And the Waters Come Back

Good God, Internet - it has been an exhausting couple of days here in Central Michigan. . .

Yesterday evening, following a couple of days of heavy - but not unheard of - levels of rain, the dam up in Edenville collapsed.  Now, while this is indeed quite a ways away from Midland, it's part of a greater system of water that travels quite a distance from Northern Michigan down through Saginaw.  This dam failure was not an isolated incident: shortly after the Edenville Dam collapse, Sanford's own dam faced 'imminent dam failure.'  This would effectively drain Sanford lake, right on down the Tittabawassee River, through Midland, and on to Saginaw.  A torrent of water, destroying everything in its path.

We had all thought that the Flood of 2017 was bad (if you'll recall) - it was a '500-year-flood,' the worst on record behind the Flood of 1986.  Remember that?

Well, this blew both out of the water (no pun intended.)

While the rain levels weren't nearly as high, human negligence was astronomical.  The dam owners who operated this system of dams repeatedly ignored State and Federal regulators who fined them for the dams not being up to code.  It was cheaper to pay the fines that fix them entirely, so the dams continued to crumble and degrade.  And following a couple days of heavy rain - nothing apocalyptic, mind you - the dominoes began to fall.

Crazy that this popped up in my Facebook. . .

Now, we Houghs were out on our regular evening stroll with the Johnson family when the Emergency Alerts (see above) began to blow up our phones.  Alayna and the dogs were once again staying back at the house (the Cannonball isn't big on the family walks), Abby and Ella were rollerskating on ahead of us, Courtney and Kris were catching up on gossip, and Erik and I were enjoying our pipes and a few beers as we brought up the rear, moseying through the empty streets of the Chestnut Hill neighborhood.

We were walking along when the first alert came up on our phones.  Shortly afterwards, another evacuation notice flashed.  Then another.  By the time we had made it over to our friends' house, the Colliers, the Edenville Dam had bursts and Sanford's was on the brink.  Helicopters roared overhead as if we were in a war-zone - army copters, news copters, you name it - all scrambling west as fast as they could fly.  Although we were on the far-east side of town - the highest, driest part of the community you could find - the impending doom that was getting closer and closer with each passing moment was nerve-racking.

I joked that this is what it must've felt like for the occupants of Atlanta as they continually received news of Sherman's approaching army in 1864.

After having a few beers with Ryan and his wife in their driveway - and all devouring any piece of news we could as it developed - we made our way home and parted ways with the Johnsons.  Upon getting home, Kris and I decided to start moving things out of the basement as a precaution.  As you know, we had a little water in our basement back in 2017 (fortunately, less than a half-inch, and it was isolated in the storage room), but this time a whole series of dams had been breached, and an ungodly amount of water was headed our way.  We wanted to err on the side of caution, so for the next five hours we moved everything of value up and out of the basement.  Check it out:

Around 1:30am, after hours of moving our valuables out of the basement, this was the state of the Study.  Photo albums, swords, dresses, musical instruments, you name it.

Some items were either two heavy to move upstairs on our own (the treadmill, that futon), or otherwise deemed expendable (the dvd shelving, etc.)

We planned on getting about 3 feet of water, worst case scenario (hence the nicer furniture being stacked on top of the expendable furniture.)

The bottom rows cleared out (in the event the water continued to rise, we could then empty the upper compartments.)

The Captain's Quarters was nearly impossible to clear out, as it's jam-packed, floor to ceiling, with stuff.  A lot of the stuff left here were the lesser-valuable stuff I could afford to replace if I had to.

Top-quality lodging in the basement.

To take things a step further, I set up a cot in the basement, right by the sump-pump, just so that I would be able to act quickly in case the house began to flood.  Didn't get a lot of sleep that night by any means (obviously), but fortunately it was an unnecessary precaution:  we didn't get a drop of water in our basement the entire night, during the worst of the flooding.

We were incredibly lucky, to be sure, but as morning broke over Midland County, we realized that tens of thousands of our fellow residents weren't nearly so fortunate. . .

The Tittabawassee all but swallowed up the Tridge (shown here.)

The surrounding banks on either side of the river were completely underwater, reaching all the way out to M-20 (at far right.)

The water went all the way up to the back of the county courthouse (at bottom right.)

Nice of Midland schools to realize there were probably a lot of folks unable to focus on schoolwork at a time like this. . . 

The H Hotel, at bottom left, was spared, but the series of parking lots behind it were all swallowed up. . .

That green ring you see here is all that remains of the city's Farmer's Market.

My Lodge, fortunately, was spared.  It's the oldest organization in town - in existence since the lumber days, well before Dow was ever a thing - so to lose our historic building would've been a disaster (the red arrow above is pointing to the Larkin Building, where we hold our monthly meetings.)

The Tridge, barely functional.

The insane flood waters attracted a ton of gawkers the following day.  This shouldn't surprise anyone.

Local news stations - and even some national ones - quickly descended on the scene. . .

Immense pressure in the city's western water mains created mini-geysers like this all over the place.

No parking?  That's a given.

The Courthouse was spared, fortunately - that's another one of the city's historical buildings that would've been a shame to see ravaged by floodwater.

The city had deployed several of these to shore up the downtown sector as the waters rose throughout the night.  Fortunately, the Sanford dam - while breached - held out throughout the night, so the torrent of damaging water that would've exploded downstream had it failed never reached downtown.

The Upper Bridge, north of M-20.

Sanford Dam (or what's left of it.)

The Western reaches of Midland were definitely pounded, and we knew lots of people who lost nearly everything, but for all the damage that the city suffered in this flood, it was nothing compared to what happened to Sanford.  The entire city was destroyed, and I doubt it'll ever recover completely.

ABC's Good Morning America is even covering this.  Check it out here.

- Brian