Game over: Living in the swamp

by YankeeJim | May 14, 2011 at 03:38 am

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Once upon a time, I lived in the frozen north, Chicago. It was so cold and snowy, year after year that I longed for a warmer climate. The opportunity came along to move my family to Tampa, Florida. It was right at the start of the boom years for Tampa with lots of commercial development. We found a place to live on Davis Island, a lovely historical community off the coast of downtown Tampa.

We lived on a street that ended at the bay. Canals laced the neighborhood so that some people could launch their boats and navigate into the bay and out into the Gulf of Mexico. What luxury!

Then came hurricane season; I had just laid white carpet in the living room and complete painting the interior. We were situated 12 feet above sea level so we paid attention to the weather.

They said hurricane Elena was coming but the sky was blue and there was barely a breeze. My neighbor said that there had not been a direct hit in Tampa since he was a child. As the evening came, authorities in Pinellas County said gently, “If you live in coastal areas, you may want to meander into higher ground, but it isn’t mandatory.”

The tone of the warning said to me, “They aren’t worried.” As I went to sleep that night, my wife was frantic. “How can you just go to sleep with a hurricane out there,” she asked?

“It’s not coming here. It is moving westward,” I replied.

In the middle of the night, someone came knocking at the door and there were announcements from a loudspeaker moving through the neighborhood: “Mandatory evacuation!”

I have reported before about making a decision about which car to take and what belongings were most important. It turned out that family pictures and my daughter’s dolls were top priority. We took the station wagon.

The next day, watching television from a hotel room, we saw a helicopter view of our house in the neighborhood with a yacht floating in the front yard. Downtown Tampa was flooding, including my office building.

We returned a few days later with little damage as the water stopped at the front door and the house was sealed tight. Yet, that was a warning and I moved from the island to … a new development built in the swamp.

They said, the swamp would never flood during a storm. There, I only needed to watch for alligators when I mowed the lawn. They did not say I could never use my lanai because 1) it is nearly always too hot, and 2) mosquitoes penetrate the screen no matter what you do. Traffic in and out of the neighborhood was so bad that we decided island living was better. Next time, we would move to the seventh floor, above the bug line and safe from high water.

The next move after that was to Hermosa Beach California where all we had to contend with was EARTHQUAKES!

“La. spillway to open, flooding Cajun country but averting disaster in New Orleans, Baton Rouge

By Associated Press, Published: May 13

LAKE PROVIDENCE, La. — In an agonizing trade-off, Army engineers said they will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as Saturday and inundate thousands of homes and farms in parts of Louisiana’s Cajun country to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm’s way when the gates on the Morganza spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years.

“Protecting lives is the No. 1 priority,” Army Corps of Engineers Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh said aboard a boat from the river at Vicksburg, Miss., hours before the decision was made to open the spillway.

The opening will release a torrent that could submerge about 3,000 square miles under as much as 25 feet of water in some areas but take the pressure off the downstream levees protecting New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi.

Engineers feared that weeks of pressure on the levees could cause them to fail, swamping New Orleans under as much as 20 feet of water in a disaster that would have been much worse than Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Instead, the water will flow 20 miles south into the Atchafalaya Basin. From there it will roll on to Morgan City, an oil-and-seafood hub and a community of 12,000, and then eventually into the Gulf of Mexico, flooding swamps and croplands.

The corps said it will open the gates when the river’s flow rate reaches 1.5 million cubic feet per second and is predicted to keep rising, which is expected sometime Saturday. Just north of the spillway at Red River Landing, the river had reached that flow rate, according to the National Weather Service.

Some people living in the threatened stretch of countryside — an area known for small farms, fish camps and a drawling French dialect — have already started fleeing for higher ground.

Sheriffs and National Guardsmen will warn people in a door-to-door sweep through the area, Gov. Bobby Jindal said. Shelters are ready to accept up to 4,800 evacuees, the governor said.

“Now’s the time to evacuate,” Jindal said. “Now’s the time for our people to execute their plans. That water’s coming.”

The Army Corps of Engineers employed a similar cities-first strategy earlier this month when it blew up a levee in Missouri — inundating an estimated 200 square miles of farmland and damaging or destroying about 100 homes — to take the pressure off the levees protecting the town of Cairo, Ill., population 2,800.

This intentional flood is more controlled, however, and residents are warned by the corps each year in written letters, reminding them of the possibility of opening the spillway.

Meanwhile, with crop prices soaring, farmers along the lower Mississippi had been expecting a big year. But now many are facing ruin, with floodwaters swallowing up corn, cotton, rice and soybean fields.

In far northeastern Louisiana, where Tap Parker and about 50 other farmers filled and stacked massive sandbags along an old levee to no avail. The Mississippi flowed over the top Thursday, and nearly 19 square miles of soybeans and corn, known in the industry as “green gold,” was lost.”