Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Phillips If Metro Offers to Buy You Out, Should You Take It? Some Things to Consider
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Wed, May 19, 2010 at 5:05 AM
- This should put lie to the notion that our flooding was unprecedented.
So if you're one of the people the city will buy out, should you take it?
I actually don't know. I've had friends who lost homes in the '93 flood in Illinois. Some of them rebuilt on higher ground; some of them rebuilt where they were. All of them anguished over their decisions, long after they'd been made, worried that they should have done the other.
But there are some things that have been glossed over or muddled that you should consider when you're trying to decide what to do.
This flood was not unprecedented
Rivers flood. It's a natural part of the life-cycle of a river. We can do things to mitigate flooding (like dams and levees and river walls) and we can do things to mitigate the damage flooding does (like not building in flood zones), but we can't completely stop flooding from happening.
And rivers flood badly, sometimes. Even with all the best the Army Corps of Engineers can throw at a river, sometimes it's going to do what our rivers did to us. And not all our rivers have flood control systems in place.
If you've seen pictures of the '29 flood, you know it looks pretty similar to what we went through. It's important to know this, because I hear a lot of folks talking about how this flood is unprecedented, a 1,000-year flood or a five hundred year flood and I know a lot of folks think that means that the last time Nashville saw a flood this bad it was 1510 or 1010 and that none of us will live to see the likes of that again. But we've been through this before, and pretty recently.
Which brings me to my next point.
A 1,000-year flood isn't literally a flood that happens once every 1,000 years
Though it would seem like it, that's not what they mean when they say a 1,000-year flood or a 500-year flood. What they mean is that there's a one-in-a-thousand chance a flood like that will happen this year (or, if we're talking about a 500-year flood, a one-in-500 chance). Statistically, over time, that would average out to once every 1,000 years, but that doesn't mean you can't have a flood like this next year or next week, for that matter.
Think of it like a coin toss. When you toss a coin, you have a one in two chance that it will be heads. Statistically, over lengths of time, a coin will land heads up half the time. But you could pull out a penny right now, flip it ten times in a row, and it might come up heads eight times. That doesn't mean that the odds of throwing a head are actually four out of five. It just means that you hit a run of heads. If you kept flipping, you might hit a run of tails. And, if you kept flipping long enough, you'd find that, half the time, it was heads and half tails.
But here's what's crucial. Flipping a head last time doesn't tell you anything about your chances of flipping a head this time. What happened on the last flip has no influence on your current flip. And no influence on the flip after that.
It is the same with this 500-year/1,000-year flood stuff. The fact that we've just had a 500-year/1,000-year flood doesn't buy us any time, no safety cushion before the next flood.
When we roll the dice again to see if we're going to get another historic flood, fate isn't taking what we've just been through into account.
This could happen again. Exactly how it happened this time. Within your lifetime. Hell, if we're really unlucky, within this decade.
Officials know where our city floods. You should too.
If you look at the Army Corps of Engineers' maps of where they predict flood waters from a catastrophic failure of Wolf Creek Dam would go and you look at Metro's map of where this floodwater went, you'll see that the Corps fairly accurately predicted how Nashville floods (though, obviously, they're predicting what will happen if water comes down the Cumberland, not out of the sky, so the maps don't perfectly correspond). Massive amounts of water go where federal, state, and local officials know it goes.
You should take a look at both those maps — where water went during this flood and where it will go should, god forbid, the Wolf Creek dam goes. You should, if you live in this city, understand what parts of the city are under water during major floods and understand that we will have major floods, hopefully less often with good river management, but they cannot be completely avoided.
Not all waterways in our state are well-managed
What I am about to share with you is pretty much unbelievable. So, I'll just warn you up front, what you are about to read will flabbergast you.
From the Jackson Sun:
Herron, D-Dresden, said he was told the state has 70 high-hazard, non-federal dams not being inspected due to exemptions allowed in the Safe Dams Act of 1973.Eight of those dams are in West Tennessee, 49 in Middle Tennessee and 13 in East Tennessee.
A high-hazard rating means people would likely die if the dam fails.
Now, this isn't necessarily directly applicable to us. Here in Nashville, we live downstream from dams with federal oversight.
But here's the thing. We've got Cooper asking if the Corps screwed up. So maybe their oversight of the waterways is a little shaky. You've got dams overseen by the state that haven't been inspected in decades, even though their failures could kill people.
And these are the folks Metro has to work with. These are the people in charge of keeping your home out of the path of flood waters. One of them may not be doing their job that great and the other is too afraid of the farmers to even do its job at all.
How safe do you feel living in or near a floodplain with these bozos in charge?
Comments (7)
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That Metro map you link to is fascinating and valuable. I wonder whether it defines what real estate buyers and sellers will now consider to be flood plains from now on.
Have a good look at the inundation of Bell's Bend as shown on the map. The sod farm got a good soaking. Picture that level of water coming into May Town Center -- and people trying to get away across the two bridges that would be the only escape routes.
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Tom, I have to think there wouldn't actually be any escape from Maytown in this situation. Looking at the map, it looks like there was water over OHB in two spots north of the proposed MTC, and water where both bridges would have come into the bend. The dog and I were out in the Bend this weekend and there was a pallet a good 8 feet up in a tree just past where that last creek is before you hit the river. I suspect the entrances to both bridges would have been under water.
It would have been a nightmare. People would have just been trapped there with no escape.
Does anyone remember the name of the documentary that was on NPT (i think?) a few years ago about the general racket in building homes in flood plains over and over, despite the relatively likelihood they'll get wiped out over and over? It might even have been prior to Katrina, but I can't remember.
For me, this is just another reminder why people need to stay informed about their flood zone status; but most people don’t have the time or resources to investigate this stuff on their own, so they probably should just fork out the $10 and get a flood zone determination.
I have family in Yakima, WA and they were notified last year that their home was in a designated flood zone due to a map revision. I did some research for them and found a company that deals in these situations (http://www.myFloodZone.com)
I also found that in order to even begin the process you need to have a flood zone determination completed on the official FEMA form.
They eventually overturned her flood insurance requirements without her forking out BIG $$$ for a survey because it turned out the Lender's flood determination company made an error.
Don't get me wrong... if you're actually in a flood zone get insurance ASAP. But if you have doubts or concerns you should get a 2nd opinion.
