#hurricane Harvey

[unknownbarley]

𝒅𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒗𝒆𝒚

march 13, 2018 - rockport, texas

[wildlife4life]

Seven (+) Sentence Sunday

Tagged by super amazing @exhuastedpigeon @cal-daisies-and-briars @hippolotamus @disasterbuckdiaz @glorious-spoon @wikiangela @daffi-990 @tizniz @devirnis @watchyourbuck @hoodie-buck @loserdiaz @spotsandsocks and @diazsdimples. Thank you all so much!

Alright, so I know haven't been as active since dropping the first chapter of NFL Buck. I've just been sort of down because that same day, the Super Bowl Champs had their parade and rally, and just after it ended there was a mass shooting. My younger sister was there with some friends and they got away unharmed, but when she didn't answer my message for a long 30 minutes, I truly thought the worst. I've just been so sad and angry for Kansas City, for the US really and I just couldn't get into the spirit of writing. I'm not getting into the politics of it all today and my sister is coming for a visit soon, so I'm feeling marginally better. KC Strong.

First chapter of NFL Buck has been dropped, but everything else I've posted for this fic can be found here. Here is a snippet from the Eddie Begin's arc of NFL Buck.

Hurricane Harvey was relentless for almost four days, bullying southern Texas with unforgiving wind and an exurbanite amount of rain. Houston fire department and so many others worked day and night to help those who had not evacuated.  It was absolute chaos, and it blew through Eddie’s entire life. The storms had wreaked havoc on the cell towers, which meant service was spotty to none and radios became the main source of communication for rescuers. By some miracle, though, the internet connection at the firehouse held strong. It was slow and glitched out here and there, reminding Eddie too much of his time in Afghanistan. He watched his infant son grow up through a screen, with his very upset wife barely holding on and his parents hovering nearby, souring the video calls even further. Christopher was no longer a whimpering baby in his mother’s lap but looking at his saddened son on a glitching iPad screen with a tense Maddie sitting beside him, was too familiar.  Add in the argument he had with Buck just before, and the threat of danger just outside the firehouse, Eddie was back to being a scared 19-year-old in war riddled country. “Dad, grandma said we’re not going to visit Buck anymore. That he’s too busy. And Maddie tried to call him, but he didn’t answer and…” The eight-year old’s voice trails off, his lips trembling. Eddie bites his inner cheek hard. This was on him. He gave into his mother’s worries and demands about traveling through Texas during the hurricane.  Helena was too stubborn and being his mother, she knew every damn button to push, and Eddie was tired of fighting.  So, he reluctantly agreed to cancel the visit and his mother grinned a little too sharply before stating, “I’m sure Maddie will enjoy having her brother to herself.” Another ploy to take Christopher and Eddie fucking fell for it. Then his mother took it a step further by graciously telling Buck and Maddie herself, that Christopher would no longer be joining them in Dallas and to enjoy their time together for as long as they need it. Eddie knew his mother didn’t approve of his relationship with Buck, more so than his previous one with Shannon. The only reason she kept her mouth shut was the potential back lash of upsetting Christopher. But she already succeeded in having a hand in driving away Shannon and she probably believed she could do the same with Evan.

With this fic, there are a lot of canon events with twists. The usual timeline does not exists. But I hope you all enjoyed!

Tagging (no pressure): @bekkachaos @theotherbuckley @lover-of-mine @buddierights @try-set-me-on-fire @jesuisici33 @jeeyuns @aroeddiediaz @giddyupbuck @rainbow-nerdss @thewolvesof1998 @eddiescowboy @eddiebabygirldiaz @spaceprincessem @athenagranted @evanbegins @elvensorceress @malewifediaz @911onabc @911-on-abc @ladydorian05 @bigfootsmom @thekristen999 @spagheddiediaz @rogerzsteven @honestlydarkprincess @doublecheekeddiaz @buck-coded @prosperdemeter2 @lemonzestywrites @gayedmundodiaz @transboybuckley @nmcggg

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Semper Paratus

In 2017, The US Coast Guard rescued 16,000+ civilians during Hurricane Harvey.

December 2017, then President Trump closed his Mar a Lago golf course to host and honor the 75 Coast Guard heroes! 🤗

[vicontheinternet]

This is why i don’t trust nothing coming out of Houston mouth cuz someone in my neighborhood said power was going to be on by 6 today and according to centerpoint it’s coming back on the 17th that’s way longer the Harvey and Harvey did more damage

[hunniebbie]

[filosofablogger]

A Hero ... A Dreamer ... R.I.P.

What follows is a repost from 2017, a time when the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program was being challenged and young children were being threatened with being deported to a country of which they had no memory, had no family, simply because they were labelled “other” by bigots and racists in the United States.  And now, some six years later, here we are again with the Courts…

[xtruss]

A bulldozer works to maintain Chicago's underground. More frequent and intense storms pose danger to aging infrastructure like these tunnels. Photograph By Keith Ladzinski, National Geographic Image Collection

Here’s What Worries Engineers The Most About U.S. Infrastructure

Water and sewer systems built in the mid-19th century weren't meant to handle the demands of modern cities, and many bridges and levees have aged well past their intended lifespan.

— By Alissa Greenberg | July 17, 2023

Christine Kirchhoff’s family were preparing to move into a new house when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017. Then the massive storm dumped 50 inches of rain on the area in just a few days, leaving two nearby reservoirs so full that their operators were forced to open the floodgates. Kirchhoff’s family had to be evacuated by boat. Both their original and new houses were inundated.

As an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Pennsylvania State University, Kirchhoff spent a lot of time thinking about water even before it swallowed her family’s livelihood. She is part of the legion of professionals behind the complex, often invisible systems that support American life: dams, roads, the electric grid, and much more.

For the last 25 years, the American Society of Civil Engineers has been sounding the alarm on the state of that infrastructure across the country. In their most recent assessment, for example, transit scored a D- and hazardous waste a D+. It’s an expensive problem to ignore. The ASCE estimates current infrastructure conditions cost the average family $3,300 a year. “Everyone is paying whether they know it or not,” Kirchhoff says.

Train derailments, highway and bridge collapses, and dam failures have become increasingly common. But which areas are civil engineers most concerned could cause imminent catastrophe, and what can we do about it? Kirchhoff and other infrastructure experts weigh in.

Water Contamination Crises are Already Here

The engineers we talked to agreed: our water systems are in trouble. Both those that protect us from water as a hazard (stormwater, dams, levees, bridges) and those that help us manage water as a resource (drinking water, wastewater, inland waterways) are in grim shape.

Streets were flooded after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017. Photograph By Ilana Pancih-Linsmam, The New York Times/Redux

The United States’ 2.2-million-mile drinking water and 800,000-mile sewer system was developed in part in response to the widespread waterborne diseases of the mid nineteenth century, Kirchhoff says. Maintenance has lagged woefully behind since then; some older areas, including some cities in the northeast, still use century-old wooden pipes. And many more of our pipes nationwide are still made of lead.

A water system designed for yesterday’s climate and to filter yesterday’s contaminants is especially problematic in a world of increasing demand, fiercer and more frequent storms, and “forever” chemicals. The result: boil orders, water main breaks, and sewer overflow, plus 15 percent of our water treatment plants working at or over capacity. These issues, combined with the toxicity of lead pipes, lead to water crises like the one that continues to plague Flint, Michigan.

Amlan Mukherjee, the director of sustainability focusing on infrastructure at WAP Sustainability Consulting, recommends focusing on these pipes—swapping lead for PVC or other materials and fixing the leaks that spill some 6 billion gallons of treated water a day—as one high priority fix.

Our coastline is also dotted with facilities storing hazardous oil and other chemical waste cocooned in donut-shaped earthen structures, adds Bilal Ayyub, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland at College Park—structures that, he notes, could be made of concrete. Because of soil’s vulnerabilities, he worries that dramatic rainfall or a storm surge could destroy these structures, resulting in a release of toxic chemicals “bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill by orders of magnitude.”

His worst-case scenario has already happened at least once, when floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey ate through the earthen container at the San Jacinto River Waste Pits, releasing noxious waste into a nearby river.

Physical Collapse is Happening Now

Meanwhile, the number of high-hazard-potential dams in the United States now tops 15,000. Many were built during or before the WWII era and have been widely neglected since then. And when it comes to bridges, “there are cautionary tales all over,” says Maria Lehman, president of ASCE and vice chair of the Biden Administration’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council. “Every county in the country has a list of bridges that, if they had money, they would replace tomorrow.”

Our 617,000 bridges include not just those spanning mighty rivers but also every highway overpass and minor link across a stream—and close to one tenth of them are significantly compromised. “If you have to think in terms of catastrophe, we’re already there,” Mukherjee says. In 2007, the collapse of an I-35W bridge in Minnesota killed 13 people and injured 145. More recently, a six-lane bridge over the Mississippi was closed for three months in 2021, disrupting interstate travel and shipping because an inspector missed a significant crack. Americans drive 178 million trips on structurally deficient bridges each day.

Every day, millions of Americans travel across bridges and overpasses, like the Marquette Interchange in Milwaukee, that may be structurally deficient. Photograph By Keith Ladzinski, National Geographic Image Collection

Yet the US spends only 1.5-2.5 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, proportionately less than half of what the European Union spends, Lehman says. This long-term lack of funding has run out the clock on many solutions. Many of our bridges were built to last 30-50 years, but nearly half are at least half a century old. The average age of our levees is also 50; our dams average 57.

Now, extreme weather is intensifying just as structures fail. We’ve already seen consequences in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, for example, when collapsing levees inundated 80 percent of New Orleans, killing hundreds, or in the failure of an under-inspected dam in Edenville, Michigan, which flooded the region and destroyed thousands of homes in 2020. The trend is set to continue: after Superstorm Sandy engulfed New York City transit, Ayyub helped study similar risks in Washington, D.C and Shanghai. His models showed widespread flooding that could swamp D.C. metro stations and in severe cases even reach “the backyard of the White House.”

The Future of U.S. Infrastructure

Mukherjee is optimistic about the use of new technology to solve some of these issues, though adoption has been slow. Drones can provide human inspectors with up-close views of areas they can’t reach themselves and reduce chance of human error; a drone on an unrelated project captured footage of the Mississippi bridge crack two years before its discovery.

Ayyub has also worked with North American freight railroads to find weak links using computer modeling, combing through thousands of stations to “identify exactly which point if it fails will have the biggest impact,” he says. Why not do the same with our power grid and waterways?

One piece of good news: in 2021, Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides $1.2 trillion over five years for the ailing systems that help American society run, the largest federal investment in US history. It was a major victory. “Every president for the last eight presidents said we should spend a lot of money—like a trillion dollars—on infrastructure, and none of them delivered,” Lehman says.

Unless it is renewed regularly, though, this funding will barely stop the bleeding. And meanwhile, across the country, families like Kirchhoff’s (who after a difficult year were able to rebuild both the destroyed houses) struggle to recover from a relentless march of disasters, many of them preventable. It’s time for the US to learn the lessons drawn from of a century of neglect, Lehman argues, and begin maintaining the systems that makes so much of American life possible while they’re still in working condition.

“If you have a leak in your roof, you go up there, find it, replace the shingles, put on a little tar” she says. “If you let it go, it’s not going to be a little fix: it’s going to be a replacement.”

[sonofthepear]

Jack Ridenour X Carolina Hurricanes

Been loving Jack’s work for the Carolina Hurricanes this season. Using the eye of the hurricane to create some stunning stand-out graphics for game promotions. My personal favourite is the, No Deal, eye of the Storm. The way Jack created an eye with the hurricane at the centre of the pupil looks incredible, and contrasting it with black surrounding it gives an intimidating atmosphere.

Sources: Twitter - @jp_ridenour,@Canes

[scholarofgloom]

[makingcontact]

But Next Time Part 3: The Fight for Fair Housing in the Face of Climate Change (Encore)

12 Moms Initiative member Jamie describes water and mold damage to her home at the Coppertree Village Apartments to members of the National Low Income Housing Coalition during a bus tour hosted by Houston’s housing justice organizers. Credit: Leah Mahan   No matter where we come from, or how much money we make, we all deserve a safe and healthy place to call home. In this episode we meet Jamie, a…

[wildlife4life]

Seven(ish) Sentence Sunday

Tagged by the always lovely @spotsandsocks, @disasterbuckdiaz @wikiangela @jamespearce9-1-1 @malewifediaz @daffi-990 and @theotherbuckley Thank you so much! I am so excited for all your upcoming works!

Here is another snippet from NFL Buck, Eddie begins arc with a hurricane twist. Honestly don't know if this is actually seven sentences, I'm a little out of it because I am sick and a little out of it from my medicine. But I hope you all enjoy! All things NFL Buck can be found here.

One last solid bump into a wall and Eddie was finally in the kitchen.  A sob, then, “Up here!” Pulled the fireman to his feet and eyes upwards. And there Hayden was, just as he said, on top of the fridge, shivering and sopping wet, but alive and clutching a drenched stuffed t-rex to his chest. “Hey Hayden, you have no idea how happy I am to see you little man.” Eddie told him softly, sloshing over to the fridge.  He pushed aside a few stools and kitchen utensils that had floated in front of the appliance, “Don’t know if you heard earlier, but my name is Eddie. I’m a firefighter and your mom sent me to find you.” “Where’s my mommy?” The blonde little boy sniffed. “On the roof with the other firefighters and they are all anxiously waiting for the both of us.” Eddie reached his arms up and motioned his hands towards himself, “So, why don’t you come down to me and I’ll take you back to her.” Hayden shook his head and scooted further back on the fridge, a soft thunk barely heard when his backside hits the cabinets above. “I want my mommy!” He cried out.

Hope you enjoyed! I'm heading back to my cocoon.

Tagging (no pressure): @gayedmundodiaz @rainbow-nerdss @hippolotamus @jesuisici33 @exhuastedpigeon @devirnis @spaceprincessem @fortheloveofbuddie @lover-of-mine @athenagranted @eddiescowboy @evanbegins @elvensorceress @giddyupbuck @thewolvesof1998 @911onabc @911-on-abc @bekkachaos @loserdiaz @ladydorian05 @bigfootsmom @watchyourbuck @eddiebabygirldiaz @thekristen999 @shortsighted-owl @spagheddiediaz @monsterrae1 @rogerzsteven @eowon @princessfbi @honestlydarkprincess @vampbuckley @bitchfacediaz @buck-coded @housewifebuck @glorious-spoon @buddierights @prosperdemeter2 @lemonzestywrites

[momlovesyoubest]

Midlife Family Meeting Aging Parent Disaster Plan

 MidLife Sibling Meeting Needed for Global Warming A midlife sibling meeting needs to be convened after the catastrophic global warming nightmare of Hurricane Dora unleashed on Maui, where 1000 people were missing, many probably older residents who could not get out quickly, creating a midlife sibling nightmare.  The identified dead are all elders. Scores more victims will be identified in the…

[raininginthenight]

Garage Large Houston Picture of a spacious, modern, two-car garage

[filosofablogger]

Good People Doing Good Things -- Hidden Heroes

I don’t do it often, but every now and then I do repost a prior ‘good people’ post for one reason or another.  Tonight, I stayed glued to the computer for hours watching various election results and simply cannot seem to get my mind back into writing mode at the moment — it might help if I didn’t keep falling asleep!  At any rate, this ‘good people’ post dates back to August 2017 and I think…

[samanthamayorofgothem]

Garage Large Houston Garage - large contemporary attached two-car garage idea

[scydiahs]

Garage Large Houston Picture of a spacious, modern, two-car garage