*How Vulnerable Are You?*
How easily can you be stranded at your own house? What threats can make it difficult to impossible to leave? Reverse that. How easily can you be unable to reach your home? What threats make it difficult to impossible to reach home? One we need to be concerned with is flooding. Our house isn’t in a danger zone, but our road is.
We have had a very wet spring. It rained everyday for about 2.5 weeks. Some days were heavy rain, some were light rain, some were periodic rain, but still, it precipitated EVERY DAY! To cap it all off, the last day it rained hard all day. Roads were flooded, some were washed out. They were shut down.
Here is a small brook just up the road from the house. This is our quickest way in to town. Here’s what it normally looks like.
and what it looked like.
I drove around town surveying some of the damage. Here is a road next to the river. This picture is the actual road. There was an immense amount of water flowing across the top of it…there is no brook there, this had just happened. Water needed a place to go so it made a brook. The debris is wood chunks which had broke free and floated down.
On the opposite side of the road toward the river was this. Yup, that waterfall is the edge of the road. The soil had been washed away and the soil under the tar was gone. I got down and looked and it there was a 2’ void under the road. These pics were taken in the evening and it was still pouring rain.
Now, you the smart survivalist who comes upon the road in this condition would proceed with caution. You would be surprised at the people who were driving over this like they normally do. Not even clueing in that they might go down through the road. Mind you, there is NO, absolutely ZERO soil under the tar. The side away from the river was solid even though it was flooded.
The road at this point was passable provided vehicles stayed toward the good side. I sat there in my truck with my blue lights on to mark the danger and divert vehicles to the good side until the road commissioner arrived with barricades. Now, if you saw a vehicle sitting at a flooded road with blue lights, you might clue in that there’s something going on. Maybe….
A local lady coming down the good side of the road, ok no problem. She got closer to me and started to head to the OPPOSITE side of the road and was heading right for the washout! DUH!! So I jumped out of the truck to divert her….yea I was soaked.
So let’s say that I wasn’t there and she went kerplunk down through the road. Now there’s a vehicle sticking up out of the road. This new hole exposes more of the bed to the water and it starts to erode. Soon the road is impassible. It could have happened, just that easy. Little things can turn in to big things in a hurry.
The road commissioner arrived about ˝ hour later. He said that he had just finished setting up another barricade and somebody drove around it AND him like it wasn’t even there. SHEEPLE!! Yup, I’m sure that if the idiot had gone through the road, they’d have tried to sue the town. TSTL!
Take a look on your exit and entry routes. Think of what might prevent you from using them and have courses of action planned just in case.
Jaden
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