Tropical Storm Fay Floods Jacksonville

[Steve]

no kidding Steve. And for the city as a whole.

Are you kidding that the place functionally collapses after a little rain?

With that said, I'd hardly call this "a little rain"  We got more rain than some places get all year.  There to me are two issues at play - the river spilling over, and unbelieveably bad drainage.  We tried to work Friday, but we had to leave because we would have been flooded in.  We are nowhere near the river, our street just served as a westside retention pond.  That to me is crazy.

In addition, in any tropical storm, the city is going to have to shut down, because of the bridges - this city frankly can't function without the bridges, which close at the minimum tropical storm force winds.  In addition, this storm was extremely hard to predict.  Look at the Weather Channel - 65 meterologists on staff and they missed about three times on the path of this thing, and nobody expected it to go so slow - had this thing gone at about 8 miles an hour (which is about normal for a tropical storm), it wouldn't have been nearly this bad - the city would have been closed Thursday, and back opened Friday.

[thelakelander]

no kidding Steve. And for the city as a whole.

Are you kidding that the place functionally collapses after a little rain?

With that said, I'd hardly call this "a little rain"  We got more rain than some places get all year.  There to me are two issues at play - the river spilling over, and unbelieveably bad drainage.  We tried to work Friday, but we had to leave because we would have been flooded in.  We are nowhere near the river, our street just served as a westside retention pond.  That to me is crazy.

In addition, in any tropical storm, the city is going to have to shut down, because of the bridges - this city frankly can't function without the bridges, which close at the minimum tropical storm force winds.  In addition, this storm was extremely hard to predict.  Look at the Weather Channel - 65 meterologists on staff and they missed about three times on the path of this thing, and nobody expected it to go so slow - had this thing gone at about 8 miles an hour (which is about normal for a tropical storm), it wouldn't have been nearly this bad - the city would have been closed Thursday, and back opened Friday.

We should have taken Norfolk's route and build a couple of our bridges as tunnels instead.

[TD*]

You all really need to take a step back...

1. In reality, no cities storm water facilities are planned for flash floods... its not cost feasible, and it just isn't possible.

2. Cities are planned to handle what happens most of the time (occasional storm, and they do that fine)

3. Blaming the city of jax on poor planning is wrong. nobody could have planned for this system or any other tropical system, you do the best you can, and when something like this happens you tough it out, and clean up afterwords.

[Midway]

Also, in New Orleans there was the not insignificant fact that much of the City is below sea level.  That is not something which is true of Jacksonville.

Yes. Jacksonville is at sea level, so you won't have 20-30 feet of water in a hurricane, only about 5 feet. Thats much better.

[RiversideGator]

Midway:

Stephen said:

We would be even more wiped out by a category 5 Katrina event than New Orleans was.

I never said we would have no flooding from a Katrina type storm.  I said that we would be better off than New Orleans was because our geographic conditions are more favorable.

BTW, Jacksonville's official elevation is 16 feet but of course this varies based on where you happen to be in the City.  In any case, we are on average sitting on much higher than does New Orleans.

[thelakelander]

You all really need to take a step back...

1. In reality, no cities storm water facilities are planned for flash floods... its not cost feasible, and it just isn't possible.

2. Cities are planned to handle what happens most of the time (occasional storm, and they do that fine)

3. Blaming the city of jax on poor planning is wrong. nobody could have planned for this system or any other tropical system, you do the best you can, and when something like this happens you tough it out, and clean up afterwords.

You're right.  There was nothing the city could have done to keep the river from overflowing its banks or keep excess water from settling at the lowest spots in the region.

[downtownparks]

People need to understand that while this was "only" a tropical storm, it was a significant to borderline generational rain event that lasted for the better part of 5 days dumping nearly 30 inches in Duval county. Most hurricanes could slam us with winds and surge and wipe out coastal and low lying areas because of it, but really, the rain with most hurricanes wouldn't be as significant. Hurricane Andrew, for instance, was a devastating cat 5 storm but only dropped about 5 inches of rain. The wind and surge (and gun toting criminals) were the killers.

Its important also to realize, New Orleans flooded not because of the rain, but because the levy system failed, due either to the surge, or President Bush (which ever you prefer).

Duval doesnt have a levy system, and is highly republican, so I think we might fare a bit better than did New Orleans.

[stephendare]

You all really need to take a step back...

1. In reality, no cities storm water facilities are planned for flash floods... its not cost feasible, and it just isn't possible.

2. Cities are planned to handle what happens most of the time (occasional storm, and they do that fine)

3. Blaming the city of jax on poor planning is wrong. nobody could have planned for this system or any other tropical system, you do the best you can, and when something like this happens you tough it out, and clean up afterwords.

You're right.  There was nothing the city could have done to keep the river from overflowing its banks or keep excess water from settling at the lowest spots in the region.

actually there is.  Its called 'drainage'.

Also available are riverwalls and pumps.

[thelakelander]

You all really need to take a step back...

1. In reality, no cities storm water facilities are planned for flash floods... its not cost feasible, and it just isn't possible.

2. Cities are planned to handle what happens most of the time (occasional storm, and they do that fine)

3. Blaming the city of jax on poor planning is wrong. nobody could have planned for this system or any other tropical system, you do the best you can, and when something like this happens you tough it out, and clean up afterwords.

You're right.  There was nothing the city could have done to keep the river from overflowing its banks or keep excess water from settling at the lowest spots in the region.

actually there is.  Its called 'drainage'.

Also available are riverwalls and pumps.

We can drain all we want and spend a trillion dollars on installing 10' high levees along the riverbanks throughout Duval.  Excess water will still settle at the lowest elevations in certain areas.  No one should be shocked about areas like McCoys and Hogans Creek flooding.  They were originally swamps.

[uptowngirl]

If some people would also take 10-15 minutes to clean out the storm drains as needed throughout the storm we wouldn't have seen all the street flooding (away from normal sources of water) either. Several of us around our neighborhood went out and cleaned the drains as they became full of debris and TRASH. Especially TRASH, these are some trashy people...I don’t know how many times I grab little debbies and owl wise chip bags, oh and Crystals bags, cups, boxes out of storm drains. I cruised through North Jax yesterday and it still had standing water, still tons of debris, and storm drains still plugged up, but hey they got priority....everyone was grillin and chillin.

Spend as much as you like, but someone has to clean out those drains as they clog, and the city can't clean every single one of them, contrary to popular belief in some neighborhoods. The pumps in San Marco didn;t help much did they? Perhaps that moeny would ahve been better spent on the lochs at Hogan's Creek? Also did you see the pictures of the "Castle" in Springifeld? The city did a great job with the bridge and filling in the ponds over there, that house is flooded every time it sprinkles...no I think if they do anything at all, they should educate people on how to keep their darn storm drains clean. After 30 inches it is bound to flood, but maybe not so bad it can sink a car.

[jbm32206]

During the first break in the heavy downpours, I was out there, along with another neighbor with rakes and a push broom to move the debris...which is all it took, and the street drained in no time. Although the majority of it was limbs and such. I'm proud to say that my neighbors and I do a great job with keeping this block clean.

[civil42806]

I agree this was not "just" another tropical storm.  This was in fact a very unusual rain event.  Ask Melbourne about it.  Fortunately we did not have hurricane force winds, a fact that the NEFBA is grateful for.  But the rain amounts were unprecedented.  i'd like to see the last time we received this much rain in such a short time.  I'm living in mobile at the moment but my wife stated that we received about 25 inches of rain in about 2 days on the westside off will branch creek.  She had to drain our pool at least 4 times.  There simply isn't much the city can do in this situation. The response seems reasonable to me.  Low lying areas are always going to flood, the city can certainly try to improve the drainage.

Also living in Mobile, Ala, gives me a great appreciation of bridges, the big complaint here is that fact that they only have tunnels crossing mobile bay.  They are investigating building a bridge.  The tunnels create horrible traffic jams constantly, small fender benders basically bring traffic to a stop, plus in storm situations the tunnels are closed due to potential flooding.  There is no easy answer to the situation, you can always by pass the tunnels on us 90 but that takes  you all the way around the city.

I doubt that the 3 storms we had in 2004 dropped as much rain as this storm did.

[civil42806]

also cleaning your street gutters is one of the most important things you can do to keep the water down.  I'm amazed that the city doesn't advertise that more.  In 2004 when we had the 3 tropical storms, my neighbor and I spent the evenings going around and clearing the street gutters.

[BridgeTroll]

Its important also to realize, New Orleans flooded not because of the rain, but because the levy system failed, due either to the surge, or President Bush (which ever you prefer).

Duval doesnt have a levy system, and is highly republican, so I think we might fare a bit better than did New Orleans.

Puleeze... How about appropriatly placing blame on the mayor of NO and Guv of Louisiana

[downtownparks]

Bridge, It was tongue in cheek.