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  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Primitive Technology Living
  • Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:05:59 -0400



eureka AT hctc.net wrote:
Bev, I did not know, and I'm SO sorry to hear that flood touched your life. That must be painful to think about, my heart goes out to you.

Thanks, I'm fine. I just wish I had been able to meet her before she died. At any rate, I see people on TV drive through floodwaters all the time, and it just seems like such a dumb thing to do. Russian Roulette.



I used to be a whitewater instructor so I have a very healthy respect for the power of water. I approach it with great caution. I've seen the damage it can do.

Wish you lived closer. We've been trying to take a ropes course for the canoe, not that we would be intentionally in whitewater, but you never know when a good thunderstorm will turn Class 1 into Class 3 or 4. One of the scariest moments in my life was on a river. I was about 15, trout fishing on the Chattahoochee in about ankle deep water. The river was wide and I was on some rocks in the middle. I heard a horn, the warning horn from the dam when they release the water. Before my stepfather and I could get to the bank, the water had come up several feet and we were swept a long ways downstream. At the spot where we would grab a tree, the bank was steep. Luckily, there were some people there who helped us out, or I think we could have drowned. Fighting the water like that tires you out very quickly, especially when you panic. Add all that with my broken arm from the river trip a few years ago and well, it is a recipe for caution around moving water.

In fact,
that three slug flood took out the cabin I had been renting three weeks before moving into my house.

Close call. You are lucky.

Where I
live there are some crossings that always have four to six inches of water flowing across--including mine in wetter years--so we have to keep aware of the weather at all times (we use wunderground.com) and always check the height of the water on the marked poles before crossing.

I use wunderground, too. It's the most accurate for my area. I like the poles idea...it's not something I've seen here.

It can be raining on the plateau but not here and still flood. Unfortunately the only USGS gauge is downstream but it does give us some indication. Our local DOT is pretty good about putting barriers across the roads too and we respect them. Fortunately our canyon is not as steep as those in Colorado and we could evacuate by foot through cut fence to higher ground if need be. Even as bad as they were, no lives were lost.

That's good news. Do you check the gauge online? I do that with out local river, just to get an idea of the flow before we canoe.

One of the ecological problems here is that when new people move in, they clear everything, including the native grasses, leaving only the ioak trees between their house and the river (there's this obsession about having to see everything, take the mystery out of it), so when it rains there's nothing to slow the water down. Gravel (since we don't have much in the way of soil) from erosion is starting to fill the swimming holes and the river is getting flatter and wider. No doubt FEMA will redraw the lines in the future.


That is a problem here, too. Our local river group, NERA, of which DH and I are members, monitors the water quality. When they clear the land, runoff creates a silt laden stream. The creeks become muddy, then the rivers. When there is no clarity, fish suffer, and of course, there is no way to tell depth.

B




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