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

The Great Flood

Good to see you, America.  How's everybody doing?

We're actually doing really well, all things considered.  As you know, we Midlanders just suffered the worst flood to hit this region since 1987, which, at that point in time, had been the worst flood on record since 1903.
The rain came on fast and hard, and most of us didn't think anything of it at first - just a heavy downpour that came in late one evening and lasted most of the night.  In the morning, however, Kris and I woke up to a weird sound coming from our house; something we had never heard before in the two weeks we had been living in our new home.  I got up immediately and looked out the window.

Outside, the sidewalks and street were underwater.  City maintenance vehicles were pumping water out of a manhole a couple houses down from ours.  Pissed off neighbors were slushing around in their rainboots and pajamas.  Whitewood was underwater.

The extent of our damage.

The sound, however, had been coming from inside the house, so I went downstairs to check on the status of our new, fully-finished basement.  Fortunately, as I came downstairs, I saw that everything was still miraculously dry:  the main basement area, the laundry room and bathroom, the side basement rooms, the Captain's Quarters, etc. - all bone dry.

Not so much the case with the Storage Room.

This little back valve saved our asses, rest assured.

The noise we had woken up to was coming from our Sump Pump, which kept kicking on to drain the water that was filling up its reservoir.  We can thank that miraculous apparatus for keeping our house from being damaged with flood water.  A back valve (see picture below), was also keeping water from seeping back into our house, but the pressure from the city waterlines was so intense that water was spewing from the seams (which were fully tightened in place, I couldn't budge the cap.)  The spare strips of carpet that the previous owners had laid down in the Storage Room were all soaked by the constant spraying of water, but fortunately the water spewing out was being drained back into the main drainage hole in the basement.

The main drainage hole - pre-plunging

John and Mom came over to check out the state of things for us, as we were obviously new to all of this.  After plunging the main drainage hole, the water drained and from that point forward it was just a matter of squeegeeing up the water on the cement floor and throwing away the soaked carpet strips.  We were fortunate to not have endured any real damage to our basement, especially considering that all of our neighbors on either side of us and across the street were dealing with anywhere between 6" and 6 feet of standing water in their basement.

After our Storage Room was dried out, I made an attempt to reach our old house to borrow the dehumidifier from its basement, but couldn't get through:  Waldo and Ashman streets were completely underwater and cars were being forced to turn around.  It was another few hours before I was able to make it over there successfully.

As it turns out, our neighborhood has only one waterline that drains out into Waldo Street's one, humble 12" pipe.

Seriously.  That's it.

When Waldo's pipe became backed up with floodwater and debris, our neighborhood - which constitutes some 200 houses - had nowhere to send our own congested waste.  The torrential downpour of the previous night, coupled with a soggy preceding week of on and off rain, had accumulated over 7 inches of standing bullshit, with nowhere to drain.

Then the sewage lines backed up.  And shit quite literally hit the fan.

Of course, our neighborhood wasn't the only area devastated by the flood:  many other areas in Midland were equally hit hard, especially around the river and to the west.  Parts of US-10 were completely underwater, as was much of Coleman, Mt. Pleasant, and Sanford.  Whole areas were closed off, and people got around in boats and kayaks like you always see in areas in the south - it was surreal seeing something like that happen in your own backyard.

A soggy, soggy Tridge.

Alas, we were fortunate enough to be the sole survivors of the damage on our street, and we can thank our Sump Pump and back valve for that.  Our luck definitely made us feel a little guilty, though, that we didn't share in our neighbors' misfortune:  as I drug out a few trash bags of soiled carpet to the street corner for trash pickup, I felt pretty crappy looking up and down the street and seeing folks carrying out entire bedrooms sets, entertainment centers, electronics, exercise equipment, and countless boxes upon boxes of treasures.

And then, of course, came the Scavengers.

You know the sort I'm talking about.  On 'Big Trash' pickup days, when one tosses things out like old TVs, broken or soiled furniture, etc., these Scavengers can be seen driving around in ratty, old pickup trucks looking to score on other peoples' garbage.  Usually, I find some level of amusement at this - it's like thrift-shopping for really, really crappy stuff, but to each their own.

This time, though, it seemed tasteless:  people were hauling out prized possessions that they had no previous inclination to discard mere hours before, and here these scumbags were, loading it into the backs of their trucks right in front of the previous owners.

More than once I witnessed heated verbal altercations between our neighbors and these Scavengers.

So much for groceries this weekend. . .

Why these guys were going hard at it like they were, I'll never know.  It's not like they could clean up these discarded items - they were literally soaked in human waste.  The City of Midland even ordered a halt on all scavenging, due to urgent health concerns over people hauling away items that were shit-caked and soaked with piss.

Yet still they came.  God knows why.

The damage, contained.

Anyway, our back valve and saved us from getting sewage water in our basement, so the water that had soaked our carpet strips in the Storage Room had been rain water coming from drainage pipes and nothing more.  Our neighbors, unfortunately for them, had stagnant sewage water in their basements, and what they managed to pull out from the mess was now on the street side being rummaged through by totally despicable people.

We count ourselves insanely fortunate, but are still planning on buying a generator and a backup Sump Pump in the coming weeks, just to stay on the safe side.

I'm sure many of our water-laden neighbors will be doing the same.

- Brian