10/4/15 7:42 AM

People are flooded out. I live on a hill, not and issue. Roads are flooded out. Ducks are flooded out.


My kid's car is stuck on the 3rd floor of a parking garage in Charleston. He got to work, they closed and he could not get home because his Camaro would have been flooded out. So far his restaurant is not flooded out.

10/4/15 8:25 AM

same weather system as Joaquin?

10/4/15 8:53 AM

Thats a horrible amount of rain. We would be underwater here with half that much,

10/4/15 9:18 AM

There will be more of it. As the mayor of New York (Bloomberg) once said "we're getting storm of the century every other year!" Simply, the weather is such we're in a record setting trend. Every few years, there will be a new big one bigger than ever before.

I know it's not a laughing matter. But like the snow storms we got last 2 winter, it's the way things going to be. Just plan for it.

I grew up in the hurricane zone (typhoon actually). So we just accept there will be days we need to just stop and .... WAIT!

No different than the snow storm we get up here. A few times a winter, everything stops and we... wait! I don't feel quite as annoyed as others because I'm used to the idea of letting mother nature run its course.

10/4/15 9:20 AM

I saw the reports on Charleston and thought of you guys. In that situation I guess a hill is a good place to be. And whew, glad the Camaro is high and dry!... :)

We got about 6-7 inches a couple days ago and I thought that was a lot....Lots of cars flooded out in some parts of Portland but it didn't affect me.

10/4/15 9:29 AM

--not the same as Joaquin. That cat 5 was pushed out into the ocean.

Richmond was in the middle of this; glad it wasn't 4-5 days earlier.

10/4/15 10:17 AM

nm

10/4/15 10:51 AM

Whew! The PNW is in an opposite weather trend precip wise. In fact there seems to be a lot of talk about how we are way overdue for the a big earthquake. The big one, as it were....

10/4/15 11:11 AM

For your viewing pleasure. I have a much worse washout on another road behind my house. I have no water but can flush to my septic via pool water and will make coffee with bottled water. Still waiting on the other video to upload.

https://youtu.be/jIJ0eIskfLw

10/4/15 11:30 AM

you DO NOT want to put water with a lot chlorine in your septic!!!

10/4/15 11:47 AM

My pool is in winter mode, hardly any chlorine right now and slight green tint. 17 inches of rain and no filter running made it pond water. It won't hurt my septic at all.

A major road behind my house washed out completely!!

The water main is gone also.

https://youtu.be/pVKDP0zqhEM

10/4/15 12:24 PM

Was there a culvert under the road there, or did nature just make one??


Is your Septic Field also higher than surrounding terrain, so as to drain out faster?

When I was doing the FEMA work I saw a lot of fields saturate and back flow into the tank. Including fields pumped up to that it all back washed into the house I am afraid to say. If you field happens to be higher than your house or tank [pump up situations] there can be unpleasant surprises.

10/4/15 1:27 PM

House is higher, slightly, I live on a hill and no water will stand in my yard. We are not washing clothes etc so it should be okay. I have been in drought conditions for quite some time so the subsurface can soak up a lot of water if it will just slow down a bit.

It has slowed some and Charleston and the tides went out. My son has gotten his pride and joy from the parking garage. LOL I was a little concerned for him.

There was a huge culvert, you can see it broken up in the woods. The water went around and through it, eroded the soil and the whole mess caved in.

10/4/15 2:22 PM

Should be ok? Hope so...

Just watch if your drains start getting too slow. That would indicate a saturated field and the tank will fill above outlet to field. This can be bad though. If the tank level raises the scum layer above the vent on the field side outlet, the crust layer can let chunks of the crust into the field. That = clogging the field lines potentially. Newer tanks have a baffle to stop this. Older tanks usually do not.

Sent you a PM with picture etc...

If it was me I would be curtailing adding fluids to the system until I verified the field is not saturated and or drains back down...

17" is an insane amount of precip..


Ciao

Last edited by Sparky on 10/4/15 4:41 PM; edited 1 time in total

10/4/15 2:56 PM

The drains are totally normal right now.

10/4/15 4:42 PM

well, hope life gets back to normal fast for you and your family... & neighbors. ;)

10/6/15 7:13 PM

Erik, how are things going??

10/7/15 4:27 AM

My family is fine. Other than the flash floods tearing out the roads around us we all fared very well. I am boiling any water we drink which is no big deal, we boil water for coffee and tea anyway and can brush our teeth with bottled water. The broken line in the video was one of two feeds to me and they just turned the broken line off while feed my community from just one line.

My wife is a teacher and her coteacher lost her home to areal flooding much like Katrina victims and a coworker of mine had his car swept away in a flash flood. As of yesterday he had not found his car. :0

10/7/15 12:16 PM

Not to compare the PNW rainy season apparently starting today to that mess...

But I have no loos of weather feeling this season upon the onset. Not with the Green Machine ready for mucky and lots of on/off road duty. ;) Although looking at it with fenders on it offends my sensibilities sitting next to the Scott. ;)

10/7/15 12:29 PM

Erik, Columbia SC and points downstream are making headlines every day. The country knows you guys got an amazing 17" of rain and that there have been several lives lost as a result. This morning (Wednesday) there was a story about a dam upstream of Columbia being reinforced with rocks and a levee too.

Best wishes for a healthy dry spell and everyone's safety. We know the trouble isn't over yet. The LSU game this weekend scheduled for Columbia has even gotten a steady rotation on sports broadcasts!

So pass this along to any of your fellow Carolinians who might wonder if the rest of the country has abandoned them.

10/7/15 1:14 PM

I wonder how long the cycle of 1000 year storms hitting the east coast so often will have to be endured??

10/7/15 4:09 PM

My wife spent the day helping a fellow teacher who lost everything. Their home was flooded to about 3 feet up, which really means that it is a loss. Jeannie said the floors were already buckling, it reeked of gasoline and chemicals from upstream and mold was already setting in. It was a very emotional day for her. I went back to work yesterday.

A coworker had a car washed away (stupid move done by his lazy son).

Another coworker owns a wonderful home on the Beaver Dam that was in the news today. The home owners along with help from the SCANG were able to stop the breach. The home owners in the community did the work to save their homes with the Guard bringing the rock and loads. Side by side. They did not just stand and watch. We talked on the phone this afternoon and he has not slept in 36 hours.

Kids are out of school do to the unsafe roads all over the midlands through at least next week.

People are asking why residents don't have flood insurance. Plain and simple, it has NEVER flooded in central SC like this before. We don't have snow melt, we are far enough inland that hurricane storm surge has no way of getting here and in fact a hurricane would not have dumped 1/3 of the rain that this event did. To purchase flood insurance would be flushing money down the drain.


The official rain total for my area was 21 inches dumped Saturday and Sunday.

10/7/15 4:25 PM

It is probably silt and not mold this early IMO. The place I make that comment from is having been a FEMA habitability inspecting contractor for over a decade. My experience in the field was mainly flood stricken areas, FWIW. It way a continuing certification I had to maintain until I let it go around 2010. After FEMA funding got swallowed up by Homeland Sec., FWIW.

10/7/15 9:03 PM

You can't have flood insurance unless it's in a designated flood zone.

Most of the houses on the bank of small river had not been designated as such because it had never gotten flooded in the past.

10/7/15 9:21 PM

"You can't have flood insurance unless it's in a designated flood zone. "

Mandatory in certain designated zones as well IIRC. With mortgages from federally regulated or insured lenders in higher risk zones. It is possible to not have the flood INS if you do not have a mortgage I believe. Or an seller held note with a poorly inked contract. I say that because I have seen instruments for proof of ownership provided was real close to looking like crayon and written in Kindergarten out in the West Virgini hills back in the 80s when inspecting with FEMA there.

The will be eligible for disaster assistance after a federal emergency is declared.
Including and not limited to temporary housing if their properties are not deemed habitable by FEMA. Or rather deemed uninhabitable, semantics. Sometimes that means not existing anymore unfortunately.

Some of the Katrina relocated folks are still in such temporary housing BTW, and not in LA either.