beenie

By the light of day...

Ironically, it's beautiful today. A little humid, but I'll generally take sunshine over rain.

Bryan went to the dam to take some pics - you can see them and read the post he made on a message board we both frequent in the extended entry (it's really long).

The dam is still holding, but we're nowhere near out of the woods yet.

***Bryan's Post***

I went down early this afternoon with Beenie's digital camera to record in the daylight what I saw at the dam last night.

The situation hasn't changed any since then.

This is the heart of the problem. The dam in Beaver Dam. The lake is a good five feet above normal. As you can see, it's starting to circumvent the retaining walls. It's only got about another foot and a half before it goes OVER the dam. The biggest problem is the local fire department found a crack in the dams foundation a few days ago. This is an old slab of concrete. It's been unchanged since around 1940. A local concrete company was called in to try to pump cement into the crack, but they were apparently unsuccessful due to pressure and over all wet and muckiness.

Here's the result of the problem. To stop the dam from breaking, they've opened it up around two and a half times normal capacity. As anyone with structural engineering knowledge will tell you, all that whitewater means the flow is probably eating away at the dirt in front of the dam.

This one is hard to appreciate unless I had another picture of how wide the river usually is. Let us just say, if you can imagine a river about as wide as a conversion van running through the middle, you'd get an idea how far out of it's banks our little crick is.

As you can see, it's already up into the backyards of the houses by the river.

Yonder bridge is one of the towns two major roads. Take it in the direction the car is heading and you'd wind up in Madison. That water is usually six feet lower. If the dam goes, so goes the bridge.

Oh look, the good humor man.
Every good natural disaster should have a good humor man.

This is just beyond the bridge. Those buildings front on the downtown. The water is creeping in their back doors.

See. Not kidding. Times like this I start thinking of buying a nice gondola and learning to sing in Italian....

And this is where it makes or breaks. These buildings are standing on four foot concrete pilings which are in turn sitting on big lumps of rough concrete. The water has risen right up to the bottom of the buildings. I had to stand in the water to get this shot. The real problem though is not the height of the water, but the SPEED of the water. I made a short film with the easyshot camera but we couldn't find server space big enough to host it. (anyone wanna host it for a few days? I'd be grateful.) It's going a good fifteen mph by my exceptionally crude measurements. On the film, the roar of the water was so loud I had to shout to be heard above it. These are old, old buildings with turn of the century concrete pilings. There isn't a year that goes by that they don't have to repair one of them under normal circumstances.

This is the building that the water is going under. It houses the towns new coffee shop. While walking around, following the river, I went in. Just this morning I was lamenting the fact that our previous coffee house had gone out of business and there was now no place to get a civilized cuppa. Well, surprise surprise. I went in to buy a cup and the owner and I got to talking about the situation. She informed me that the city engineer had been down to see her. They told her that they wanted to take another board out of the dam (open it up further) to lessen some of the pressure on it. She informed them that she'd like a days notice to clear out her basement. I showed her the pictures I'd taken of the water rushing under her foundation and she grinned. "Want to see something REALLY cool?" Sure, I said. She took me down into the basement of the building. I can't describe how scary that sound was. I knew that fast moving water was only a thin, old layer of concrete beneath my feet and the sound was DEAFENING. It roared through the tight concrete basement with a hollow moan. Still with a devilish grin she pointed at a round iron manhole cover in the floor. I whipped out my camera and she pulled the lid off.

So that's where we currently stand. If you see us on CNN, you can say that you saw all the drama preceding it.

As it stands right now, we really can't handle any more rain. We need at least a week of dry to get the water level down. (even then I still got a feeing that one of those pilings is gonna go). But it doesn't look good. We're forcasted for more rain tonight, and tomorrow. If the dam breaks, most of downtown is going to be flooded. A lot of residential land downstream is going to go with it. Beenie's got some extra pics on her website if your interested.

BTW, don't worry about us. Beenie and I are on the second floor of an apartment complex on top of a hill. I fear no water. But to have my hometown washed away would not be cool in the least.

I guess if the dam goes we'll have to change the town name to Beaver.

***

Posted by beenie at June 12, 2004 06:27 PM