QRTRHRS
Elite Member
Spring thaws and flooding used to be called "freshets". I guess because the water would wash things away and freshen everything up somewhat?
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HOw did they clean up after a flood in old days?
- Thread starter 2manyrocks
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woodchuckc
Bronze Member
I live 75 miles southwest of Nashville and I didn't have to deal with the Cumberland River. My house is up on a hill away from the creek in front of my house so I didn't have to worry about flood damage to it, but I will be dealing with damage to my property for the rest of the summer.
One thing I thought I would mention - flooding in the hilly areas in Middle TN is different than flooding in flat low-lying areas. You are not dealing just with water rising, but a lot of POWERFUL current. It is not enough just to prepare for rising and falling water like in flood-prone regions like Louisiana - when a 2' diameter trunk whole oak tree complete with roots or a floating truck comes raging down a creek or river at 20 mph or more, it is going to take out a house or or most anything else in its path. Building a house up on stilts or putting cans under your bedposts to deal with a foot or two of water covering the floor is not going to be too helpful in those situations.
My little creek that is normally ankle to mid-calf high rose 16 feet. A neighbor had brought in a trackhoe to dig a pond a couple of days before the rain and parked the full sized, 3 axle Mack dump truck and low-boy trailer he used to haul it down near the creek. That little creek picked up and swept the truck and trailer about 50 yards downstream until it snagged on big sycamore tree that managed to hold up until the water went down.
My only road to get out to the highway has a branch of the creek running under it, with two 6' diameter metal culverts side by side for the branch to flow through. Normally, a single 18" diameter culvert is plenty big enough to carry the flow from that branch. During the rain, that branch washed out a 25-30' wide and 12' deep section of the road and the culverts ended up in my front yard, a half mile downstream.
Large volumes of rushing water can do pretty amazing things.
One thing I thought I would mention - flooding in the hilly areas in Middle TN is different than flooding in flat low-lying areas. You are not dealing just with water rising, but a lot of POWERFUL current. It is not enough just to prepare for rising and falling water like in flood-prone regions like Louisiana - when a 2' diameter trunk whole oak tree complete with roots or a floating truck comes raging down a creek or river at 20 mph or more, it is going to take out a house or or most anything else in its path. Building a house up on stilts or putting cans under your bedposts to deal with a foot or two of water covering the floor is not going to be too helpful in those situations.
My little creek that is normally ankle to mid-calf high rose 16 feet. A neighbor had brought in a trackhoe to dig a pond a couple of days before the rain and parked the full sized, 3 axle Mack dump truck and low-boy trailer he used to haul it down near the creek. That little creek picked up and swept the truck and trailer about 50 yards downstream until it snagged on big sycamore tree that managed to hold up until the water went down.
My only road to get out to the highway has a branch of the creek running under it, with two 6' diameter metal culverts side by side for the branch to flow through. Normally, a single 18" diameter culvert is plenty big enough to carry the flow from that branch. During the rain, that branch washed out a 25-30' wide and 12' deep section of the road and the culverts ended up in my front yard, a half mile downstream.
Large volumes of rushing water can do pretty amazing things.
As long as man has been on this earth, floods have caused trouble. As population rises, and more and more high ground gets occupied, the problem can only get worse. I live in a floodplain on the same flatland farm that my family has occupied for 6 generations. Like Fred says, we have learned to work with the water. The house is built up a bit, but my barn floors get flooded on occasion. Several times, I have came home from work or partying to find a sattelite news truck setup in my driveway because the road was covered too deep just past the house. We look forward to the these times when we can enjoy "lake front property" for a few days. We have even decorated our house in that style, with an old wooden boat for a bar and Johnny Cash's "five feet high and rising" on the record player. The kids like it when I can take them for a boat ride to the nieghbor's house. With well over 100 years on this land, we know that the water only gets so high, and will go down as fast as it comes up. There is no place I would rather live than in this here floodplain. I would much rather deal with a foot or two of water each year than those subdivisions and stripmalls which have gobbled up most of the high ground in areas where one can easily find a good-paying job.
OP
2manyrocks
Super Member
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2007
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- 8,571
Just received the June issue of Tennessee Magazine where the author of one story asked the question just how it was that the city brains built the Opryland Hotel, Bridgestone Arena, the Country Music Hall of Fame and LP Field in areas subject to flooding? His answer? "government officials and city planners didn't think we would ever have a flood of this magnitude again because we thought we had 'tamed' the river."
So it's not just Joe Schmoe homeowner that built in the flood plain.
So it's not just Joe Schmoe homeowner that built in the flood plain.
user.69169
Veteran Member
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- Feb 22, 2009
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Thing or 2 I noticed over the years about flooding~
I grew up in the swamp country and we pretty much expected fllods every yera or 2, and given some of the things I see on the TV the ones we had weren't all that bad or violent. We could watch the water coming up in all directions, and pretty much knew when it was time to pull the floorboards and get things up. My family been there for 3 generations by the time I came along and boy I tell ya a kid dang sure listened and did what he was told when water coming or that kid didn't sit for a week after water went down. I can remember when we was little how mom tied each of us kids to a clothesline wrapped around the post in middle of the house, and it was 2 kids on each rope, one on each end. We was each responsible for the brother or sister on other end of the rope, and dang well watched out for each other. The ones weren't old enough to be tied went up in the top of the house in their cribs, and they stayed there till it was safe to bring them down. You grow up that way I think responsibility is put in your makeup from time youre about 5, and it never leaves you.
We never much had to worry about trees floating by the house, but when I got older probably about 12 me and my brother took up ropeing propane tanks over close to town. Them things go floating by, and if you could rope one and haul it to shore and tie it off the propane company would pay you a few dollars for the tank when they came got it and hauled it back to the house it came from. Me and brother both had us little boats sort of like a wide canoe made out of cloth and paint, and we learned to tie one end of boat off upstream and use the current to get out to where the tank floated by. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of letting the flood work for you, but it can get hairy too. We always kept one of the boats by shore so if something happened to the one ropeing the other brother could just send the spare boat down the rope and you could pull youreslf in and work your way back to the bank. I guess when you grow up with wet feet like we did water is just something your used to and it don't scare you like it does to people who live on dry land.
Thing I noticed driving truck all over America was how many citys are built in the fork of a river, or in obviously floodland next to a river. Shoot you pretty much don't have to do more than take a shovel and dig down a couple feet to figure out where the river flooded and put soil from upriver. Seems like people don't do a whole lot of thinking when they build.
Seems like I drove for miles along rivers that got high concrete walls on both sides too where the government stepped in and built them walls to contain the river like they say. Odd thing is a lot of the houses behind them walls was built exactly where they sit so the rich folks who built them could have a view of the river. Well fine, you build in the flood plane and guess what gonna happen. Then you go to complaining and the government come along and build a wall. What have you got a view of now? Looks to me like a dang expensive house with a view of a concrete wall. Some even got stairs going up back side of the wall and docks for their boats on the river side of the wall. Not too smart in my thinking.
So OK, now you got the river confined between them 2 concrete walls, and some time passes. That river still picks up soil upstream every spring, and all that soil that used to spread out for half a mile or more and make rivh planting ground now gotta stay between the walls. Mother Nature sure ain't gonna change her ways, and river pretty much ain't gonna change its ways. Don't take long till people start noticing the river coming closer to top of the walls every flood, and then over the top of them walls. Guess what happens next? I mean good lord folks, you got any idea how much dirrt they dredge and haul out of the lower Misissippi every year? You think its any different in any other river running between walls? The dang water ain't getting deeper, the bottom of the river between them walls is coming up! I guess they don't teach that kind of smart to engineers though.
Another thing been confusing me more than 20 years. Back before we got all that political corresc and environmental concious stuff farmers were happy to get free topsoil to plant good crops in. When they dredge a river now all the soil that came from 50 miles upstream is now what them engineers call HazMat and it gotta be handled all special and disposed of according to some plan. Seems to me like somebody sold the taxpayer some phoney thinking. Seems like good sense got replaced by how much money can we collect and throw away. You know when they sandbag a place now they use plastic bags and when the water goes down all them sandbags gotta be hauled off and buried in a dump someplace. Who's kidding who? Did the world run out of burlap? Seems a little funny to me in 2010 we still got mobs of people filling sandbags with ashovel too. At least get a dang ladder and a couple sawhorses and put some cutoff traffic cones through the ladder.
If the people running these shows are the best and brightest America has I'm dang glad I'm old.
I grew up in the swamp country and we pretty much expected fllods every yera or 2, and given some of the things I see on the TV the ones we had weren't all that bad or violent. We could watch the water coming up in all directions, and pretty much knew when it was time to pull the floorboards and get things up. My family been there for 3 generations by the time I came along and boy I tell ya a kid dang sure listened and did what he was told when water coming or that kid didn't sit for a week after water went down. I can remember when we was little how mom tied each of us kids to a clothesline wrapped around the post in middle of the house, and it was 2 kids on each rope, one on each end. We was each responsible for the brother or sister on other end of the rope, and dang well watched out for each other. The ones weren't old enough to be tied went up in the top of the house in their cribs, and they stayed there till it was safe to bring them down. You grow up that way I think responsibility is put in your makeup from time youre about 5, and it never leaves you.
We never much had to worry about trees floating by the house, but when I got older probably about 12 me and my brother took up ropeing propane tanks over close to town. Them things go floating by, and if you could rope one and haul it to shore and tie it off the propane company would pay you a few dollars for the tank when they came got it and hauled it back to the house it came from. Me and brother both had us little boats sort of like a wide canoe made out of cloth and paint, and we learned to tie one end of boat off upstream and use the current to get out to where the tank floated by. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of letting the flood work for you, but it can get hairy too. We always kept one of the boats by shore so if something happened to the one ropeing the other brother could just send the spare boat down the rope and you could pull youreslf in and work your way back to the bank. I guess when you grow up with wet feet like we did water is just something your used to and it don't scare you like it does to people who live on dry land.
Thing I noticed driving truck all over America was how many citys are built in the fork of a river, or in obviously floodland next to a river. Shoot you pretty much don't have to do more than take a shovel and dig down a couple feet to figure out where the river flooded and put soil from upriver. Seems like people don't do a whole lot of thinking when they build.
Seems like I drove for miles along rivers that got high concrete walls on both sides too where the government stepped in and built them walls to contain the river like they say. Odd thing is a lot of the houses behind them walls was built exactly where they sit so the rich folks who built them could have a view of the river. Well fine, you build in the flood plane and guess what gonna happen. Then you go to complaining and the government come along and build a wall. What have you got a view of now? Looks to me like a dang expensive house with a view of a concrete wall. Some even got stairs going up back side of the wall and docks for their boats on the river side of the wall. Not too smart in my thinking.
So OK, now you got the river confined between them 2 concrete walls, and some time passes. That river still picks up soil upstream every spring, and all that soil that used to spread out for half a mile or more and make rivh planting ground now gotta stay between the walls. Mother Nature sure ain't gonna change her ways, and river pretty much ain't gonna change its ways. Don't take long till people start noticing the river coming closer to top of the walls every flood, and then over the top of them walls. Guess what happens next? I mean good lord folks, you got any idea how much dirrt they dredge and haul out of the lower Misissippi every year? You think its any different in any other river running between walls? The dang water ain't getting deeper, the bottom of the river between them walls is coming up! I guess they don't teach that kind of smart to engineers though.
Another thing been confusing me more than 20 years. Back before we got all that political corresc and environmental concious stuff farmers were happy to get free topsoil to plant good crops in. When they dredge a river now all the soil that came from 50 miles upstream is now what them engineers call HazMat and it gotta be handled all special and disposed of according to some plan. Seems to me like somebody sold the taxpayer some phoney thinking. Seems like good sense got replaced by how much money can we collect and throw away. You know when they sandbag a place now they use plastic bags and when the water goes down all them sandbags gotta be hauled off and buried in a dump someplace. Who's kidding who? Did the world run out of burlap? Seems a little funny to me in 2010 we still got mobs of people filling sandbags with ashovel too. At least get a dang ladder and a couple sawhorses and put some cutoff traffic cones through the ladder.
If the people running these shows are the best and brightest America has I'm dang glad I'm old.
