[AT] And now for something a little different...

[David Bruce]

I remember in the days after that trying to get from Burlington, NC to 
Edenton, NC to assist a customer.  The trip east was a bear and with 
many major detours because of the flooding.  I was there for the week 
and even driving back several days later the evidence of the flooding 
was very apparent.

Few years earlier (ok a lot of years earlier) when I was taking driver's 
ed in the summer (1972 as I remember) we had a couple weeks of nearly 
constant rainfall.  The creek near the high school was over the road for 
several days - several feet over and all due to shoddy road construction 
further down the creek.

David
NW NC

On 8/4/2012 5:55 PM, charlie hill wrote:
> Steve,   I know that feeling well.  In the big flood we had in 99 the water
> was rising an inch an hour at my mom's place and was already about 4' higher
> than it had ever been before.  I was on my
> way to go and get her out.  Her house was already surrounded by water but
> it's atop a hill and she was still high and dry but I had to get someone
> with a boat to go and get her.  I couldn't get in there
> with a 2 ton truck.  Anyway, while on the way to get her I suddenly saw why
> the flooding was so bad.  In the late 60's they build a new road to serve a
> local industrial plant that was under construction.
> The road crossed the creek that flow around 3 sides of her house but about 4
> miles down stream from her.  To build the road they filled nearly half a
> mile of swamp that makes up the watershed for the creek and left a bridge
> about 60' long as the only way for the water to flow out.  When I crossed
> that bridge there was about 3' of elevation difference in the water level
> between the upstream and down stream sides of the road.  Water was shooting
> through the bridge opening like it was coming out of a  fire hydrant.   If
> I'd had a 40 ton excavator I would have very tempted to rip that bridge out
> right then and there.  As it turns out almost all of the severe flooding in
> eastern NC was the direct result of highways built since the late 50's.   We
> were in a cycle of severe hurricanes in the early and mid 50's that died
> down and it appears we are back in that cycle now.  The water in 99 liked
> just inches of getting in her house.   I pulled a vent register out of her
> floor and measured down to the water in the metal duct and it was 11" from
> the top of the carpet to the water.  That put the water about 1 to 2 inches
> from the house framing.   There were literally millions, perhaps billions,
> of dollars of damage from that flood and most of it would never have
> happened if those bridges and highways had not been built.  Since then we've
> had two more such floods.  Not as bad as 99 but worse than anything prior to
> about 59.
>
> Charlie
>