Flood Barrier USA

Destructive Floods Throughout the Florida Panhandle

Author: Flood Expert Donna Conneely

Heavy rains pounded the Florida panhandle last June, producing  widespread flooding and leaving a muddy mess. Over a foot of rain fell in one day, overwhelming flood channels and storm drains. Some areas were buried under more than four feet of water.

The image above uses TRMM satellite data collected when it flew over on Sunday June 10, 2012. Unusually heavy rainfall was occurring in states near the Gulf coast. Due to the path of TRMM’s orbits it had good coverage with more than one orbit. Source: http://pmm.nasa.gov/

The damage from the flood was widespread and severe, and many residents were forced to evacuate to shelters. Some residents were not lucky enough to be able to leave their flooded housing, however. Over 600 prisoners incarcerated at the Escambia County Jail were left trapped in their cells with no lights, AC, or ventilation when the jail flooded.

The entire bottom level of the jail is reported to be under five feet of water. Unfortunately, this level houses the electrical system for the jail, and this infrastructure is said to be all but destroyed. Generators have been put into place to operate powerful lights that can be directed into the facility from outside, but the situation is potentially very dangerous for inmates and employees alike.

All the expense of bringing in extra manpower, installing generators for the lights, cleaning up the mess, and replacing the entire electrical system for the jail could have been avoided by installing proper automatic flood barriers to keep the waters from entering the building in the first place. It can be argued that the state of Florida has a responsibility to protect both its inmates and employees from future flooding, and automatic flood barriers can achieve that — probably for much less money than will be spent to clean up the mess.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2012 at 11:00 am and is filed under Flood Protection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.