Catastrophic flooding in Houston | Hacker News Reader

Catastrophic flooding in Houston

washingtonpost.com

86 pointsr72188 comments

A large portion of the labor engine of one of the most significant industrial cities has been halted indefinitely.

Naturally, there are almost no employers operating and no way for employees to get to work anyway.

Once the water recedes there will still be an unprecedented number of formerly-paying jobs that can not be returned to for an unexpectedly long time if ever.

At the exact time that there will be an unprecedented number of people who have lost everything, including their homes, and a lot of these are the same people.

So many that could not afford to miss a paycheck under ordinary conditions.

Until further notice the city will not only be running on stored resources, but primarily the availability of stored resources.

What amounts to the wealth of a rural nation will need to effectively stream into Houston merely to sustain it until industrial recovery can establish momentum.

Shortages relative to the amount of wealth ordinarily generated by Houston on a daily basis will only exacerbate the difficulty.

I live in Houston, well, just outside of it, and it's very not fun. Some friends of mine have reported flooding in their homes, and lost power. I live in a new area and the neighborhood is built up several feet higher than the surrounding plain - just enough that I've been lucky so far (no flooding in my neighborhood and still have power). I've seen pics posted by friends of the area where our office is downtown, and everything is underwater.

Hurricane hits Corpus on Friday.

Starts raining in Houston about 10 pm Saturday night.

Devastated by midnight:

https://www.harriscountyfws.org/GageDetail/Index/920?span=24...

Not just historic but nearly prehistoric since it already exceeds the 500-year level.

First 24 hours not yet elapsed.

Still raining.

Overall conditions in Houston & Pasadena already worse than the direct hit by Ike.

Or Alicia or Alison.

For the gulf coast, because of the way hurricanes rotate, the northern eastern side (or right side) always comes out worst. They get the most amount of fresh clouds coming from the warm water, while the south western end gets the clouds that had already expended a lot of energy overland.

It is crazy that this storm is putting the 1900 storm to shame.

Before the hurricane of 1900, Galveston, TX was the largest metropolitan area west of the Mississippi.

After the hurricane... yeah.

It's still difficult to judge the full scale of Harvey's damage, but major roads and bridges are starting to collapse, which means it will be incredibly difficult to even bring in supplies and equipment to start rebuilding.

Houston, the fourth most populous city in the United States, will not recover from this for months.

Haven't seen any reports of major roads collapsing. Bridges? There are no major bridges in Houston.

America has a knack of encouraging people to move to completely unsustainable places and not planning for the growth at all.

https://twitter.com/RosenbergPolice/status/90183726729943040...

That is not going to prevent any supplies from reaching anyone.

The worst of the rain has not arrived yet. If gigantic sinkholes are appearing now, things will get much worse.

>>Haven't seen any reports of major roads collapsing.

https://twitter.com/RosenbergPolice/status/90183365789111910...

You gotta realize Houston is basically built on clay. Once the clay is washed away, like what is happening now, many buildings and lots of infrastructure will collapse.

Sure. But I thought everyone living in Houston was aware of this risk? How do you live there without knowing this? Most of these outer areas are full of people constantly harping on about the government staying the hell out of their business, but will now beg for federal help and financial bailouts for the uninsured.

And before anyone calls me a Yankee snob... Born and raised in Houston and our house flooded many times in the last decade. It gets worse because they keep allowing massive paving and megablock development with no regard for environmental planning. Most of the residents love this as the city hates zoning, regulations, and people love the growth from development and population growth. It's one of the most environmentally disrespectful places in the world and then they freak out when they remember Nature exists.

You should see the massive parking lots they created on what was just green fields, for so called "power centers" (HEB, Costco, etc). Instead of requiring garages to be built instead on a smaller footprint and reserving the rest for a reservoir, they allow any development because they can only compete by being as cheap as possible for everything, and that would increase development costs! So now we get more flooding in residential areas. And I haven't even started on the massive cooling costs of these ridiculously oversized buildings, the carbon from the SUVs being driven everywhere, the heat island effect of the massive concrete parking lots (which are not required to have covers or trees planted over them ...),the quarter mile wide I10. But Texans love this lifestyle! They reap what they sow. "pray for Texas y'all!" Yeah that'll do it!

Unfortunately, in the classic American tradition, the east side of Houston (poorest) will get hardest by the rest of this, while the wealthier west side appears to be okay.

This isn't the time for that.

This is the best time for it. We are online and not in Houston so not like I can help them anyways. People need to live in tune with nature, not ignore it for short term monetary gain. Eventually places like Phoenix, Vegas, Miami, etc will face reckoning too.

So, "whaddya expect?" is the best response?

People need to live in tune with nature, not ignore it for short term monetary gain.

Amazing, I wonder why nobody thought of this before.

UPDATE: "There will inevitably be extreme hottakes regarding flood planning and monday-morning QB-ing of officials. This is for context": https://twitter.com/CorbettMatt/status/901959336850804737

If now is not the time to remark that failure to plan and disrespecting the environment has consequences, then when? In a month, when this has been forgotten?

That's begging the question in a couple different ways, but who doesn't know these things? In what way isn't it apparent? What can be done about it now, while shit like this[1] is going on? I'm sure people are trying, but if "hurf durf shoulda built stuf. DUH" comes to mind, maybe keep it to oneself.

And to take your point, "disrespecting the environment," what do you suggest we do to counteract that in a way that would have changed the outcome in Houston? Who are the best people working in that space?

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/6wd3mn/nursing_home_in...

What can be done about it now is what should have been done before and wasn't. Not for Houston, maybe, but for the next city. I don't accept that "yes, we should have planned better, but let's not talk about how we can prevent similar disasters now".

What is the thing that should have been done that could handle 37 cubic kilometers of water?

Not building Houston in the first place.

Your mention of grocery stores and the environment reminds me of the first time I went to Houston, in the mid-'90s. I went to a Fiesta grocery store and was amazed to discover the front entrance had huge doors wide open, just dumping cold air out.

That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works. Stop being alarmist. That's one little road in bumfuck rosenburg outside of Highway 8. That's not a sign of real collapse.

All of our bayous and drainage is functioning as intended, and it is so much better than it would be without.

(I'm a Houstonian.)

I'm not being alarmist at all. Just repeating what the experts are saying. Regardless of whether your bayous and drainage are working as intended, they weren't designed for this magnitude of disaster. Downtown Houston is underwater as I type this.

edit: Just to hammer this point home, the Buffalo Bayou is above 14' above record: https://twitter.com/TTrogdon/status/901824532440342534

> I'm not being alarmist at all. Just repeating what the experts are saying. Regardless of whether your bayous and drainage are working as intended, they weren't designed for this magnitude of disaster. Downtown Houston is underwater as I type this.

You are being alarmist, and this kind of armchair disaster cheerleading is infuriating. Stop it.

There are no "experts" saying buildings are going to start collapsing, or bridges, or major roadways.

Downtown Houston has flooded many, many, many times. It always has. It is built to flood.

Almost no one, aside from actual civil engineers who work there, has an accurate understanding of how floodwaters in Houston arrive, accumulate, and leave. Long-time residents have an intuitive understanding of how things behave. They've seen all this before, just not everywhere it is happening today and all at once.

You, and everyone else, should STOP REPEATING INTERNET "facts". It is misinformation, and misinformation can kill people.

Thanks for your attention.

>>Downtown Houston has flooded many, many, many times. It always has. It is built to flood.

Please stop trying to normalize the situation, thanks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fema-director-says-h...

Yes, Houston is built to handle lots of rain, but nowhere near this much.

So, downtown streets are currently dry again, and we're doing fine. Drove out there myself to drop donations at the George R. Brown convention center.

You don't know what the hell you're talking about and, frankly, most of the folks who don't live in this area (including media) don't either.

There's a lot of fun to be had in jerking off over how evil and terrible the storm is, but the fact is that we are getting it handled and that we are coming together and doing better.

FEMA Director is not "the media", dude. Seriously.

I live in Austin. Got many friends and coworkers in Houston. Three of them lost their homes, and they all said the same thing: this is by far the worst storm Houston has seen in their lifetimes, and the city is getting absolutely devastated.

Rescue teams are rescuing people and taking them to shelters... in garbage trucks. And most shelters are full and no longer accepting people.

Houston may have experienced flooding in the past, it may even be built for it, but it's definitely not prepared for something of this magnitude.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/2...

I get that the typical Texan attitude is to shrug stuff like this off like it's nothing (trust me, I know: I live here too), but tens of thousands are in shelters as we speak and hundreds of thousands have evacuated. This isn't your run-of-the-mill hurricane. It's the strongest Texas has experienced in recorded history, and National Hurricane Center says there's the possibility that it will go back out to the coast, re-gather strength and make second landfall some time on Wednesday.

Whatever, fuck it.

There are more important things during a storm than trying to argue with a knowitall Hackernews.

That's correct. Please be safe, and evacuate if the order comes, even if it's a voluntary evac order.

Let the record show that this turned out to be alarmist, and that things went as well as could be expected under the circumstances.

FEMA is saying they'll be there for years, not months:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/27/politics/fema-harvey-brock-lon...

> Before the hurricane of 1900, Galveston, TX was the largest metropolitan area west of the Mississippi.

What? It was a bit smaller than the 100th largest city in the U.S. both 1890 and 1900, with StL and SF >10x its size, and many other west of the Mississippi cities smaller multiples of Gavelston. The 1900 hurricane was devastating but it devastated a minor city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_United_States_Census#City... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_United_States_Census#City... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston,_Texas#Demographics

The 1900 Hurricane devastated Galveston when it was the largest port west of the Mississippi, likely second in North America only to NY at the time.

They're saying this could be the worst disaster in state history.

It already looks like New Orleans after Katrina:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/901818498908905472

What's worse is it's forecast to head back out into the gulf and drop rain on the region until it makes landfall at Houston (possibly as a cat 1) on Thursday. Several of the major dams/reservoirs are already at capacity and we've got another 20-30 inches of rain.

It's like worst case scenario.

It is estimated an additional 24 to 30 inches of rain can fall in Houston metro area, on top of what has already fallen by next Thursday. I cannot overstate enough how much I hope that model is wrong, on that value.

https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/comments/6wbo8t/live_hurric...

Get ready, because the next few decades are gonna look like this.

> Get ready, because the next few decades are gonna look like this.

And this https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/90179790604643942...

> 20-30 inches of rain

500-750mm, for anyone else with my familiarity with inches. Wow!

And that's extra to what already fell. incomprehensible.

Worst disaster in state history would probably be when Texas City blew itself up in the 40s.

Nope, when STP will blew up, not being able to cool its reactors. The whole area will be flooded, dirting their cooling water. https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/comments/6wepsx/please_keep...

I've also heard on radio that it is "unprecedented"

Yet every weather/climate nerd has heard of Galveston 1900.

Yes, and by death toll it (hopefully) will never be matched. It changed Galveston forever. My wife's dad would say she probably would have been a Galveston baby if it wasn't for that storm (if it wasn't obvious, she was born and raised in Houston). In 1915, a similar strength hurricane hit Galveston with only 53 casualties.

But by damage and cost, this will very likely be higher.

> Get ready, because the next few decades are gonna look like this.

Probably not.[1]

And thinking as a lay person, storm intensity is governed by differences in temperature, not absolute rises is it not? In fact one might expect lower intensity, since the poles will warm by more than the equator.

[1] > there is a small nominally positive upward trend in tropical storm occurrence from 1878-2006. But statistical tests reveal that this trend is so small, relative to the variability in the series, that it is not significantly distinguishable from zero

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/historical-atlantic-hurricane-and-...

While the storm hit with the highest category in a decade, it's not the intensity that's the problem here - it's that the storm is just parked and not moving anywhere, continuing to dump rain.

OK, from that same link, regarding landfalling hurricanes.

   "... U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even
   show a slight *negative* trend beginning from
   1900 or from the late 1800s ..."

My emphasis on negative.

It seems to me that this Houston flooding was a bit unexpected.

Is that an accurate statement? Were there warnings before? Were the models particularly bad at predicting rainfall?

This tweet was posted just before landfall:

https://twitter.com/NWSHouston/status/901243650532945921

My girlfriend's sister lives there and works at an oil refinery as an engineer. All production has been halted and plant shut down. She hasn't been able to leave the house in a few days, but says people are still trying to drive.

If I'm correct, they only predicted a smaller amount of rain and now have this. I hope everyone stays safe.

Question: How much impact would Harvey levels of rainfall have had on 2013-2016 California drought?

Too much rain at once is bad. Even in a drought. Actually, it's pretty bad. Dried out grounds cannot absorb water very fast (in that quantity), so it usually results in a lot of issues and mud slides.

Gov. Abbot encouraged folks to leave two days before the hurricane hit. Probably good advice then but not today. Mayor Turner is saying to stay put. Probably best advice now since it is too late to move.

Remember: follow no politician's recommendation, it's best to assume and prepare as if YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN because YOU ARE.

As usual, the people who get hurt are the most disadvantaged ones, and those who trust the government will come to save you and fix your problems. So look out for the elderly and your neighbors and do the best you think to keep you and your families safe.

Gov. Abbott contradicted local officials with his off-the-cuff suggestion people in Houston should flee. Metro Houston is 6.5M+ people. Where would they evac to? San Antonio and Austin were already swamped with people from Victoria, Corpus Christi and further south evacuating there under mandatory evac notifications. I45 to Dallas in no feasible way could handle 6.5M people fleeing. I was here when hurricane Rita came through and everyone evac'd. More people died on highways evacuating days before the hurricane made landfall than those died because of the hurricane.

Majority of people in metro Houston have power and while the flooding is catastrophic (exceeding 500 and 1000yr flood levels), the fatalities have been less than a handful (at the moment). Houstonians and Texans are coming to each other's aid, helping with rescues, etc. Even the Cajun Navy is coming in to help.

Edited: I completely agree with your sentiment about not waiting for the govt. Resources are already strained and even if they were willing, many roads/highways are completely impassable at the moment.

See other comment

I understand that resources are limited. In my city, you'd just evacuate certain areas, rather than the whole metro area, but I'll assume Houston made its decision in good faith based on data. Hopefully, the death toll stays low.

If I were a citizen, though, I would have liked to know last week or month that Houston is too big to evacuate. No matter how bad it gets, that call won't come, apparently. We're used to evac orders in dangerous storms, and calibrate our plans accordingly. I want a government that admits "its on you," rather than knowing the government will choose to misinform me when it hits the fan. I am seeing people with a day or two of medicine, not a week or month, etc. A warning that no warning will come might have made a difference there.

I was here in town for both Rita (the storm that "didn't happen" that put 3 million people on the road at once) and also Ike. Lots of rescues have been needed but that number is tiny compared to the population of Houston. Your suggestion to evacuate certain areas doesn't work here--there'd be far too many areas. Houstonians are generally knowledgable about staying safe in a storm such as this, and evacuations have often led to avoidable deaths and other problems in the past. I've been sitting in the middle of the city for days and I'm with the local officials on this one, not the governor.

Ressources are limited because everyone voted for tax reductions. Why not admit to cutting ones life-boat?

Those who trust rich people are just going to help out of their own volition aren't any better. Well to do have no incentive and no moral obligation to help.

Your elected officials have both an incentive and moral obligation to help, it's their job. And it's trash talk to say those who trust the government are to blame for their situation as if they shouldn't or can't hold them accountable. This anti-government nonsense is anti-intellectual, and anti-civil.

I don't believe the parent poster was saying the govt was to blame. I have no problems holding them accountable, but the local govt can only do so much in a scenario such as this. They are limited by resources available. Self-responsibility is not anti-government, it is the appropriate adult response. Some situations are out of your control, but that doesn't mean you can't safely care for you and yours along with making sure your neighbors are helped at the same time.

See other comment

Nobody but you brought up "rich people" nor "anti-intellectualism" b.s.

But thanks for your "help".

In the meantime, a person helping another person here. Response was minutes:

https://twitter.com/lovelynnn_/status/901922641099010049

Hey thecodefounder and others, if you are in Houston thanks for passing good information along to folks. I think it is time to help and we can leave the political bickering for some other time. There is confusion on the ground as to what to do. People should be aware that at this time government units are overrun with the exception of tactical support and assistance units on the ground doing the best they can.

Help a family:

https://www.gofundme.com/a54hv-renteria-family

Started here: https://twitter.com/abc13houston/status/901798264474927104

Please please please help fight climate change. Stand up get mad. Fight the system. Do everything you can to fight the fossil fuel industry and save Earth for our posterity.

... you do know that hurricanes happen every year? And always have?

They are worsening because of climate change. You know it and I know it.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/the-problems-with...

And the hurricanes are fueled by the amount of available water, which is increasing

The biggest chuck of CO2 footprint is heating and cooling. I'm pretty sure people don't want to stop using their AC.

Second biggest is cars and animal agriculture.

So, three most convenient things in the modern world, cooling, transportation and abundance of umami luxurious products and yet what, one industry to blame?

Climate change is happening because of the way society works, individuals works. It is a social problem.

What you need to fight is the ingrained greedy human nature. You need to fight the desire for convenience. Desire for luxury.

Many people will never inconvenience themselves by not eating animal products or by not driving a car, or by not cooling their rooms.

It's not the fault of the industry. It's a collective guilt shared by all and given that no one teaches you anywhere to fight against your greedy nature (well, maybe some religions somewhere do it right) I do not see how this will stop.

He even lives in Los Angeles where all these 3 are heavily used (maybe more than in other places?).

LA has: lots of AC and lots of cars

Not quite in LA, but there is Harris Ranch nearby.

So if he really wants people to change he needs to start at his door, I suppose.

Los Angeles happens to be the most energy efficient in the country and residents are quite environmentally aware

There is enormous demand to relocate into more temperate and less car-dependent parts of the country. Indeed we will not abstain from cooling and motor transportation where they're required, but we can move to where they aren't required.

Turns out simply wishing people good luck and asserting everything is going to be fine [1] is a poor substitute for extreme weather monitoring / defence / preparation / response [2].

Who knew?

[1] http://www.chron.com/news/houston-weather/hurricaneharvey/ar...

Trump: "Good luck to everybody. They're gonna be safe. Good luck to everybody. Good luck."

[2] https://newrepublic.com/minutes/144555/trump-says-good-luckb...)

"Over the last seven months, the president has both proposed and implemented numerous policies that surround hurricane preparedness, readiness, and response. Here are some of them:..."

This really doesn't have anything to do with him. This is a once in a lifetime event. Could we wait to make it political until after it is over?

Hurricanes (or natural disasters) are one in a lifetime event?

>During the peak of the flooding on Saturday night, the National Weather Service in Houston issued an apocalyptically worded “Flash Flood Emergency for Life-Threatening Catastrophic Flooding.” That kind of warning wasn’t a thing before Harvey, which just adds emphasis to the unique risk this storm poses.

>The event is so rare, that even the NWS is unsure of what will happen next. In a chilling follow-up tweet on Sunday, the NWS said “this event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced.”

http://grist.org/briefly/harvey-dealt-houston-catastrophic-f...

Yes, but just because it happened for the first time now it won't happen anytime soon again? Maybe not next year, but really lifetime rare? I think it's better to prepare and it not happening than not prepare because it's just a once in a lifetime thing.

They even say it isnt sure what's going to happen next. So you can't say now that it is a once in a lifetime thing.

In someways isn't this the governments job? It's very easy for people to plan for things that happen every year or two, one of the things the government is capable of doing is looking further ahead than normal people will getting ready for THAT.

This hurricane yes. The last comparable event was the destruction of Galveston in the early 1900ies, which led to the rise of Houston.

This is a hurricane with masses of hot mexican golf water, which decided to stop directly behind Houston to unload all the water there, the 3rd largest city in the US, which is huge and totally flat. The rivers are showing record factors of flow, 10x more than the previous flow records. E.g 70.000 cfs in La Grange. The previous record was like 6.000 cfs. You cannot deal with such numbers, but still the dams are holding.

I see. Thanks for providing some context and numbers. Seems to be much larger than I thought. But it could still be that the number of these kinds of hurricanes could go up, no?

It being a cat 4 hurricane was bad enough, but the flooding is largely being caused by the two high pressure systems on either side of Harvey [0][1]. Storms normally aren't held in place for a week straight.

So it may be more important to try to understand whether there'll be more storms + surrounding high pressure systems

[0] https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/harvey-stall-22aug17.j...

[1] https://www.wunderground.com/news/tropical-storm-hurricane-h...

Counterpoint: isn't this the PERFECT time? This is one time when we can discuss possible policies and it's not completely abstract. We can point to what a policy would have or would not have changed about what is currently going on.

For example it's much easier to convince people that it's OK to cut certain parts of the budget when no one has seen some of those programs used much in a couple of years. Events like this make it clear that preparations for extreme storms, even if they're not common, are still necessary.

Now of course most of what Trump has "done" is PROPOSALS to the budget, so he hasn't necessarily changed anything yet. But it still seems like a reasonable time to discuss these kind of issues.

And the government involvement in flood insurance, basically subsidizing people to live in areas that are a lot more dangerous than necessary.

Fortunately the Trump administration (in partial continuation of Obama policies) is attempting to reduce FEMA subsidy for people living in floodplains[1]. It's a messy process to end an unhealthy subsidy that many depend on but with this particular problem it may be worth buying people out--lives are at risk as well as just dollars.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-23/trump-fem...

That's good. That's one of those things (like the home interest tax deduction) that seems like a terrible idea we already have and is near political suicide to actually get rid of. At best people can just keep chipping away at it until it's affectively gone.

Regardless of the politician in question...

Let's quantify a once in a lifetime event just a little bit:

Let's say it's a 'hundred-year' event which means that it has a 1% probability of happening in a given year. And let's say that the event costs what Katrina did[1], i.e. ~$100 billion ($100,000,000,000).

That's an expected loss of $1 billion every year.

Once in a lifetime events like really bad hurricanes hitting a particular Gulf city aren't exactly 'unknown unknowns'. And furthermore, major damaging hurricanes in the US total (not just a single city) happen every 5-10 years maybe. It's absolutely worth putting a lot of resources into risk reduction (hazard assessment, long-term resilience efforts, disaster planning and strategizing). Ignoring this is shameful, especially considering that hurricanes are the costliest disasters the US faces, and efforts understanding and preparing for 1 once-in-a-lifetime event like Katrina will substantially apply to an independent once-in-a-lifetime event like Harvey.

And political will is the only way that things will get done in an appropriate fashion. It's not exclusively political/governmental (for example, reinsurance companies invest in research into this and their results plinko down to local insurance rates) but governments are in the best position to coordinate efforts, enforce regulation (zoning etc.), and have both bigger assets and bigger liabilities than everyone else.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina

how is this hacker news? can we report on any flood or natural disaster event outside US as well, some people really are self-centered convinced about their importance...

You are welcome to do that, you are not welcome to mock the people who are losing their houses, possessions, and lives right now. Jerk.

I sympathize with how you feel about that (and with the people in Texas, of course). But the personal insult really isn't helpful.

Could you please stop spamming the thread with off-topic complaints? If you aren't going to comment civilly and substantively just don't.

> can we report on any flood or natural disaster event outside US as well

Yes and it can be up voted or down voted like any other comment or link

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