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Harvey


Stallard12

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Well folks, right in the middle of an historic event, hurricane Harvey.  We, along with Houston are on the wet side of it and it's unbelievable.  Rising water is slowly filling our neighbors houses and moving closer and closer to us. Can hear 80' pine trees hitting the ground like WW2 88's.  We have about 12" of safety left, but if it comes back in off the Gulf, as predicted, oh boy.   Very proud of Texans response, everyone out with chainsaws and boats from all over the state.  Think there is a little piece of Sam Houston in every one in Texas, including the imports !!  Have sat through three previous hurricanes, the others were much windier, but this one will cause much more damage.  In the mean time think about me - last year I convinced my wife to cancel our flood insurance, maybe it won't be the hurricane that kills me !! 

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Crikey that sounds awful Stallard and I hope you and your home stay safe.  I saw a small snippet on the TV news about it yesterday but thought it had subsided now...clearly not.  Where about in Texas area you?    As for you cancelling your flood insurance...oops if the water is only 12 foot away from you now :( How deep is it :(

You should post some pics for us to see....

 

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We are 90 miles east of Houston.  Pounding rain, thunder and lightening have now joined the rain. The hurricane has moved back onto land (tropical storm now) right over us.  We had 28" inches of rain over last three days and nights and last night we got another 10" with the same forecast for tonight. We are under a constant tornado warning and this could continue until Friday.    Our grid power goes out every ten minutes, but luckily we have a Generac ( automatic natural gas driven, hard wired generator) which kicks in after ten seconds. 

Not light yet, so I'll have to wait to check where the water level is now.  Presently filling the bath tubs with water to use for flushing toilets if our area water pumps go out.  Oops, there goes the power again, good job the IPad is on battery.

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We have been tettering on the edge, with the water at our toes since last Friday and it's going to get worse for us thru Friday we are east of Houston and the revitalized storm  is coming on in over us.  We cannot drive more than a few hundreds from our house without coming up on 6' of water.  To give you some perspective, imagine if all of the roads between Warrington and London  (almost) were completely under water - it's a Texas size storm.  Not just the  motorways, every road as far inland as Sheffield, that's how big Texas is.  There is no chance to get food supplies etc.. Forget your political prejudices and watch Fox News.  We have low water roads chock full of cattle escaping to high ground, dead horses and cows who didn't make it, floating in the water and an infestation of snakes heading for driveways and patios.   Remember Churchill "we can take it", well that applies here, brings tears to your eyes to see the ' good ol boys' who are usually out bass fishing, out with their boats dragging old people, kids and pets off roofs  and off to safety, hundreds of small boats not waiting for government help, just doing what has to be done.  Although it's much bigger than Katrina, this one is being handled by Texans and you can see the difference - you won't die here.   I'm just doing an Edward R Morrow (for those old enough to remember), relaying the details of an epic disaster.   Signing off. 

 

 

 

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:(:( Reading that bought tears to my eyes Stallard

I watched some of CNN News earlier tonight after I replied on here and what I saw was awful and my heart goes out to anyone affected.  What struck me though was the great way everyone is working together to help each other.  It showed one business owner who had opened his furniture store, he had a big place that sold all sorts of furniture including settees, beds and bedding..he just opened the place up so that anyone in need could stay in there and use his 'stock' and the restaurant and food for as long as was needed.  The image showed kids playing and bouncing on beds pushed together and they said others had been going in giving out toys and dressed as clowns to cheer the kids and everyone up.  Nice that..... 

Thinking of you and everyone else Stallard and fingers crossed it will all start to subside very soon.  See you when you are over here in December and you can show me your pics and tell the tales about how you survived and conquered storm Harvey.  Some things in life are thrown at us so we have stories to tell for years to come eh...

Take care x x

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Thanks Dizzy.   Rain still pouring down, but we are still dry, but surrounded by water.  We can only get 50 yds away from our house and it's going to be like that for days.  That's the problem, emergency services cannot get to people.  There are thousands of helpers waiting in Austin 300 miles from us and that's as close as they can get due to flooded roads.  Rain should stop Thursday evening, just hope our remaining 12" of freeboard is enough.   

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The sun is shining, oh happy day.   I apologize for imposing this on y'all, but you have never seen anything like this.  We were blest that we live on very high ground, but we spent five days praying that it would stop as the water moved closer, but for hundreds of thousands of our fellow Texans, it didn't stop soon enough.   Having to swim out from your house holding your pet and your two yr old to be rescued is not fun and that happened several hundred times a day for a week and is still going on.  An area the size of the U.K. is under water.  This was not Latchford flooding or Penketh flooding, it was roof high water for an area the size of a country.

Today our city pumps were covered by water and failed, now a city of 120,000 people has no water.  The hospitals are trying to get the patients evacuated because they cannot even wash their hands never mind drink.

Regular guys, welders and operators from the plants etc, have been out with their bass boats and skiffs non stop for five days rescuing  people.  The Cajun navry (my wife is Cajun) are the same 'good ol boys' from Louisiana, who drop everything and head into devastated areas with their every day boats to help.  Their normal  motto is ' Laissez le bon temps roulette', let the good times roll, but in trying times, you can't find a better ally.  I am a Cajun by marriage and that is better than being knighted.

One fantastic thing coming out of this is the government response.  Governor Abbot of Texas is fantastic and, many will be upset by this, President Trump gets it.  He is not a politician and he has reacted like a business man - all action.  Army amphibious vehicles are working alongside the bass boats rescuing people. For once everyone seems to be on the same page, except the left  and biased media, who are complaining that Milania Trump wore high heels when she left the White House to go to Texas.

Dont  get the wrong idea, I am not comparing the loss of life, or the length, but to me watching all this it wa just like watching the Blitz, not exaggerating, it is bad.

For me this is now over, I still can't drive anywhere to buy a bottle of milk, but in a week that will change.  It will be years before the area recovers.  But I bet it will be done with a smile on the face - cos that's Texas.

 

 

 

 

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No way to plan for this kind of momentous event.  Millions of people live in apartment complexes and have no way of storing boats etc..   Probably 1 in 5 families have a boat and that's where all the rescues came from.   This storm moved in so quickly, people had no water in their yard, took a nap and woke up to find water in their living room.

The storm dropped 48" of rain on us in three days.  My property is 30' above sea level and we stayed dry, but even now all of the roads a mile from my house are under water and are impassable and are likely to stay that way for several days.  Power is out everywhere in an 100 mile radius of us and there is not even an estimate of when it will all be back on - the repair crews cannot reach the sources of the problems because of the impassable roads.   If this storm would have made landfall in Blackpool, apart from isolated high spots, every where east to the Pennines, north to Carlisle and south to St Albans would be under water.

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If this is down to "climate change", as some claim, then imo it's already too late to prevent.  So, we need to adapt; and that means building on higher ground (not in the flood plain), building houses on stilts, where a boat can be stored underneath etc - welcome to "water world".  

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From what I've read, the Houston area has been prone to flooding since the town was founded, and bad as this flooding is it has been worse in the past. However, as always, the financial cost will be extremely high simply because of the amount of high value property that now exists in large conurbations.

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The rebuilding begins.  Obs, the only high ground for a couple of hundred miles around Houston is the highway overpasses.  This area has been inhabited for hundreds of years and nothing anything like this has happened before.  We personally have have sat through three previous hurricanes and suffered huge trees landing on the roof and other tornado damage. They usually last 24 hours and then it's a matter of picking up debris.  This one sat for four days and dropped 5 ft of water on the whole area.  The experts say that is a thousand year storm so you can't change the lifestyle of a huge population to cater for something that is not supposed to repeat for a thousand years.  If you want a cheap car get here, they say that 5,000,000 cars have been completely under water for a week.

For the misguided, it is acknowledged, grudgingly by the left, that Trump and his administration have handled this disaster better than anyone has in the past.  Texas always has a great State government and they are ecstatic about the cooperation they have received from the Federal Government.  President Trump is in Texas today visiting the affected areas so that he will have first hand facts when he argues for disaster money with Congress. -  thank you Mr President.

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Sid, he's offered a $million of his own money.   Tex, I wouldn't count on the thousand year theory;  boy scout's motte0 - "be prepared".  If there's no high ground, it seems stilted houses on rafted bases, should at least keep folk above probable water levels; it is possible to built in mitigation into the infrastructure, and to do what humans have always done - adapt to one's environment.     

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This is a sub tropical area subject to several hurricanes every year, every possible safety and engineering feature is in place all of the time and have handled every previous storm.   Homes within fifty miles of the beach have all been built on stilts since the turn of the century.  There is no way to convey the size of this storm, we are a hundred miles from the coast and 30ft above sea level and the water was lapping at our toes for five days. God himself could not have been prepared for this and he probably knew in advance!

Finally got to make our first trip into town, 40 miles.  Water on our high ground has drained well, but closer to town the water lines on some homes is six feet high.   This is 60 miles away from Port Arthur on the coast, imagine what it's like down there.  No gasoline at any gas stations but one, there the line of vehicles waiting was a quarter mile long, but no problem.  Guys just leaning on their trucks chatting with everyone else and it's close to a100 degrees right now. Walmart had six trucks being unloaded outside and they must have had two hundred workers stocking the shelves as fast as they could.  We have been eating my wife's diet program food for a week so the first thing I picked up was T-bone steaks.   Power came on at nine pm last nigh, it's three pm in the afternoon and just got a message that it's going off in two hours to complete repairs and will be of for 15 hours.  Ah well.

what do you mean Obs?  Grow gills and webbed feet?

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Sid, he's offered a $million of his own money.

Well, let's see how that goes eh?

https://thinkprogress.org/white-house-walks-back-trumps-promise-to-give-1-million-of-his-personal-money-to-harvey-victims-4691cf5e6dd6/

President Trump is in Texas today visiting the affected areas so that he will have first hand facts...

Depends how you define "first hand" really:

 

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My condolences fugt, it must be so depressing to be permanently negative. Liberals lost to a businessman, get used to it.  The man made billions of dollars, lost it and came back and did it again. Anyone who can equal that is entitled to unfairly criticize him.  He's been in office for seven months, please give me a list of his evil deeds to date.  He has reduced illegal immigration, he has backed the police forces, he has removed many of the idiot Obama's job destroying regulations, tried to revise the healthcare but was stalled by 'politicians'.  I could go on, but I await your list with interest.  By the way, the Unions are right behind his agenda and his agencies have never arrested or deported any illegal who wasn't a violent criminal.

Finally, can someone please give an answer, as a normal human being I'm at a loss.  Why do left wing liberals always feel that they have to turn human suffering into gotcha politics - the epitome of bad taste. I guess it's because they have no original thoughts and it comoflages their lack of ideas.

I apologize folks, been taut as a spring for a couple of weeks, but feeling better right now- just opened the bar.  Aaaahh

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2 hours ago, Stallard12 said:

My condolences fugt, it must be so depressing to be permanently negative. Liberals lost to a businessman, get used to it.  The man made billions of dollars, lost it and came back and did it again. Anyone who can equal that is entitled to unfairly criticize him.  He's been in office for seven months, please give me a list of his evil deeds to date.  He has reduced illegal immigration, he has backed the police forces, he has removed many of the idiot Obama's job destroying regulations, tried to revise the healthcare but was stalled by 'politicians'.  I could go on, but I await your list with interest.  By the way, the Unions are right behind his agenda and his agencies have never arrested or deported any illegal who wasn't a violent criminal.

Finally, can someone please give an answer, as a normal human being I'm at a loss.  Why do left wing liberals always feel that they have to turn human suffering into gotcha politics - the epitome of bad taste. I guess it's because they have no original thoughts and it comoflages their lack of ideas.

I apologize folks, been taut as a spring for a couple of weeks, but feeling better right now- just opened the bar.  Aaaahh

I'm gonna ignore that request for a "list of evil deeds" because I never said there was one, but here's a few points and questions which might not quite chime with your rosy view.

He didn't make billions from scratch, he was gifted by his father.

He's not a very good businessman.

Obama backed the police, Trump has backed racism in the police with his pardon of that Sheriff Joe fella.

You think Obama's an idiot and you support Trump?

"Politicians" = The Opposition and a few of your own. It's like, y'know, democracy.

And this:

Why do left wing liberals always feel that they have to turn human suffering into gotcha politics...

Here's Trump five years ago:

 

 

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Best ignore the snowflakes Tex, they'd let the water in, just as they let the migrants in; while keeping busy, pulling down statues  !     :D        Glad to see someone's had the foresight to already be building on stilts close to the shore line, perhaps the practise now needs to be extended inland ? 

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