"Houston's system of bayous and reservoirs was built to drain a tabletop-flat city prone to heavy rains. But its Depression-era design is no match for the stresses brought by explosive development and ever-wetter storms.
Nearly any city would be overwhelmed by the more than 1.2 metres of rain that Hurricane Harvey has dumped since Friday, but Houston is unique in that it gets regular massive floods and has an inability to cope with them. This is the third 100-year-or-more type of flood in three years.
Experts blame too many people, too much concrete, insufficient upstream storage, not enough green space for water drainage and, especially, too little regulation.
"Houston is the most flood-prone city in the United States," said Rice University environmental engineering professor Phil Bedient. "No one is even a close second — not even New Orleans, because at least they have pumps there."
The entire system is designed to clear out only 30 centimetres of rain per 24-hour period, said Jim Blackburn, an environmental law professor at Rice University: "That's so obsolete it's just unbelievable."
'We're not done with this:' Harvey floodwaters continue to wreak havoc as forecast brightens
Also, Houston's Harris County has the loosest, least-regulated drainage policy and system in the entire country, Bedient said."
The last report from our son in Katy shows that the water in his neighborhood has pretty much receded but that there are many people near him who will not be able to move back into their houses for several weeks. At least he says that when and if he decides to sell, he can advertise that his house stayed high and dry during the "Great Hurricane of 2017".
As for his attempt to reopen his three restaurants, they accomplished that yesterday by 3:00 pm and while they had very limited menus (just what they had on hand that hadn't spoiled) he said that he was expecting his vendors to start making deliveries today and he should be fully up and running by tomorrow for the weekend. He hopes corporate is happy since his was the only concept that got all of their stores open so far, albeit only three locations in the Houston area (nationally, he's responsible for something over 60 restaurants).
He said that it's still somewhat of an adventure getting to work. When I talked to him this morning he had about 5 miles yet to get to his primary store, near the Galleria in uptown Houston, which is normally a 25 mile drive. He said he had already been on the road for better than 90 minutes and figured it was going to be at least another 20 or 30 minutes.
All this talk of McC&S; they entirely lost their way when they sold out. They were a far better place when the bulk of them were in the Portland metro area. 1st & Oak closed years ago and it's been all down hill since. There's a huge difference between a local group of restaurants where the owners can visit each one every week and a "brand" within a faceless conglomerate. No offense to JRB's son, and if you enjoy the experience that's great, but it's just a name today, not what it was. Sorry, but there's no real way that Pacific Northwest Seafood can be "guided" from Houston, nothing's fresh, nothing's local. The executive chef of McC&S ought to be able to visit Newport, Astoria, Long Beach, Gray's Harbor, the Olympic Peninsula, the San Juan's, and lower BC every week or two and know many of the fish mongers. It was a thing, now it's just a name. Too bad, a great loss.
jgKRI,
That is exactly the thought I had when I read DavidBeach's post. Some of the best seafood I've ever had was at McC&S in Chicago. Followed closely by a half dozen restaurants of various brands in Houston and Lafayette, LA (I've had better luck there than in New Orleans), a tiny hole in the wall place with only boat access in East Kalimantan Indonesia and a place in Manila. Good sea food mostly requires it to be fresh and handled in a clean environment. Great sea food has to start with fresh and clean and add preparation techniques and seasoning.
Part of my son's job is to visit the places where they get their seafood, which in the last couple of years has included Alaska, Scotland, Canada, etc. Most all of their seafood vendors, except for locally harvested fare, is fresh-packed in ice and flown to where they have their restaurants.
And let's hope that we're not dinged for the off-topic nature of the this recent exchange ;-)
Sure, there's fish in the gulf, just very different fish. Not saying the present McC&S is bad, just that McC&S isn't what it was when Mr. McCormick and Mr. Schmick were running a handful of restaurants in a relatively compact geographic area. For some people's tastes it might even be better now than then, others miss the original.
The wind farm stood up to 90 mph. Not bad. I would be interested to know their design rating. Would they have taken the 130 mph from around the eye wall? I know a few around here have been shredded by tornadoes, but that is of course not as wide spread as a hurricane would be. Almost nothing beside storm shelters is designed to stand up to a direct hit from a tornado.
Looked at some on line pictures. Structural casualties are about 15% metal buildings (apparently a lot of school gyms in the area are made from metal buildings), 60% residential and 25% small wood framed businesses (my numbers). Of course, beyond that there's countless flood damaged businesses and businesses.
But as a structural engineer, I'm curious about the major structural damage. The winds weren't that high (I don't think they exceeded even minimum code values in the worst area; this wasn't a windy storm) and floods shouldn't knock down steel framed buildings. Does the siding fail due to a non hurricane wind, take out bracing members, and in turn, take down the building?
I'd be interested in the post mortem. Who does these things?
How about the force of the flood waters on the walls of the structures? Could the currents have been strong enough to dislodge buildings from their foundations? How about the undermining of foundations? I'm not a structural engineer, but I do have an understanding of forces applied to the framework of large pieces of machinery, some as large as small buildings, and side loads were always something that we had to take into consideration, is not during operation, then certainly while being erected and rigged.
Most building side load are supposedly due to wind loading, which is still relatively minor compared to water pressure. The bottom of a 20-ft wall with 8 ft of water on one side would have about 11500 lb of force against its footings.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
There's a real problem with buildings in a windstorm... having done a whole bunch of forensic reports on failures, and, I think pre-eng buildings are more susceptible and are often damaged.
The main 'secret' in having a good 'wind proof' building is detail to the flashings at the corner and eaves to make sure they are well secured. I don't think you can secure them enough. I've seen failures where fasteners are @8" o/c.
In a windstorm, the wind pressures are higher on the edges and, in particular, the corners. Once a flashed edge fails, then the wind gets in under the roofing/siding and simply tears it off... it then becomes a dangerous 'projectile'.
