other affected communities--Auburn, Renton, or Tukwila--contact your city's Emergency Management Department to learn what they have planned.
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1 Paging Stitch Witch! We picked up some stuff for you from Auburn!
2 You know, telling everyone to just chill because Uncle Sam will take care of you.
3 I told a colleague that my emergency preparations were going to include concertina wire, to keep refugees out...
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