killerbeefans.com

[MOTOWN]

Laredo and areas south of Laredo including the Mexican side, saw floods coming down from Del Rio at Lake Amistad, and causing severe damage to most areas near the Rio Grande. Besides debris, animals and anything that could float and be swept up by the rising waters, empty trailers from warehouses were also seen flowing down the river. The river went up 42.8 feet from it's normal flow and overflowed between 1/4 and 1/2 mile on both sides of the border. Now Zapata is the target, along with the cities and towns south of Zapata. Falcon Dam has now been releasing water to prevent Falcon Lake from over cresting. Good luck folks.

[BeeLady]

There never is a happy medium to things. From one extreme (drought conditions) to another (flooding).
_________________
common sense... it's a terrible thing to waste

[BeeLady]

Well, you warned us about the flooding. Laredo has it much worse, but from what I saw at Chimmney Park and Pepe's it's hard to imagine the worse. Pepe's is no longer 'on the river', but 'in the river'. The water is over half way up on their building. In fact, some places you could only see the thatched roof. The poor winter texans will have a horrible shock when they come back to their travel trailers. The water reached half way up to their trailers, a couple of them roofs are the only thing one saw. I hope they are coming down with new trailers because the ones left are absolute totaled.
Now, this may be an ignorant question, but if those boys who control the flood ways/dams or whatever and they KNEW what was headed their way in regards to the rains, can they or could they not release water a little at a time instead of just all at once? Don't they have better control? Just curious if this was another time that blind was leading the blind.
_________________
common sense... it's a terrible thing to waste

[MOTOWN]

Yep, I think it was the blind leading the blind. I have no clue how they couldn't figure out that disasterous floods would be heading south. Many homes were flooded out here in Laredo. The city has united tremendously and has given from the heart. Food, water, clothing, toiletries, furniture, labor and even mechanics have donated their FREE services to help out flooding victims. Laredo was not by itself in donations. Everything I mentioned was donated from around Texas, including San Antonio, Corpus, the Valley and as far as Dallas.

Our Fire Dept. started our fill the boot today and will continue Thursday and Friday, from 11:00am till 2:00pm and the from 4:00pm till 6:00pm. Today, we had short day because of calls and a rain storm in the afternoon, yet our 14 Fire Stations were able to collect over $4,000.00 in a couple of hours. All of our collections will go to those affected by the floods.

[BeeLady]

Good for your fire dept. and collecting $$ for those in need and to all that are helping near and far. This still was something that could of been avoided or either not turn out as serious as it did in my opinion. Blind leading the blind is NOT an excuse. Try explaining that excuse to all that has been affected by those flood waters. Someone sitting on their brain (clearly, they don't have one) once again and I bet there will be no correcting the problem for the future. So sad.
_________________
common sense... it's a terrible thing to waste

[bobcat]

The only problem for me, I can't go fishing, Falcon's boat ramps are under water. So no fishing! Someone told me that there's a thing that people do when they can't fish, something called work? I thought that's what I did when I fished? Well, hopefully the ramps are made available. Today, I freaked out, got up early and noticed everyone has fire drills at 8am from there homes? I wonder where they go during the fire drill?
_________________
Proceed with extreme caution
CHLForums.com

[puddinman]

bobcat: Mmmmm. . . ok?

Anyway, I have a few friends in Laredo city govt. and from what they tell me, there really isn't a good way to control the flow of water at that volume, especially with the level of technology that exists in South Texas. We are using a system that was designed a very long time ago and really hasn't been upgraded. It only has a certain capacity and that has been reached. Therefore, this is exactly the expected result of the inflow of this water volume.

Now, who do you blame? The government? Politicians? Lazy bureaucrats at the water control board? I don't think that's entirely fair. There's only so much you can do with limited resources. The fact is that making your life on the river carries certain risks. Rivers flood; you can't change that. In fact, it's the major reason why the Valley has such fertile farm land. So, unfortunately, this is just a natural occurrence that we have to adapt to. I think the City of Laredo and communities in the Valley have done an excellent job in helping the people who lived and worked on the river get through this. From what I understand, there has been relatively little loss of life during this time, so my hat is off to the Police, Fire and Rescue squads.
_________________
Blog: puddinman.wordpress.com

[MOTOWN]

I have to say that locally for Laredo, there wasn't much to do but clear out and wait for the water. People were advised a few days prior to the flood, that flood waters were headed our way. Even before Lake Amistad released it's water, the warning here in Laredo had been announced in the media about water heading our way. Everyone knew about it, but no one knew what to expect. Citizens in low lying areas were advised to move to higher ground. We saw flood waters in 98, so I guess people living in those areas expected the same result.

The crest of the water was guesstimated by the Weather Center in Corpus Christi. Their first guesstimate (early Thursday) was the river cresting at around 38 feet. They later told us that the guesstimate was wrong and that it would crest around 50 feet. Everyone got caught with their pants down, especially the people in the affected areas. Those people lost their furniture, electronics, and their clothing. Of course their homes were flooded out, so the clean up and rebuilding will take a lot of time and money.

It was told to us that Lake Amistad was releasing 33,000 gallons of water per minute. I would assume that the question everyone has is,
WHY DIDN'T THEY RELEASE LESS WATER AT A SLOWER RATE AND AT AN EARLIER TIME? It was announced about two days before they released the water that there would be possible flooding. There were towns in Mexico that were completely submerged.

[puddinman]

I think you hit on the answer: it's not really predictable how bad the flooding will be until it hits. It's hard to strike a balance between retaining water for later usage and releasing it so it doesn't flood. They also have to consider what the capacities are downstream and try not to overload those systems either.

It's a valid question nonetheless: Why not less water earlier? I think the goal for any water control board is to keep as much water in their system without overflowing. Since they can't predict how much water will enter their system for a given storm, they make educated guesses. I don't think any of those guesses could have predicted the incredible volume of water we received. It really was unprecedented. So, they got caught off guard when their systems began to crest. At that point, they have no choice but to release massive amounts into the river.

The bottom line is that our flood control systems do not have the capacity to contain the volume of water we got in the amount of time we got it in. But let's not forget that the system is pretty much doing what it's designed to do. This could have been much, much worse. Like you said, entire towns were flooded in Mexico because they don't have the systems we do.

Humans are a funny lot, aren't they? I just left the City of New Orleans. They are STILL rebuilding from Katrina and they are just as vulnerable now as they were then. In fact, because of the erosion of the surrounding wetlands, they are even more vulnerable than ever. All it takes is another big storm and they are underwater again. But people still live there and work there, despite the huge risk of losing everything AGAIN. Heck, people still live in California despite the fact that there WILL be a huge earthquake at some point in the future, maybe tomorrow. It's no different if you live or open a business by a riverbank: It WILL flood at some point and you are taking the risk by settling there.
_________________
Blog: puddinman.wordpress.com