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Preparations for
Hurricanes and other Emergencies: PREPARE: Don't Despair! The ocean and bay coasts of Delaware; we are prone to Hurricanes and Storms. Some new residents are not well educated and prepared for our storms. Temporarily, at least, folks are pushed into knowing a little and fearing a little about such things. The news about Hurricanes in this late summer of 2005 has brought added awareness, some undue fears, concerns that I wish to lessen but most of all I will arm you with knowledge and share my experience. There is no warranted fear with proper preparations and appropriate actions. Disaster:
The primary damage from storms and hurricanes is from wind and the secondary damage is from flooding. But there is an even greater damage from improper action and response to incomplete or erroneous information. The wind often arrives overnight or rather suddenly but seldom lasts more than a day or two. Sheets of Wind-Driven-Rain: Wind and rain change character greatly with speed and amount of the rain. This wind, with little or no rain, seems nice up to about 40-50 miles per hour but can rise to 70 and 90 where severe damage begins and rain with the added weight increases the wind damage. Winds of 90 to 110 begin removing roofs and some walls of buildings and the more rain with the wind the more power that water weight adds and the more things come apart and go down. The Poles Come Down: When the wind reaches about 120 to 130 miles per hour larger trees come down and roadside electric poles begin to come down. At 135 miles per hour most of the poles and wires are twisted across the roads and even tanks and military vehicles are stopped until these can be manually removed with armys of men, chain saws, wrecker trucks, tanks, and bulldozers. We have had some times when the winds have reached more than 120 miles per hour and gusts up to 150. When mixed with rain or blown ocean water winds seem to double in damage with every ten miles per hour increase. The wind usually drives water from the ocean before it and upon the land as a windblown tide or surge. The ocean builds great wind driven waves that crash upon the beaches and inland. The winds blow the tops of the waves inland as vertically layered jet-walls of sea water that can move things a bulldozer can not. I have seen these sheets of wind driven rain, slashing at 125 miles per hour, shove entire homes across the roads and into crashed piles of debris that instantly become unguided missiles by the ton. I have seen homes driven several miles from their foundations on the beach to land on the far side of the inland bays and end up far into the marsh and woods on the inland sides of Indian River Bay, Rehoboth Bay, Assawoman Bay and even up the rivers. Storm of 1962. The worst storm I have seen was the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962 which was a violent Northeaster that forced five sequential high tides inland without allowing and draining relief. It removed Route 1, the Ocean HiWay, between Rehoboth and Fenwick Island and some of that road remains hundreds of yards into the Rehoboth Bay where it was pushed. Flooding comes slowly, relentlessly, and unpredictably, starting sometimes before the major winds and almost always during and sometimes the floods continue to build for days after the wind calms. Inland the winds were not as bad but at Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse, off the coast of Cape Henlopen at Lewes; it got rough! Storm of 1998: I was working with FEMA at Disaster Head Quarters located in the Mess Hall of Bethany Beach National Guard for the Triple Storm of March 6th thru March 10th of 1998. The inland tides in 1962 were several miles farther inland but here are some of the after storm observations from '98. From Fenwick Island to Cape Henlopen Point about half the dunes were removed along with the snow fence. We started a line of bull dozers in the surf, pushing sand back up after the second storm in an attempt to save the road from washing out. The most disastrous place was both sides, especially the north side of the Indian River Bridge where the beach was dangerously close to being removed to the point of destroying the base of the bridge! Most of these dunes, although mostly or fully removed by the waves stopped the waves from removing the road. Again, the road from Rehoboth to Fenwick was removed by the '62 storm. Dune Protection: With of these two storms we have made big increases in protective measures along the dunes; building them up, stabilizing them, planting them and embedding sand fences to increase the height and width and better protect the homes and roads, marshes and inland bays. Even so, there were waves within five or ten feet of Rt. 1 south of York Beach! And they crossed the road at Fenwick Towers and went into the streets of SeaTowne! South Bethany lost Ocean Drive and a few homes to the sea from 8th Street down. We lost the road at the corner where the Henlopen Hotel is and from the hotel north for a few hundred feet there was a 20 foot deep crater where the ocean went over and under the road and churned up a wave basin three or four times as deep as cars, some of which fell into the hole. Waves came to the doors of Victoria's Restaurant near the north end of the Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk! Delaware Bay Beach Damage in '98 along our coast: The water came completely across Lewes Beach and overflowed the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal, flooding the marshes with salt water and reaching up to the foundation of the College of Marine Studies, Operations Building of the University of Delaware at Lewes. Broadkill Beach lost most of it's dunes but less damage to the homes. FEMA had required homes to be built upon pilings for decades otherwise we would have lost all of the homes from Fenwick to Primehook Beach most likely. Prime Hook Beach was flooded to about three feet of water over the road for almost a week. Fowlers Beach lost all the dunes, most of the private beach property and the thin line of privately owned beach was mostly removed back to the refuge marshes. The marshes were overrun with sand back several hundred feet from the waterline. Slaughter Beach lost most or all of their dunes and the streets were flooded a couple of feet deep. ANGOLA flooded: We evacuated most of the people from the Angola area with school buses through two and three feet deep water, other folks were able to board hundreds of private boats that locals ran for days as they rescued people and animals with the largest volunteer "coast guard flotilla" that I have ever seen in our area. These were not under the direction and control of anyone, just volunteers helping neighbors! Physical Safety is the first factor to be considered: Please begin by listing the strengths and weaknesses via a fair assessment for each of these areas. These strengths and weaknesses are from the viewpoint of the counter-stresses that may need to be faced. For instance; wind, rain, flooding, power outage, road closures, food or water supply problems, sewage disposal problems, crime, government interventions, etc. Existing Home: Elevation above the likely flood plain is a primary consideration as we now know from the Louisiana Storm Surge! Most of coastal Sussex County has an elevation of less than 14 feet and a major storm surge could be more than that. The Storm Surge in Katrina was perhaps more than 25 feet! See: http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag178.htm Storm Surge: This is a relatively new term, we used to call this an elevated and extended high tide. This tidal high water is caused by a continuation of winds and low pressures that keep piling up waters against the land from the sea and as the tide would normally go up and down, it just keeps on going up and up and up. This quickly floods areas farther and farther inland from the coast. This storm surge can cause rivers to run backwards and in Sussex County. I have personally seen the Broadkill River flow backwards over the dams and over the streets in downtown Milton, at a depth of about 5 feet over the street and back into the Wagamons Pond in Milton. Main Street, that is Union Street was flooded past the door knobs of some of the stores along the river, downtown! This is many miles inland of the ocean and bay and this was in the storm of March 1962, the worst one we have had in my lifetime. This extensive flooding was the primary cause of death in recent storms. There is a big difference in speeds and times of high flood times and fast storm surges. The high tidal surges can take days to peak and many more days to subside. The fastest storm surges can occur in a matter of hours, a few hours or many. If the storm surge is very fast it is almost a tidal wave in it's quickness. The highest storm surge we see recorded is on of over 40 feet which was in the late 1800s in Australia. Katrina had the worst one I know of in America as far as height of the surge, that being about 25 feet or more. However the famous Galveston storm of around 1900, because of lack of prediction and preparations, caused over ten thousand people to loose their lives! Sewage Backup and Flooding: As we have more and more sewers, the danger of sewage flooding and the attendant deadly poisonous problems of an area covered with human sewage is a huge potential problem! In many areas there are pumps which must pump sewage UP from coastal areas to higher ground where the sewage treatment plants are. All of our beach areas are like this. These sewage pumps have generators which are powered by LP gas in case of power outages. However the power is still out, many weeks later, in much of New Orleans and the LP tanks for the sewage pumps are only good for a few days at most. Then, the sewage starts running back downhill, toward the lowest points and UP through the manholes and toilets of homes and businesses! Automobile:
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As I write this, September 2005, we have just witnessed overwhelming news coverage of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and surrounding states. FEMA has been gutted and neutered since the Clinton Administration for some reason and did not take control of the situation and the press. Therefore, as always, the media became the major force for disaster as they reported only bad news and twisted versions to make it all worse. There are some concerns about how a similar situation would be handled here in Coastal Sussex County Delaware. GOVERNMENT WILL NOT BE YOUR SAVIOR! Most likely the impersonal actions of any government agency will worsen your situation and you will NOT be able to change what they want to do to you and your property. The motivation of the government is for THEIR better survival in the next election and to look better in the immediate Media reports. We DO have some potentially serious situations here and YOU should address them and NOT rely on the government to "save" you. We are one of the most difficult areas in America to evacuate in case of a needed evacuation according to FEMA reviews from several years ago, when I worked for FEMA in Disaster Management. According to these reports even a Category 2 or 3 Hurricane, if it were to hit our Delaware coast, would result in extreme damage and devastation to homes in the lowest elevations along all our beaches and for some miles inland where homes are located upon these lowered elevations. Although FEMA has long required homes to be built upon piling so that the first floors would not easily flood, we do not have much in the way of preventing or limiting damage to our roads and we are still vulnerable to flooding inland homes. Because Coastal Sussex lies flat and low, long term flooding will creep inland several miles. For instance Milton, in the flood tides of the famous 1962 storm had several downtown stores, along the river, that had water up as much as four feet above the shop floors. Only that one part of Milton, along the river, was that badly affected but many farmlands had the low-lying acreage flooded along the Broadkill River. A flood tide of 10 feet will reach to most of Rt. 24 and a flood tide of 15 feet would put much of Rt. 1, 9 and 24 under enough water to stop all traffic and evacuation. This much flooding would likely take more than a full 24 hours to occur but those who decide to stay when instructed to evacuate. Currently the government can not forcefully evacuate people but they get closer and closer to doing so with each big disaster. The best defense against Government Forced Evacuation is to be gone before they get to you. Evacuate early rather than too late. If you are vacated by the force of government you will be allowed very little to take with you and you will be placed in evacuee space that is not necessarily better than the rest of the disaster. In fact for many the greatest part of a disaster could be what happens if they are forced out of their homes and into a shelter. Get Out Early; Because most people will not evacuate until they are forced or threatened; our outbound roads will be overwhelmed with traffic. Some of those people will be rude and go too slow or too fast. Some will not have reliable cars. Some will not have full gas tanks. Some will get into accidents and stop the traffic flow completely. Some will try to four-wheel around the traffic and get stuck on shoulders, etc. and this will make it even worse to get things moving again. Since we are surrounded by water, accidents on bridges will be even worse at stopping traffic. It could easily take more time to get out of our area, during the peak of evacuation, than a car can make it on a full tank of gas. This could leave hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of cars - out of gas - and stopped in, on and beside the roads or on bridges. If your car gets 20 miles per gallon, a usual figure, it will also get about one hour of idling in traffic per gallon as well. Therefore: if you go 100 miles but it takes you 12 hours in slow traffic you will use about 5 gallons for the trip and 12 gallons for the idling time and you will be OUT of gas in about 100 miles instead of your usual 350 to 400 miles or whatever you usually get. If your SUV gets about 12 miles per gallon, a usual figure, you will likely get about 3 hours for 2 gallons of gas for idling time. We also have a growing population of non-English speaking people and they do not have enough cars to evacuate all of their families. They would also not likely be updated on alarms, details and directions. FEMA did have a study group, set up to make solutions for this but that group ended when Homeland Security took over. One of the directions solutions were taking, is that of variable evacuation routes. In some cases storm surge flooding could make problems along our western evacuation routes near the Chesapeake Bay and as those routes cross the numerous low-lying areas on both sides of rivers and creeks. We may even be directed south into the lower peninsula if the storm surge is less there. Most likely we will be directed north and that puts a lot of pressure on the few roads crossing the C&D canal; Saint Georges Bridge, Summit Bridge and the new bridge over the canal will be terrible cinch points that will back up traffic for many hours, even without an accident. Many of our roads, other than 13 and 113 which merge into Rt. 1 are small and ultra-susceptible to flooding in most cases. Many if not most of these tiny, two lane, connecting roads will be closed by our government agencies or by accidents in the early stages of evacuation. And all of them will be loaded with stuck traffic as they try to merge into the overwhelmed roads that cross the bridges. Get good, recent maps and keep them in your vehicle. Plan to leave early when evacuation is first being discussed or if common sense dictates; before evacuation is discussed. Being among the first to leave will increase your chances of surviving what may be the most disastrous part of a local disaster; the evacuation.
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