# This is impressive!



## lexsurivor (Jul 5, 2010)

I dont like the news source but a freind sent me the link.
Mississippi Flooding: Homes Turned Into Islands To Resist Rising River (PHOTOS)


----------



## UncleJoe (Jan 11, 2009)

Now that's really cool!!

It's criminal what is happening to those folks along the river. :gaah:


----------



## lexsurivor (Jul 5, 2010)

If I lived there the government would reiemberse me every dollar and then some. If not the water line under the house of the person who made the decision might have a little problem with it.


----------



## Davo45 (Apr 29, 2011)

*Whatever Happened to Personal Responsibility?*



lexsurivor said:


> If I lived there the government would reiemberse me every dollar and then some. If not the water line under the house of the person who made the decision might have a little problem with it.


Actually, the Army Corps of Engineers HAS already paid most, if not all of the people who had houses in the flood plain. It isn't THEIR fault if the people chose to waste it buying other things instead of say...buying property somewhere that wasn't in the flood plain, or at least SAVING it for the day (which they ALL knew could come).

In this regard I'm inclined to agree with Ron Paul...the government shouldn't be in the flood insurance business. Forgive me for seeming to be callus about the people who've lost their homes in the aftermath of the flood gates being opened, but there does come a time when people have to take responsibility for their own actions.

Call me crazy, but I really believe that if somebody knowingly builds a house (or puts a mobile home) in a known flood plain and cannot buy flood insurance from the company they have their homeowner's policy with because, "It too much of a risk" then I really don't think they've got any business expecting the government to rebuild their homes and replace their belongings.

Whatever happened to the time when we just let nature take its course where rivers were concerned? People used to not even have any homeowner's insurance...one wonders how they made it when disasters struck? Oh, I remember, their family and friends helped them to rebuild their homes, barns, etc. The Amish still do, I believe.


----------



## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

Davo45 said:


> Actually, the Army Corps of Engineers HAS already paid most, if not all of the people who had houses in the flood plain.


They're also sent notifications every years reminding them that they are in the spillway's floodplain. That's not to say that I don't feel for these folks - I absolutely do (used to live in LA and have special memories in a number of affected places). But I think when folks make the choice to live in the floodplain, it isn't the government's job to bail them out of that choice. I don't think people should be forbidden to live in a flood plain, or in a hurricane zone, or any other place that is with extra risk. But I do think they have to understand that they're on their own, they need to take care of themselves, when that risk comes to fruition. That's why I love seeing what these folks are doing to be proactive about taking care of what's their's. Way to go!


----------



## lexsurivor (Jul 5, 2010)

Most of the people that lived there were poor and proababley grew up on the land and they most likely couldent afford to live anywhere else. Also you said that they should have let nature take its course, If they did let it takes its course then the area most likely would not have been flooded because the floodgate wouldent have been opened. 

If your home is flooded because of nature then the government shouldent have to reimberse you but when they make a decision to flood one area over another because of population, the people should at least be reimbersed.


----------



## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

goshengirl said:


> I don't think people should be forbidden to live in a flood plain, or in a hurricane zone, or any other place that is with extra risk.


Being that I live in a hurricane zone, I need to address this as impractical. In order to keep people out of a hurricane zone, you would have to forbid people to live in all of the Gulf Coast (TX, LA, MS, AL, FL) and what about the East Coast. NY state has been hit by terrible hurricanes (Hurricane Hazel comes to mind). FL gets hurricanes on all sides. What do we do with all those folks?

Places hit by hurricanes happen to be THE major US ports (Mobile, Houston, New Orleans, etc). We're talking about not having a fishing industry and not having an oil industry.

What would you do next? Forbid people to live where there are earthquakes? blizzards? tornados? There are not many places in the US that don't have some kind of potential for natural disasters.


----------



## Immolatus (Feb 20, 2011)

lexsurivor said:


> Most of the people that lived there were poor and proababley grew up on the land and they most likely couldent afford to live anywhere else. Also you said that they should have let nature take its course, If they did let it takes its course then the area most likely would not have been flooded because the floodgate wouldent have been opened.
> 
> If your home is flooded because of nature then the government shouldent have to reimberse you but when they make a decision to flood one area over another because of population, the people should at least be reimbersed.


While you may have a point there, the fact remains that they live in a floodplain. The floodgate exists because it IS a floodplain.
I hate to think of people who people who are actually "too poor to move" or change their situation, but I doubt in this case that would be technically correct.
If they are on welfare or public assistance (which I assume they are not) I guess that would be a different story.
For the sake of argument, lets assume that these people are not actually 'so poor they couldnt leave', and had full knowledge of an impending flood at some point.
What then?


----------



## FunnyFarm (Oct 26, 2011)

We as humans definitely need to recognize that we do not have domain over nature. I'm in NE PA and the Susquehanna river here was just at its highest point ever in recorded history. Many of the people who got flooded this time round get flooded every couple of years. Every time they get flooded here comes fema. At some point we need to wake up and understand that nature does what it does no matter how much effort we put into making it do something we'd rather it do. The resources we spend helping these folks rebuild every time this happens would be better spent moving them out of the floodplain and not allowing any further building there. Once they were moved all these taxpayer dollars could be used somewhere else anywhere else...I have pity for someone who's home got flooded for the 1st time but if they are on their 2nd 3rd time we need not insure stupidity.


----------



## BlueShoe (Aug 7, 2010)

(1) The Corp of Engineers is always revising the flooded areas. They've* increased *by a few feet upwards in an area where I have a property. The house used to be just out of the 500 yr event line, but now the rear of the foundation is under that line. Two of the 3 houses beside me are to be engulfed in a major rain event.

(2) Some areas flood that aren't in a defined "flood plain". I bought a 'for sale by owner' house and property with a creek on two sides that turned out to be in a 'back water' of a lake. It's a "named creek", but not a "Blue Line creek". It's about 2 blocks from a major river and it turns out that it has a 90% area that has a water storage easement on it. The owner was poor and ignorant--and inherited it from her father. Maybe she knew and it wouldn't surprise me if she didn't. Since I lived across the street and up a few houses, we all knew the back yard would flood in a rain event, but has never been up to the house. We didn't finance the property so it didn't go through the process that would say it is in a flooding zone. It's just not as clear and simple as it seems.

So some people don't even know they are in a flood zone. I wouldn't have known if I didn't go toward developing the land for more housing. When I saw the description on the deed I pictured it having a storm sewer running under the back portion of it. I called the power provider and discovered all the specifics. They can flood up to so many feet of elevation. They can also store water at another elevation at their discretion. They talk in terms of 100 yr and 500 yr rain events. BUT!!! In a dammed river system like we have in America, the 100 and 500 yr event can happen at the turn of a switch from the dam at any moment. That's what happened to the river in the OP. I have the ability to develop it for new housing, but it has to be elevated 1' above the flood stage. So that means uninhabitable space or on wooden, steel or concrete piers.


----------



## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

tenOC, thanks for explaining that.


----------



## Wallrat (Oct 28, 2011)

tenOC said:


> I have the ability to develop it for new housing, but it has to be elevated 1' above the flood stage. So that means uninhabitable space or on wooden, steel or concrete piers.


Sounds like the whole first story needs to be a garage/shop, with living space above. That'ld fix it.


----------



## BlueShoe (Aug 7, 2010)

I haven't received any notice about the elevation increases for the property. I found out when I restarted the information gathering process by talking to the power provider about the water storage easement and building elevation. I don't know why the increase was made but it could be anything all the way to the Gulf of Mexico--or Global Warming:kiss:. 

I saw an area near the Smoky Mountains that was billed as affordable housing. The individual townhouse style homes were dense construction and had a drive in garage with living space above that. The garage turned out to be uninhabitable space due to flooding. Near the mountains? In TN? Weird. There was a wide, shallow, slow moving little river on the way to the property. All the mechanicals (water heater, electric plugs) were 5' off the floor in the garage.

The levee house in the OP must belong to a guy with access to a soil borrow pit, dump truck, excavating equipment and a sheep's foot compactor.


----------

