Weather Warning

Per Durango.

Rain, rain, go away

Everyone knows that never works. 
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram continues to write about the emergency warning sirens.  Thanks to Clyde Picht and Mother Nature, they exist. 

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram also talks about record rainfall today.
Flooding problems were reported in low-crossing areas in Fort Worth, Arlington, Irving Euless and Colleyville, area police reported.

Let's see, a tornado and record rainfall in April.  History repeats?

Usually.

Come again?

Did the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board just criticize the former Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board?

Did they say the lone voice that spoke out was right?

Today that lone voice is still speaking out putting the citizens safety above the popular vote.

WHAT will the next Editorial Board say about the current one?  WHAT will they say about that same voice continues to speak out?   Maybe YOU should listen.

No one cares, until the next storm comes.  History repeats.

An Oct. 21, 1997, Star-Telegram editorial decrying Fort Worth's sporadic storm-warning system as not worth modernizing because it was "redundant" with other modes of communication made Editorial Board members cringe Wednesday when they read it.


Did the collective "we" really say, "The sirens [that] blare out the warning of an approaching tornado or hailstorm are about as useful today as fenders on a compact car"?


If anecdotal evidence is any indicator, the warning provided by sirens was remarkably useful Tuesday in keeping North Texas residents safe as tornadoes bore down on the region. Facebook posts and online comments credited Arlington's warning system in particular for alerting residents to the nasty weather headed their way.


Images of the damage leave one amazed that no one was killed and only injuries that weren't life-threatening were reported.


The Editorial Board's 1997 skepticism about updating Fort Worth's siren system was shared by then-Mayor Kenneth Barr and other members of the City Council who thought money would be better spent on a traffic light system that expedited firetrucks getting through intersections.


Then-Councilman Clyde Picht was the lone voice calling for additional and more reliable sirens.


Talk about the storm-warning system quieted down -- until the March 28, 2000, tornado upended lives and businesses in downtown Fort Worth before flattening homes in southeast Arlington and southwest Grand Prairie. Five people died and more than $450 million in damage was reported.


By 2003, the Fort Worth council had approved $3 million to upgrade and expand the city's sirens.


Read more here: Broad-based storm-warning systems proved their value during North Texas tornadoes

Take Cover!

Tornado sirens currently sounding in South and West Fort Worth, Tarrant County. 

There has been a tornado sighted on the ground in Johnson County.

Be safe, neighbors!

Fires and Floods

Go hand and hand.  Who would have thought?

FEMA fills you in.  So if a wild fire can cause a flood downstream, what else could?

Flood mitigation methods will also be discussed because flooding risks can jump after a wildfire, even in areas far from the fire that were not previously considered as having moderate or high flood hazards.

Flooding may be the last disaster wildfire survivors think they should guard against. When fire burns away vegetation, however, there is nothing to soak up the water from the heavy rainstorms that can occur in Texas. Storm runoff can cause severe erosion, mudslides and flooding.  

While the highest risk of flooding is for properties directly impacted by fire, it also rises for homes downstream or below scorched areas.

Hitting the nail on the head

Is what the New York Times keeps doing.

(This story, "As Thailand Floods Spread, Experts Blame Officials, Not Rains", originally appeared in The New York Times.)

On the other side of the world, yet it sounds so familiar...

As some of Thailand’s worst flooding in half a century bears down on Bangkok — submerging cities, industrial parks and ancient temples as it comes — experts in water management are blaming human activity for turning an unusually heavy monsoon season into a disaster.

The main factors, they say, are deforestation, overbuilding in catchment areas, the damming and diversion of natural waterways, urban sprawl, and the filling-in of canals, combined with bad planning. Warnings to the authorities, they say, have been in vain.

Those who tried to warn them have been called crazy.

Ain't so crazy now, is it?

Same story

Another story from Texas with all the same factors - gas drilling, floods, politicians, tributaries, FEMA, mortgage, insurance...Any of this sound familiar?

Read about it in the Fort Worth Weekly.  WHO's next?

The first change occurred just four months after they moved in, when Devon Energy built a gas well pad next to their fence line, ruining the view for months and sending toxic residue into their backyard every time it rained (“Paradise Lost”,  June 18, 2008).
 
One month after the pad appeared, said Annette, “We got slammed by a flash flood that nearly entered the house. A neighbor called to ask if we were all right, and then she told us we might be in a flood plain.”

The flood plain question “had come up once — that some of the land but not the house was in a flood plain” during discussions before the sale, Annette said, “but when it did, the realtors produced several reports showing that the property was not in the flood plain.”

“We never would have purchased the house if there were any flood issues,” said Michael. The couple did know that runoff from heavy rains had washed into their pool and come close to the house.
People involved in the sale of the property to the couple disagree. They later maintained in court that the Daniels were or should have been aware that the property they were purchasing was in a flood plain.

After the neighbor’s comment, the Daniels began to look into the issue and eventually got in touch with Parker County flood plain director Kirk Fuqua.

“He told us that he didn’t understand why the house was sold as not being in a flood plain when it had always been in the FEMA 100-year flood plain,” said Annette. Fuqua confirmed that information for Fort Worth Weekly and said his records showed no remedial action that would have removed the house from the flood plain.

“Not only that, but it turned out our house was built right on top of a drainage easement, a platted stream,” said Michael. The unnamed stream is a tributary of nearby Silver Creek.

Worse was coming. In 2008, a new FEMA study came out, again showing the Daniels’ house in the middle of a flood plain. As usual, FEMA alerted lenders, and three months after the first flash flood, Chase Home Mortgage Finance LLC, wrote to tell the Daniels they would need to acquire flood insurance.

The insurance added $500 a month to a steep mortgage that was already beginning to pinch, as the recession slowed the income from their travel business.

Unfortunately, the couple soon discovered that the Parker County appraiser had reduced the appraised value of their home to zero after the new FEMA study, and you can’t refinance a house valued at zero. Their land dropped in value from $75,000 to $25,000.

“So we owed $300,000 on a house that was valued at zero,” said Annette. “And with business slowing down we couldn’t even get at our equity. Who could have dreamt this was going to happen?”

Speaking of water...

A letter to the editor in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram makes another interesting point.  Protecting from flooding and supplying water, isn't that a water district's job?  WHAT are they up to instead?  Ask them.

Water pipelines

I totally agree with Friday letter writer Harry Kelly's logic about a water pipeline to Texas. This exact topic has been raised repeatedly among my engineering friends.

Water pipelines flowing south to Texas and other parched areas could have prevented the recent flooding of farmland along the Mississippi River. Similar pipelines placed strategically in flood-prone areas could be part of a network of pipelines nationwide to relieve drought-stricken areas as well as create new water storage reservoirs. There is no reason why our government cannot see the logic of moving the excess water from one place and send it to another that desperately needs it. This would also create thousands of jobs to build and maintain the life saving network.

-- Steven West, Arlington

Odd?

WHO is blowing up levees?  The same group that is wanting to take down levees in Fort Worth, Texas for the Trinity River Vision.  Same folks who should remember Katrina all too well. 

Yes, none other than the Corp of Engineers.  SOS already.

Read about it and some of the possible consequences on NaturalNews.com

"Right now the Mississippi River is in the process of going through what we call an epic flood, meaning it's more than historic; it's more than a 100-year flood, it's more like a 500-year flood," said Gene Rench from the National Weather Service, to My Fox Memphis last Thursday. "We could flood many homes, businesses, close down factories, people could drown."

Since the time of Rench's statement, the situation has only gotten progressively worse. And yet this emerging disaster has received little attention from the mainstream media, which has instead chosen to focus on other events that, to the discerning individual, appear more of a distraction than actual news.

People living all around the flood zone are being evacuated, and ACE is planning to blow up a 64-foot levee, but most Americans are too busy focusing on meaningless royalty weddings and flimsy tales of the supposed capture of dead terrorists.

"Someone is going to drown"

Have you ever not been able to be in your home for the holidays?  Our thoughts are with the Arlington flood victims during this holiday season. 

Read about their struggle in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  This is happening in many areas, remember what happens when nothing is ever done, it just gets worse.

More than 200 homes and condominium units citywide were damaged during the Sept. 8 storm. More than half the affected properties were along Rush Creek, where flooding has worsened over the years because of development upstream.

Flooding in Arlington and Fort Worth

Again.

And what is to be done?

Well, TWO weeks AFTER the flooding, Govenor Perry has asked for help.  WHY would it take two weeks?  If everything you own is under water, you need help NOW.  Those waiting are told it will be a long process.  Arlington was working on plans to get some houses out of the flood plain, however they can't get federal funds released.  WHY?  ASK YOUR CONGRESSWOMAN.

And another Fort Worth flood next to a newly installed pipeline.  Animals dead, property ruined.    Just another day in Tarrant County.  We'd tell you the Trinity River Vision will fix that since the project is for "flood control", but it won't.  Read about it in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

And more in the FW Weekly.

“The land along the entire length of the pipeline has been raised two to three feet higher than it was in its natural state. And that has created a dam, leaving the water nowhere to drain off,” he said. “So instead … it’s just going to sit here until it evaporates.”

Kelleher said that when Enterprise first began laying the 30-inch pipe located just inside her neighbor’s property line, “they fueled their heavy machinery about five feet from my stock pond. And within a couple of days there was an oil slick, a sheen on my pond.”

That wasn’t the end of it. “Part of the pipeline was laid through a closed municipal landfill,” Kelleher said. “I watched them put that pipeline into the ground, and while they were excavating, they were pulling out huge pieces of trash. They said they removed and containered and disposed of it all properly, but they didn’t.”

Kelleher said that, in the process of trenching along her property line, Enterprise workers “compromised my pond, and my pond water began leaking into their trench where the trash was.”

She said she came home from work one day shortly after the pond was breached to discover that Enterprise workers had put a pump in their trench and were pumping the water back into her pond. “I told them to get it out of there, that it was contaminated water that would kill my animals. So they removed the hose from my pond and disposed of [the water] on my neighbor’s property.”

She’s convinced that the flooding, the most serious and most recent problem, isn’t going to go away until the pipeline company addresses the problem of changed water-flow patterns.

Leave it to Congress

To leave its citizens Up a Creek...Last week 20 dead in flood in Arkansas.  Today flash floods in Oklahoma.  Texas leads the nation in deaths due to flooding. 

Read the letter to the editor in the Fort Worth Business Press.  YOU can't afford not to. 

Up a creek

Due to inaction by Congress, on May 31 the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) expired and has not been reauthorized. Without the NFIP, property owners in designated flood zones across much of Texas cannot obtain flood insurance to protect their properties. As a result, those seeking to purchase property in a flood zone are not able to obtain a mortgage, without purchasing flood insurance.

This lapse in judgment on Congress’ part could have devastating results for the recovering Texas real estate market as families and homeowners seeking flood insurance are left without an option to purchase and those with expiring policies are left unprotected and unable to renew.

June marks the official start of Texas’ hurricane season, and many Texas homeowners are left with the added worry that their property may not be protected. If we have learned anything in the wake of Hurricanes Ike and Rita, it is flood insurance is a necessity for Texas homeowners. Hurricanes are not the only source of flooding as Central Texas, Houston and Dallas have all experienced flash floods in recent years.

For some time now, Congress has been approving a series of short-term extensions of the NFIP but this is the third time the program has lapsed this year. Previously, on March 28, the NFIP expired for several weeks due to Congress’ failure to agree on how to pay for extensions of other government programs and subsidies that were combined with the latest short-term NFIP extension.

As a Texas Realtor, I urge Congress to take immediate action on a lasting NFIP extension to protect a recovering real estate market and the millions of taxpayers that rely on the program for flood insurance.

– Bill Jones
Chairman, Texas Association of Realtors, Austin

Texas Flooding Again

The National Weather Service in Fort Worth has reported the Trinity River will rise above flood stage by early Thursday morning. It will then crest at 34 feet. The last time this happened was 9-11-2007.

They also said streams and creeks are already full from the earlier rain and heavy downpours are expected through midnight.

We hear they are having some flooding problems on Northside Drive in Fort Worth as well as in Keller, and part of the Haltom City trailer park was evacuated, again. Same places as in 2007.

Remember what happens when, nothing was ever done.

America's Crumbling Infrastructure

"America's infrastructure is collapsing. Tens of thousands of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. A third of the nation's highways are in poor or mediocre shape. Massively leaking water and sewage systems are creating health hazards and contaminating rivers and streams. Weakened and under-maintained levees and dams tower over communities and schools. And the power grid is increasingly maxed out, disrupting millions of lives and putting entire cities in the dark. The Crumbling of America explores these problems using expert interviews, on location shooting and computer generated animation to illustrate the kinds of infrastructure disasters that could be just around the bend." This is the description of the History Channel's documentary. We can only hope elected officials watched last night, if not tell them to watch the rerun.

Below are a few comments from the program you might find interesting.

Levees:
"No one really knows how many bad levees there are in America, incredibly the United States didn't begin compiling a national inventory for levees until after Katrina. It will take years to complete. Meanwhile officials have no reliable way knowing where the levees are or what condition their in. If we cant even identify who is responsible for all these levees we can't begin to fix them, maintain them and upgrade them to provide protection to the general public".


Leaking sewer lines:
"No one notices underground water pipes until they burst. Cities are sitting on time bombs, people have to die before it becomes national agenda".


Bridges:
A survivor of the I35 bridge collapse said, "To think a thing like that could happen in a major metropolitan area is beyond belief".

Mayor of Dover said:
"It's unfathomable that any group of people would say, no we'll wait til later to fix it when lives are in danger. It would be absolute catastrophe".

Sounds like another case..."Nothing was ever done, it just got worse".

Alexandria Collins

This is Ally. A beautiful child with a beautiful smile. Ally died two years ago in June during the floods in North Texas.

She was ripped from her mothers arms by the current as they tried to escape their home due to rising flood waters in the middle of the night.

It wasn't raining where Ally lived, it was raining north of there.

Those downstream had no warning.

There had been talk, rhetoric, of moving the homes away from the creek in the past. There had been studies of the creek in the past.

The map below was published in 2005 by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (we will tell you WHO they are soon). It shows Ally's street completely under water, two years prior to her drowning.

Another case of "Nothing was ever done, it just got worse". A child dying because nothing was ever done is, in a word, unacceptable. And if the government knew loss of life was probable, WHY was nothing done?

What does it take for something to get done? Besides money. Maybe if some of the Trinity Uptown money was spent to protect lives and property instead of economic development...then no lives would be lost. Which is more important?

Our thoughts are with Ally's family during the anniversary of what had to be the worst day of their lives.

She is not forgotten.