Sewage disaster in the making 8

[3DDave]

If the over-buying of toilet paper in some markets goes unabated, how long before people are going to see massive waste-water backups into their homes because some of the less clever people are using non-compatible paper towels, baby wipes, and nose tissues which block conventional sewer systems?

Nothing would make the entire trapped-at-home situation just a bit more unbearable than human waste backing into basements and shutting down apartment building toilets.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Speaking of Venezuela, until about four years ago, my sister was living in Caracas. When she was a senior in college, she met an engineering grad student from Venezuela and a year or so after she graduated, they got married and the following year, they moved to Caracas, where he was from. For years he worked for Bechtel Corp and would often get overseas assignments, including to the US (they once spent 18 months in Houston). They have one son, who's also a graduate engineer. Anyway, when things started to go all to hell down there, she decided to move back, along with her son and his family (he and his wife have two small girls). They're now living just outside of Detroit. Her husband also came, and in fact, he started the process to become a permanent resident (my wife and I are officially his 'sponsors') however, he kept going back and forth trying to sell their property there (they own a couple of apartments including the penthouse they were living in when they left).

Anyway, it appears that her husband as now decided to remain in Caracas but my sister and her son are staying here. Their son is of course an American citizen as are his two daughters. They've managed to get a Green Card for his wife and she's in the process of applying to be naturalized. He's got a really good job, being able to speak both fluent Spanish and English (in fact, he's considered to have TWO first languages) working for a tooling supplier who has customers both here and in several South American countries.

Now over the years, they had tried to move as much money out of Venezuela as possible, either directly or via third-party countries, like Panama. Unfortunately, they've lost most of what they had except for their real estate, whatever it's now worth. My sister's biggest problem is that she's nearly 70 but has not worked sufficient quarters to get Social Security or Medicare. Granted, she's invested what money she had left behind in the states, but that's only going to last so long. Her son bought a nice house and she's moved in with them last year.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[gerhardl]

Todays picture from Norway (Scandinavia, Europe): The problem with sewers here are not the toilet paper, despite some hoarding, but an excess and increasing flow of Q-tips, hand cleaning tissues and other waste, blocking pumps. Waste said to originate from quarantine demanded home offices.

No much excess paper money floating around, we mostly use cards. (Please do not get THAT picture in your mind!)

 

[IRstuff]

Caracas used to be a beautiful place, or so my parents told me; I was too young to remember anything from there.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[1503-44]

Baker, been there, done that... in reverse. Venezuela does have some good aspects... I left for Turkey just before Chavez took office. Before that I wanted to stay in Venezuela forever. Thought about waiting it out, but it just didn't look like that would work out. I had an apartment on the beach in Puerto de la Cruz. Beautiful. 1000 X better than Caracas. I have heard that you cannot legally sell any property in Venzuela today. Least so I'm told. Or maybe they are really talking about just getting the money out of the country. That is after all what keeps Panama and Miami in business. At the price I imagine you would get today, I probably wouldn't want to sell a property there anyway.

IR, Amigo mio! I had you pegged from East Asia. Q' sorpresa mi han dado!

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

 

[IRstuff]

No se comprendo, que lastima!

Too young to even do THAT; although my parents claim that I spoke Spanish to the cab driver that picked us up at the airport, probably La Guardia, since we arrived before JFK even got elected. I tried two years of Spanish in high school, but those little Spanish gray cells apparently got tired of waiting to be reactivated and either left or changed jobs.

My supposed native language, Mandarin, is in better shape, although my Cantonese is very stilted and mostly only capable of ordering Dim Sum.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

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[1503-44]

OK, so I wasn't completely wrong. Venezuela is (was) surprisingly multicultural. There were very large Lebanese and Syrian communities around Puerto de la Cruz.

“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"

 

[zeusfaber]

I still have a few Lebanese £1000 notes left - make good "First to Find" trophies for new geocaches in the UK.

A

 

[CWB1]

So far as I noticed the great TP scare was mostly internet hype. Here in Detroit stores were cleaned out for about three days then life returned to normal. Our governor closed schools two Fridays ago as many did, we did our weekly shopping the following Monday evening and Costco had a mountain of the 36-packs of Charmin, which was good as we were down to our final couple rolls.

Interestingly enough, several old friends work retail in poor rural areas where the career choices outside of the building trades and agriculture are: retail, fast food, or Walmart. As several memes predicted, hoarders keep trying to return TP and other hoarded items for rent money. While part of me feels bad for folks struggling financially, another part of me feels good that smaller retailers aren't accepting returns now for the "safety" of employees.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Perhaps we should start a thread specifically to discuss the engineering side of the COVID-19 response. It is not in and of itself an engineering disaster, but the pandemic is obviously stressing the global and local supply chains, medical community, and just about everything else.

Fred

 

[moon161]

^ Yeah. Check out

http://www.covidskunkworks.com

. There's emergency engineering & design of PPE and medical devices going on.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Don't forget about Zimbabwe in the late-2000's... they printed up 100 Trillion $ notes, as in, each piece of paper was worth "100 trillion".

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[LittleInch]

This thread has gone a bit astray.....

Poland in pre USSR collapse days but during glasnost was quite fun. You were meant to officially exchange money at a bank at some sort of official rate, but for sporting event we were exempt. The money changers on the side of the street were offering 15000 zlotys to the UKP. The issue one set of people had when they got fined for speeding was that fines hadn't kept place and the maximum was 8000 Z. They still had grozneys ( subdivison of a zloty) coins!! Now they were worth more as scrap metal than the coins were for sure. It was wads of currency in exchange for one or two notes alright.

The deposit on the beer bottles was 3 times the cost of the beer (2p) and the deposit on the plastic crate was 10 times that. The beer wasn't bad either.

They had a re donomination in 1994 for 10,000 = 1 new zloty

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[EdStainless]

My daughter works at a UF hospital in Gainesville. They figured out that they had surgical draping that was made from the same material used for masks. They came up with a pattern (ties, pleats, wire stiffeners) and my daughter and others have been sewing them. They will UV sterilize them and use them in the main hospital. And since they are actually a heavier gauge material than standard masks they will be able to re-sterilize unsoiled ones and reuse them.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Go Gators

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[3DDave]

Excellent read:

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/31/63

This event will be a fundamental change to handling of medical and political disasters.

 

[NOLAscience]

The people working at Sam's in this area said the same people come every morning and buy the maximum 2 packs of toilet paper. That's 72 rolls. Obvious resellers. They should be tracked by law enforcement and their Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist shops shut down.