Austerity kills
On Friday, four people died in flash flooding in Pittsburgh. Those deaths were preventable as the road that they were on is a known flood basin and the road most likely had blocked storm drains.
Storm drains, especially drains at the bottom of a collection area will get blocked up with dirt, sand, leaves, sticks and other debris that are swept downhill in regular rain storms. Blocking a drain means the water either has no where else to go, or other parts of the drainage system are stressed more than they should be. There are four options to dealing with storm drains.
- Routinely have people poke at the holes in the drain to remove debris. This is my daughter’s favorite solution as it is fun and a toddler can do it. However, it is a short term fix as it pushes debris into the drainage pipes.
- Send around a “muck-sucker” truck with a crew to clean the drain and drain pipe by sucking up the debris into the back of the truck. This is a recurring need, but a much longer and more expensive solution than #1.
- Regular street cleaning to minimize the debris that is on a road. Street cleaning does not remove the problem, but it stretches out the time between either the poke or suck cleaning methods.
- Do nothing but hope.
The municipal authorities and governments responsible for the chunk of road in question are severely cash constrained. The city of Pittsburgh is effectively broke, and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority has been deferring maitenance since before I was born. Their choice was minimal street cleaning and lots of hoping.
Austerity and the failure to provide decent public services (street cleaning and drain maitenance) helped kill those four people on Friday.
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I grew up in Pittsburgh and know those roads well. Cannot imagine the terror of watching water rise up to 9 feet while sitting helpless in a car.
You’re right about this being yet another consequence of “austerity.” But it’ll be spun differently. Too many people still won’t get it.
But president Obama and his defenders tell me that it’s hard to find ways to spend money. So it can’t be that giving this municipality more money would have resulted in it being spent! ! ! ! !
As a Pittsburgher I predict the most popular local am radio talk shows will advocate a state law or city ordinance making drain cleaning the responsibility of homeowners like sidewalk snow removal in winter.
Last winter when controversy arose over thus abandoning snow removal responsibility to homeowners who are often too old or too sick to shovel and too poor to pay someone else to do it leading radio personalities went so far as to falsely deny not just that the city or local boroughs owned sidewalk plows but the very existence of such machines, making sure to subject to outraged mockery their fictitious claim that public responsibility would involve spending a fortune in tax money on snow blowers.
KDKA, at your service.
That’s exactly what I was thinking when I read about that: austerity kills. An 89-year old woman and a Mom and her two kids, ages 8 and 12 were killed in the incident.
Z
@ Gaius — If I am reading the property maps correctly, there is only publicly owned land abutting the relevant section of Washington Boulevard — but I agree KDKA is pure resentment of middle class old guys.
@ Notorious PAT — yep, we’ve been running deferred maitenance on basic infrastructure for decades, and there is no way that a massive drop in demand in 2008/2009 would last long enough for both short term maitenance (the poke method) and long term infrastructure construction to actually have any stimulative impact at all, no sirree [/snark off]
Dave,
I don’t know what your background is, and I don’t have any details except what I have seen reported in a few locations, but as a professional engineer with over two decades of experience in municipal drainage and stormwater management, I can assure you the problem is almost certainly about alot more than regular maintenance of storm drains – as important a factor that may be.
Briefly, it is not practical, i.e., economically feasible, to build storm sewers that can convey the rainfall volumes reported in Pittsburgh, however, in Ontario at least, it was recognized over thirty years ago that drainage systems had to be designed to safely convey these (relatively) rare large events. The solution since then for new development has been to ensure that excessive flows (that exceed the capacity of storm drains) are safely conveyed on roadways to appropriate outlets, i.e., receiving watercourses – this means flooding depths on the road should generally not exceed 0.3 to 0.45meter (1 to 1.5 ft.)
I have to presume the flooding occurred in an older area of Pittsburgh that developed before such design requirements were in place because a 9ft depth of water on the road is obviously unacceptable for any conceivable amount of rainfall, let alone 2 inches. In other words, the area was built with no ability for flood flows to safely spill or overflow before rising too high There are lots of similar problem areas in older Canadian cities (though 9 ft is particularly excessive), and a number of the Ontario cities I am familiar with are striving to rectify these problems but it is a slow and expensive process when dealing with established communities and existing infrastructure. We have nowhere near the financial problems that American cities are experiencing but there is an infrastructure deficit here too and municipalities are pretty much on their own.
I was a bit disturbed reading some of the responses from Pittsburgh’s municipal officials to the effect that “there may be nothing that can be done.” http://post-gazette.com/pg/11234/1169016-53.stm That is hogwash – any roadway that can flood to 9ft. of depth is a public health and safety issue that must be dealt with. A suggestion that a warning system might help fails to recognize the rapid onset of these types of rainfall events. What is required is ensuring that excessive flows now collecting in the flooded area have a safe outlet that does not now exist – it it did, there would be no ability for floodwaters to rise so high. The solution will no doubt not be cheap and may involve expropriation to create the required outlet – but that would be a small price to pay to avoid another tragic loss of life (then again, we are talking about American taxpayers, here……).
I do agree that austerity can kill but this sounds like alot more is required beyond regular maintenance.
Dave, that would be lower middle class, I suppose.
Not too many doctors listen to that stuff, though they do seem to prefer Fox News in their waiting rooms.
“this sounds like alot more is required beyond regular maintenance”
I’m sure you’re right–and if it weren’t for government’s austerity mania, there would be money to do that.
Jon Walker had a great idea up yesterday that could easily embrace the storm sewer problem Dave (and @Darlene Conway) writes about here:
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/08/23/the-taking-care-of-our-shit-initiative/
It would be nice to have thoughts like these should be seep into the consciousness of the general public, to help offset the idea “that it’s hard to find ways to spend money,” as @Notorious P.A.T. mentioned.
Austerity=murder. Can’t be said enough.
I live in Pittsburgh and have driven regularly on Washington Blvd. The last part of the road which meets Allegheny RiverBlvd in a “T” is an old creek bed which sheds to the Allegheny river beyond the Blvd, and has been a flood basin for decades.
I have no argument that Austerity Kills but I think the situation here is slightly more complicated, and the potential critical factor is an enormous construction project on the wooded hillside that rises up along the east side of the Blvd as you travel north to the river.
http://post-gazette.com/pg/11235/1169214-53-0.stm?cmpid=newspanel4
Area residents have been complaining for months about the amount of dirt, mud, gravel runoff coming down the hill onto the Blvd. There was a nearly identical flood incident only a couple of months ago, though no injuries and not the level of flooding we saw Friday.
Job Works does not have a work permit for the site. The silt fence that they erected was quite inadequate for the steepness of the hill and the amount of runoff that h ad to be contained. It was totally overwhelmed Friday.
The drains were completely clogged with silt and debris after the flood of course (maybe before?)
I watched a TV News RPt (will try to find the link) interviewing a worker on the weekend as he vac’d out the drains.
He stated that he’d cleaned them all out only 3 weeks prior.
So I’m not sure there was negligence on the part of the city per se. They knew about the problem and had cleaned all the drains recently. The streets are cleaned regularly in Pittsburgh.
The issue of negligence/liability on the part of Job Works might be interesting to explore but I imagine it would be difficult to prove anything.
Since the majoriorty of the flooding came from the sewage lines – my guess is the silt blockage of the drains caused some amount of diversion to the sewar lines greater than normal. Just a guess. But for the last 1/2 mile of the Blvd every single sewer manhole cover blew off (300 lobs – sometimes 20 ft in the air per witnesses) and geysers 20 ft tall erupted. That’s apparently how the flood basin filled so fast so deep – approx 10 feet.
There was also a ridiculous amount of rain in a short period of time – 2 inches in 37 minutes in the East End of Pgh.
So who knows.
But this incident is a little more complicated than meets the eye.
Correction, Pgh Job Corps, not Job Works. Bit more here
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11234/1169016-258.stm