Episode 74: Flooding

spk_1:   0:01
Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. Where we are. It's good afternoon, everybody. And before we begin today's podcast, I were driving along as we podcast in the car and I need to tell Spice.

spk_0:   0:13
She just saw that from the look on your face that we need to stop for gas.

spk_1:   0:16
We need to stop for gas in the next town. Yes, I was just like, yeah. Should have done that before we left. We're okay. We have range of 82 miles left tomorrow only 22 miles out of town or 20 miles out of town. So we're good. We're seven

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miles from next gas station,

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but we do not want to. Rick, trip back on this cast. Welcome to the show. The big show. The largest show. That is sorry about the night that is taped in our car. Even though we don't use actual tape,

spk_0:   0:45
credit is actually our car. So that 500?

spk_1:   0:48
Yeah. I'm sorry. I've got all these words flooding out of my mouth. And we all know that flooding is not good. Suddenly could

spk_0:   0:56
be dangerous.

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Flooding could be bad. Footing can cost you money. It can cost you your life, depending on the kind of flood, whether it be a flash flood or ah or, ah, bigger flood. So, hey, let's talk about floods.

spk_0:   1:11
Some of the stuff is pretty obvious, and we've touched on it in other places, so But I think we should just bring him up here, since the topic is floods. First of all, if you I have never driven through running water and head your car almost washed off the road by what you thought was just a little runoff. From what? From a bare field, not even a creek lit. We've been there. We've done that. Its tanks shocked and amazed how little water it takes to move a car off the road.

spk_1:   1:45
Okay, well, we're gonna tell a story. Um, were we? I think we were in your Joe Metro. If I recall correctly,

spk_0:   1:54
it was one of my small

spk_1:   1:55
Yes, Yes. It may have been your Renaud le Carre. And yes, we actually did own a Renault. Look our for a while. That's true story, which really wasn't a bad car. It was actually comfortable to drive us big insight. The transmission was really bad. Oh, my gosh. But we were driving along. We're count back from from Illinois and we were just driving. It was night, and it had been raining hard that day. Now we're up on a rich road, okay? They were driving down this little dip in the highway. And because these country roads, they don't they're not like city roads. They go up and down and up and down. They don't degrade, was never leveled when they built them, and there's a cornfield was off to each side of us and there's a draw in the cornfield and the the, um, height of the top of the field is just maybe a little over the roof of our car. I mean, it's not like it. We're not talking hit real hills here. And this dip is, what, 15 feet? Maybe

spk_0:   3:03
not even that deep.

spk_1:   3:04
Not even that deep.

spk_0:   3:05
They didn't even bother having a culvert under the road at that point.

spk_1:   3:09
That's something. I mean, just the tube that a tube not really not really a full blown covert. The two must have been plugged because we're driving along and we come in or coming down the little hill. It's maybe 15 feet worth of hill. It's not even a hell rating cancer dogs, and we hit the water and our wheels lose complete traction. Boom! We're floating.

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Start drifting into the oncoming lane

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and there's

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being washed down that's

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being washed downstream on the highway, and this is not a low water crossing highway. This is, like two rather flat corn farm fields on the top of a rich kind of highway.

spk_0:   4:00
So respect flowing water and driving through it is bad. That is the first pretty obvious, but ought to be said element.

spk_1:   4:10
And also we have. We have that in an article, and also we have an article about how to keep a escape tool in your car so that if he does happen, you can break out the window, cut your seat belting, actually get out of that. Really. They're very inexpensive. They're available on Amazon anywhere you look. Ah, well, razor thing. And

spk_0:   4:28
yeah, and it works for mangled cars that you need to get out of a CZ. Well, a CE flood situation.

spk_1:   4:33
It's not as easy to break a window on the cards you think it might be.

spk_0:   4:37
They're not designed to break that easily. So these tools,

spk_1:   4:40
these tools we have the little pointed thing. That coach. And so anyway, yes, cars. What else?

spk_0:   4:47
Don't build on a floodplain, ever, Ever. It's a building that can't afford to get wet and maybe get washed depending on where you put it.

spk_1:   4:57
Yeah, we. Most of the biggest problems in the flood of 93 because so many people had built in the floodplain is the biggest problems with in Katrina. So many people lived below sea. Love don't live below sea level. If you are in a sea level of sea area, if you're indefinitely, it's okay. Three oceans not going to get. But if you're in New Orleans, live above sea level

spk_0:   5:24
deserts could actually be pretty dangerous that

spk_1:   5:26
way. Yeah, they have ridiculous flat floods but

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mountains and are just as well don't camp in draws.

spk_1:   5:35
No, And don't Don't camp in dry creek fifths rod dry riverbeds because, you know those rocks are in there and they're rounded. They did not get rounded by the wind.

spk_0:   5:46
Even if there is no cloud burst near you, positional thunderstorms could be very intense and upstream of you.

spk_1:   5:52
And if you if you like to do some of the things that we do like playing canyons, and you really have to pay attention to that. I know we were. When we were in Zion, we were in the main canyon and the river that runs back. We couldn't really go back in there very far because they've been storms in the area and the water level can rise quickly. And then there's some other place we love to cave. There's certain caves you can go into when it's been raining, and there are certain caves you should avoid. For example, in Kentucky, you can feel it's the best time to go into the Jewell Cave is does it call the Jewell box? I forget exactly what it was called. Something like something like that Diamond Diamond Cave. Maybe you could look it up. You go in there when it's been pouring ring for three days because all the waterworks a running inside it. If it's been pouring rain for three days, you may as well skip your your tour of horse cave because

spk_0:   6:53
it's gonna be a float.

spk_1:   6:54
It's going to be your you're gonna look down there and see a sinkhole full of water. No, so it just kind of depends on which cave urine,

spk_0:   7:02
which kind of brings us to the real reason I thought of making this podcast about floods, which is it's getting to be spring season when the normal spring floods come and sometimes really big spring floods come. Have you checked your potential exit routes? You're listening to a proper podcast, um, hoping you have a plan for how you're going to leave your area. If you need to leave your area,

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we even have to

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meet your family. Your backup plan for where you're going to meet your family,

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even if it's just a temporary. You've got to get out of the area because there's been a chemical spill that they're evacuating because of whatever reason forest fire, wildfire, you name it. There could be all kinds of problems that you need to evacuate the area or for 24 48 or 60 or 72 hours, you know. But if it's flood season, don't assume your routes are gonna be open. Even if they're interstates. This tube, they're going to be open because interstates flood everything, floods.

spk_0:   8:03
And if you've got a plan to go by the back roads, a lot more of those they If you don't see them in the high flood season, you may not be aware of which ones are at risk and which ones aren't wonderfully. If you start going through rural areas, there's gonna be some places I can't get through.

spk_1:   8:21
One of the things we know about the place, which is where our country retreat is, is we know there's only one way in and one way out during flood season, and from where we live, it's the long way. And

spk_0:   8:38
we've got, Oh, about four different routes normally

spk_1:   8:42
and that a couples.

spk_0:   8:43
But we have the roads. Okay, it's been raining for this long. We can't go this way if it's not been. If it's been raining for longer than that, we can't go this other way even longer than that. We can't go the third way. And if we're in a serious flood, we're down to one route.

spk_1:   8:58
There's that one road. If it's had a heavy do you know, because it turns the ah hard packed dirt into soft pack mud. But that's not a normal route for us. That that was Oh, heck, we're on this route now. Yeah, So it wasn't a spends that road. I had to pack out a mile and 1/2.

spk_0:   9:22
Oh, yeah, because that road had was standing water on it at the bottom of the hill. So

spk_1:   9:28
we didn't know about it. There was no place to turn around. There was no shoulders in the

spk_0:   9:32
Sometimes on the gravel road you get no turnaround spots,

spk_1:   9:36
so you know those fun.

spk_0:   9:38
But we're in a rental car. Rental cars can go anywhere, do anything. So one other major thing about floods that a lot of people don't know, especially when it comes time to do the clean up. And you're maybe wading through the water trying to reclaim stuff, things like that. The single biggest overlooked risk of floods. I hope everybody thinks about drowning and not getting washed away in a car. Single, bigger story. Floods is communicable diseases that we don't normally have problems with the U. S. Because municipal sewer systems get overrun with water and the contents of the municipal sewer systems get untreated into the flood waters. And then people start waiting through the floodwaters either to try and rescue others or to rescue their stuff or to try and get back in early or what? For whatever reason, the only serious diseases I can think of Seikaly spread diseases that early kind of third World country disease outbreaks in the US that I recall. We're actually a flood related, like in 19 in the flood of 93. Here in the Midwest, the city of Des Moines got overrun with water and their sewage plant got washed into the river and they had some disease outbreaks downstream because somebody had hepatitis or something like that. It got in the water, and rescuers who had been working in the water caught those diseases.

spk_1:   11:22
Another another Gotcha. When it comes to flood work and sandbagging is tetanus, if you're gonna be doing sandbagging and working around floodwater have a tetanus shot, I'll tell you,

spk_0:   11:44
I don't like this.

spk_1:   11:46
I'm starting

spk_0:   11:46
in the life vest.

spk_1:   11:47
Had a life vest? Yeah, we We were volunteers during the flood of 93. We could tell you several stories, but we're volunteers during the flood running through. We do not live in a town that was affected. We live on a hill. This is not an accident. Yeah, but we live. About 35 lived at the time about 35 miles from a town that was affected. And this is 93. So it's been a while and that town waas sandbagging there, Clay loving and I mentioned Clay, and it will come back to that story the town was saying, begging that clay loving. So we went down there and she did a lot more seen begging than I did because I had a big black pickup truck, and that big black pickup truck was I was my biggest contribution for that week. I took a week off work to help the people because a lot of them are my friends with school in that town. And a lot of them were my people that I cared about So I would go and we would load up their family's possessions, which were down in the lower part of town to town, built on a hill and then has a lower part. And then we take them up to friends that they had up the hill and, like start store all their possessions in their garage.

spk_0:   13:09
That's the level of confidence we had in the levee. At

spk_1:   13:12
that point in time. It was it was coming up. We had. We had the levee and then we had sandbags. There were boards. You were six inch boards.

spk_0:   13:21
Is on the Mississippi, by the way,

spk_1:   13:22
is on the Mississippi. There were six inch boards, and those boards were what, four deep. We had like 32 inch high of boards back and forth with sandbags, and it was up on the sand bags. It was up on the board. That's how high it was getting and been. I'll tell you, when they start passing out the life vests, it gets your attention.

spk_0:   13:47
Yeah, on the levee at midnight, and we were working behind the levee, right, filling the sandbags and handing up the lumber and handing up the bags. So we're not talking. Just the guys standing on top of the levee who had one foot in the water on the far side of the levee. We're talking those of us who were behind it. They started handing out life vest, too. And if the Mississippi River washes you away when

spk_1:   14:12
you

spk_0:   14:12
were wearing a life vest your little of a night in a huge flood,

spk_1:   14:16
you're going think that life

spk_0:   14:17
vest is going to save you know why,

spk_1:   14:20
but you're going for the ride. But anyway, the really weirdest part about that whole deal was we were building the levee. We were building a higher building, a hired killer and the people across the Ripper from us in Illinois or building the levee. They're sandbagging and sandbagging, building the levee in building the levee because there's a town

spk_0:   14:45
about. You don't have to outrun the bear. You have to outrun the slowest member of your party.

spk_1:   14:50
That's how this Waas, because one of these levees was gonna break. And if ours broke it, what, it wouldn't have filled enough acreage to really save them. But there's broke and it dropped the river overnight 68 feet as it went out and covered up thousands and thousands and thousands of acres in that whole levy area.

spk_0:   15:20
We were out till midnight one night wearing our life vests. We got back the next morning next afternoon because I had to work, got back the next afternoon to put in the evening shift, and they didn't need a whole lot of help that day because you could just stand there on the levee and hear the Mississippi River pouring into thousands and thousands of acres through a hole in the levee across the river.

spk_1:   15:48
And for the one thing you felt relief, the people in the town we were in could rest That could relax a little bit, get some rest because they were working so hard. But you know it's your neighbors across the river. Yeah, they're going under

spk_0:   16:03
to this day if you watch video from the flood of 93 and you see an entire house, a big old farmhouse being lifted off its foundation

spk_1:   16:13
and carried downstream

spk_0:   16:14
downstream that was across the river.

spk_1:   16:16
Yeah, that was right. That was how she's standing

spk_0:   16:18
there, listening to the water.

spk_1:   16:20
Go through that whole. Also, if you were, if you were watching any of the footage from the flood of 93 and you'll see the river pouring into West Quincy along the way and you, which is excellent. Emissary side, it's West Quincy, Missouri, actually, and you see a gas station explode and the tanks exploded, blow up and surging, washed away. That was the regular gas station. We stopped at what used to stop that when we weren't Illinois. That was our gas station, and people don't realize how important northeast Missouri is to western Illinois, because the Baby Bridge and Quincy was the only bridge open between ST Louis and like Minnesota because everything else was closed and that one bridge have two bridges there but one of those, but much higher. It's much in your bridge. But when the the access road went under for the baby, a bridge, that was it. And from the Quincy, Illinois, or the Quincy, Missouri, riverbank to where the flood stopped us. What eight miles? It's got eight miles of road, the

spk_0:   17:36
whole bottom land.

spk_1:   17:37
One of the TV trucks got in trouble, got stuck, and they had to drive it up onto an overpass and leave it parked there for the duration of the flood

spk_0:   17:47
TV truck. They came in and a helicopter and got the guys off of it.

spk_1:   17:51
Yeah, that

spk_0:   17:52
truck stayed there

spk_1:   17:52
through this truck, stayed there on the overpass. It was fine. In fact, I think it was kind of kind of interesting that the state of Illinois did a whole bunch of bridge maintenance on those two bridges while they were closed. Anyway, they were able to go in and gets a major repair some critical repairs done because they're already closed as well. Do it. That's

spk_0:   18:14
nice demonstration of the importance of the point of knowing what routes are going to go underwater win

spk_1:   18:21
right now. I mean, people had to get creative during that flood. There was no way to get across. But a lot of people live in Missouri and work in Illinois or live in Illinois and work in Missouri. So what they would do is I mean, you're the hospital and your doctors and nurses across the river. What are you going to do? Well, you're going to send a helicopter over and just bury your staff over across the river.

spk_0:   18:45
They would bury him once a week that bring him over and working like 4 12 hour shifts and have him stay in the unused wing of the hospital. And then they bring him home for three days and run it again.

spk_1:   19:01
There's a really cool thing that they didn't keep cock, which was really interesting. The lock and dam at the Keokuk River has a tramway on the top of it that they used to to run the crane back and forth, have this big giant crane in the section, maintenance for clearing, clearing logs away from against the the gate, clearing away debris and stuff like that. They used all the time. Well, they were able to take the crane off because the damn lock and dam is wide open because there's no you don't control the river when it's like that

spk_0:   19:37
high on both sides,

spk_1:   19:38
you just He was let go because there's nothing you Nobody was investigating its Nabil's damns our navigational lot flood control, Really. They may say they are, but not really so they opened up a little, but what they did is they went to a antique railroad museum and they got a trolley car out of it and literally took me to the

spk_0:   20:03
narrow track. Trolley,

spk_1:   20:04
took the train, took the trolley car and put it on top of the lock and dam. And that's how people from Keokuk got over to Hamilton across the river. And you know what again? A lot of people who work at the Kit Kat Hospital the kid cut nursing home. Employers would run, but it's up to you, Charlie, stop E because that was the only way. I don't

spk_0:   20:28
think it can't necessarily happened just because it's never happened before. Because

spk_1:   20:34
this was months. Yeah, month. That was

spk_0:   20:37
beyond anybody's experience since these bridges were built, many of them went underwater and lost every bridge along the Mississippi River. Three solid states.

spk_1:   20:46
We can tell you another story. That's because we were one of the first people we needed to go to Quince ng. We had an event that we needed to go over there for, and we got the word the day before that. The next morning the highway to Quincy was going to be open. And at the time the highway to Quincy ran under the Santa Fe Railroad tracks that actually, literally the tracks ran over the highway and you would dip down in this underneath, probably the size of ah so semi could go under it underneath the railroad track and then come back up. So not only was that that was the low spot, that thing and we're driving in there were driving the big black Ford pick up truck, full size pickup truck were driving, and we get to the area where you could see they cleaned off the road and we get to the year there, sandbags next throat. And then you just keep going. You're going in the sand bags keep getting higher and higher, and you could literally see the water up. The sandbags at the level of the water was about the level of the window of our pickup truck you could just see. I mean, you're looking across the sand bags and the water, and that was weird. Now, going under into that underpass to get over there, that was that was a little freaky. I was like, Yeah, it was. They had the pumps running Mississippi River that had big, big pumps running, shooting water out of this low.

spk_0:   22:24
And that car the truck sides were getting sprayed by little jets of water coming in between the sandbags on either side. From the pressure of the water, it was deep enough.

spk_1:   22:32
If you doubt the importance of modern infrastructure and how important it is for one state to be connected to another state economically, that ended all doubt of that for me because that was just boom that showed me. And so we get there, we get we drive across the bridge, which is way up above the river now and then, because Quincy, Illinois hispana bluff. We drive across the bridge. We go up the rather steep little hill there to do the downtown area where one of the Lincoln Douglas debates was done, and the mayor of the town is standing there. This is a 50,000 city for 10 50,000. He's standing there with the sign Welcome back back. Does that tell you how important we are? Roads are too modern commerce. It was eye opening

spk_0:   23:33
and think what an earthquake or major floods don't do too well. I know what they do to Missouri because we have bridges all over the place. But it's something for a proper to keep in mind, so we thought we would bring it up. Here. Is flood season approaches?

spk_1:   23:52
Yeah, and my one hint. If you are going to build a building in a flood prone area, make sure it's metal, uh, and

spk_0:   24:01
oriented in the direction of water

spk_1:   24:03
flow in that direction of water food and have open both and be able to open both ends of the building up. That is critically important. Do not if you if you know you're going under open all the doors.

spk_0:   24:14
And if you're gonna electrically wire it, you can put the electrical wiring up high and put the plug in boxes up high. That saves you in a large number of floods.

spk_1:   24:23
Yes. So there you are.

spk_0:   24:27
Also keeps the mice from climbing into your boxes as much, by the way. Okay, Probably very.

spk_1:   24:32
So are we gonna stick a fork in this one?

spk_0:   24:35
Were to stick a fork in it. Have a good day, folks. Don't float away.