Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
So I said Houston is just fine where? My argument wasn’t to say Houston is good as is. My argument is comparing what happened in Lake Charles and imagine the exact same situation would happen in Houston. Currently in Lake Charles seeing what areas are and aren’t effected. Most of Lake Charles is very outdated as compared to Houston. This is a fact. Many areas in Houston would see devastation if the exact storm through the path described here would.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tewest86
Ok, I’ll tell you that the article is flat out wrong. Here’s a hint, deciding flood protection is a major part of my job. The writer has no idea what they are talking about. I’ve taken part in plenty of studies with the Corps. Most recently in NO. I exactly what goes into deciding levels of protection. I’ll leave it at that.
It’s so much that this piece is missing. It’s just something thrown out by the researcher. Theirs reasons for certain decisions. A lot of it has to do with laws and what’s authorized. But I digress. It’s not just as easy as “hey, let’s build protection that can stop a 30 ft. surge”. NOLA doesn’t even have that.
Funny thing is I can google the researches achievements on line. You 2 on the other hand are just giving your opinion on a message board. LOL I digress though.
Surge height is t tied to storm Cat. Katrina was a Cat 3 but had a 30 ft surge in some places. A lot a variables help determine the surge height. Holding back 30 ft of water is no small task. I’ve designed flood barriers. There will always be a risk. It’s the freakin coast.
Funny thing is I can google the researches achievements on line. You 2 on the other hand are just giving your opinion on a message board. LOL I digress though.
Ok. Buddy. You don’t know my name or my credentials. I’m not putting that on a message board. That’s just a sensational piece without strong backing. Did they actually go through a Chief’s Report to determine how these things come about? No. It’s a one sided piece without any real digging. We have a saying about people with all the academic credentials but limited real world design experience.
Ok. Buddy. You don’t know my name or my credentials. I’m not putting that on a message board. That’s just a sensational piece without strong backing. Did they actually go through a Chief’s Report to determine how these things come about? No. It’s a one sided piece without any real digging. We have a saying about people with all the academic credentials but limited real world design experience.
Oh buddy you clearly are unfamiliar with this guys work. But ok. Btw, I’m the prime minister of Japan cause I said so on a message board!
Oh buddy you clearly are unfamiliar with this guys work. But ok. Btw, I’m the prime minister of Japan cause I said so on a message board!
Happy retirement to you sir!!! BTW, I just realized most of us on this board are probably 40 and up, the young and hip are probably on discord, or that's what my son tells me. LOL
Ok. Buddy. You don’t know my name or my credentials. I’m not putting that on a message board. That’s just a sensational piece without strong backing. Did they actually go through a Chief’s Report to determine how these things come about? No. It’s a one sided piece without any real digging. We have a saying about people with all the academic credentials but limited real world design experience.
Don’t take the bait. He’s arguing just to argue at this point.
For starters, you're mentioning calculation methods being outdated and you're not taking into account what was really outdated here. Lake Charles has been structurally outdated for a long time. Uncoincidentally, Ryan St (which is extremely outdated) received much much more catastrophic damage than Nelson St which is extremely modern. Even Galveston is structured light years better than Lake Charles. A Cat 5 in Downtown Houston wouldn't cause the damage that the Capitol 1 building received in Downtown Lake Charles. Don't get me wrong, I love Lake Charles and the time I spent there. But if Lake Charles and Houston were houses, and Hurricane Laura was a wolf blowing, Lake Charles would be the straw house and Houston would be the brick house.
.
Wait...
Did you see what downtown Houston looked like after Ike? A much weaker storm than Laura:
To that end, I would completely dispute the idea that some buildings in downtown Houston would not look like the Capitol 1 building in Lake Charles.
Houston and Lake Charles are not horribly different though obviously one is much larger than the other. You have a wide variety of structures in both cities. Some very well built homes and buildings and some that are not.
I went to Lake Charles on Saturday because meteorology is hobby of mine and Ive never seen Cat 4 damage first hand.
There were a lot of houses (especially north of I-10 and Enterprise) that were missing chunks of roofs, walls, and a few that had complete destruction (though those were rare). Going South until 12th street, that was pretty much par for the course. But West of Common towards the Lake (especially on the Lake front and Shell Beach Road), damage to homes was actually quite rare outside some roofing tiles missing and a couple of homes where a tree crashed on them. South of 210 west of Ryan St. and in Prien, it was the same. More superficial damage than complete destruction.
What is lesson in that? Frankly, poor neighborhoods get hit much harder. The houses are typically not built as well and the resources are fewer. Houston has plenty of poor neighborhoods that would easily resemble what happened in Lake Charles. Our newer neighborhoods and those in upper middle class places would fare much better just as in Lake Charles.
To that end, I would completely dispute the idea that some buildings in downtown Houston would not look like the Capitol 1 building in Lake Charles.
Houston and Lake Charles are not horribly different though obviously one is much larger than the other. You have a wide variety of structures in both cities. Some very well built homes and buildings and some that are not.
I went to Lake Charles on Saturday because meteorology is hobby of mine and Ive never seen Cat 4 damage first hand.
There were a lot of houses (especially north of I-10 and Enterprise) that were missing chunks of roofs, walls, and a few that had complete destruction (though those were rare). Going South until 12th street, that was pretty much par for the course. But West of Common towards the Lake (especially on the Lake front and Shell Beach Road), damage to homes was actually quite rare outside some roofing tiles missing and a couple of homes where a tree crashed on them. South of 210 west of Ryan St. and in Prien, it was the same. More superficial damage than complete destruction.
What is lesson in that? Frankly, poor neighborhoods get hit much harder. The houses are typically not built as well and the resources are fewer. Houston has plenty of poor neighborhoods that would easily resemble what happened in Lake Charles. Our newer neighborhoods and those in upper middle class places would fare much better just as in Lake Charles.
I can tell you the major reason for that. We don't really build our houses to meet hurricane codes like some cities in Florida require. Look at the building code requirements for homes in Florida vs homes in LA and TX.
I probably will regret taking this bait, but at the end of the day, you got Jim Blackburn - noted environmental professor and environmental attorney who has written multiple books on this particular topic vs. the views of a couple of internet posters. Apparently this is the age of giving everyone's opinion equal status, no matter who it is, but something tells me neither of these posters knows nearly as much as Mr. Blackburn does about flood risks specific to Houston and why what we have is currently inadequate.
But from anyone that feels what we have is sufficient or that Category 4 or 5 moving directly up Galveston Bay would be "not that bad" - why, in your opinion, is Mr. Blackburn wrong about the impact of a 26-foot storm surge on the region? He claims that hundreds of tanks could become unmoored and rupture, creating the dual threat of huge waterborne projectiles and chemicals all over the place. It happened with a single oil tank during Hurricane Katrina (with a storm surge of "only" 16-20 feet) and polluted 1,700 houses with oil. We have thousands of chemical tanks along the ship channel, many containing more toxic and dangerous substances than oil. Why do you think that this is an incorrect hypothesis?
Because from where I sit, even if say, ten or twenty tanks ruptured and floated and not hundreds, in the case of a 26-foot storm surge, you're still talking about many hundreds of thousands of flooded homes, tens of thousands of homes exposed to oil/chemicals, a bunch of stuff destroyed (and probably people killed) by the massive projectiles that storage tanks would be, and lasting environmental devastation across at the very least the entire eastern part of the region, and probably a good chunk of the western half depending on how many tanks go and where they end up. A completely destroyed landscape.
Perhaps reality is somewhere between the two, but frankly, there's no region in the country that needs coastal flood protection more than this one. The fact this wasn't funded 10-15 years ago speaks to the ineffectiveness of our local and state politicians more than anything else.
I probably will regret taking this bait, but at the end of the day, you got Jim Blackburn - noted environmental professor and environmental attorney who has written multiple books on this particular topic vs. the views of a couple of internet posters. Apparently this is the age of giving everyone's opinion equal status, no matter who it is, but something tells me neither of these posters knows nearly as much as Mr. Blackburn does about flood risks specific to Houston and why what we have is currently inadequate.
But from anyone that feels what we have is sufficient or that Category 4 or 5 moving directly up Galveston Bay would be "not that bad" - why, in your opinion, is Mr. Blackburn wrong about the impact of a 26-foot storm surge on the region? He claims that hundreds of tanks could become unmoored and rupture, creating the dual threat of huge waterborne projectiles and chemicals all over the place. It happened with a single oil tank during Hurricane Katrina (with a storm surge of "only" 16-20 feet) and polluted 1,700 houses with oil. We have thousands of chemical tanks along the ship channel, many containing more toxic and dangerous substances than oil. Why do you think that this is an incorrect hypothesis?
Because from where I sit, even if say, ten or twenty tanks ruptured and floated and not hundreds, in the case of a 26-foot storm surge, you're still talking about many hundreds of thousands of flooded homes, tens of thousands of homes exposed to oil/chemicals, a bunch of stuff destroyed (and probably people killed) by the massive projectiles that storage tanks would be, and lasting environmental devastation across at the very least the entire eastern part of the region, and probably a good chunk of the western half depending on how many tanks go and where they end up. A completely destroyed landscape.
Perhaps reality is somewhere between the two, but frankly, there's no region in the country that needs coastal flood protection more than this one. The fact this wasn't funded 10-15 years ago speaks to the ineffectiveness of our local and state politicians more than anything else.
I didn't say anything about Houston's flood protection. I said that the method he claims USACE uses is incorrect. Economic impact is taken to account. Look up the RMC (Risk Management Center) in Lakewood, Co and check out all the reports they've put out about different systems. I know first hand what all is involved to determine the level of flood protection that will get built.
By the way, it's not called flood protection. It's a system to reduce risk. That's why HSDRRSDG was written and used to design the system in NOLA after Katrina. That stands for Hurricane Storm Damage Risk Reduction System Design Guidelines. There will always be risks. You can't eliminate all risks.
Define what would be "adequate". You can't reduce risk down to 0%. So what is acceptable? What he feels is acceptable may not be what members in Congress feels because they ultimately have the last say in what is authorized and funded.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
