Are you prepared?
County emergency managers warn flooding can strike unexpectedly, encourage planning
In December of 2015, just a week before Christmas, heavy rains hit North and Central Georgia. As residents in those areas were preparing for the holidays, the last thing on their minds was how much rain they were going to get. Heavy rains soon turned into serious flooding, affecting dozens of Georgia counties, and instead of a white Christmas, folks got a wet Christmas.
“From our standpoint we expected a lot of rain, but we'd never seen it quite this bad," said Byron Lombard, Greene County EMA Director. "It just kept going on and on.”
Areas of Greene County received up to 20 inches of rain within a 10 day period. That’s between 200 to 400 percent higher than the monthly average for the area. The county had several damaged bridges, blown out culverts, and seriously damaged roads. According to Lombard when they have heavy rains, there are the usual problem areas in the county and that’s where they head first. With this event, they were getting called into all different areas.
“We had never seen this volume or velocity of water,” he said. “Two problem spots turned into a dozen spots.”
Laura Belanger, meteorologist with the National Weather Service Peachtree City, said to have those kind of rainfall amounts over a 10-day period, at that many locations, was a 100 to 200-year rainfall event. In other words, for any given 10-day period through the year, there is a 0.5 to 1% chance it would occur.
Greene County wasn't alone in the flooding. Wilkes County had more than 200 roads severely damaged and more than 250 miles of dirt roads washed out. The county received 300 to 600 percent higher than average rainfall.
“I knew we were going to get hit, but I didn’t know how hard,” said Blake Thompson, Wilkes County EMA director.
His sentiment was one that was echoed by several other emergency managers. They expected rain, but not flooding of this magnitude. It goes to show that flooding can happen at anytime and anywhere, and that’s why it’s so important to be prepared.
Knowing your area’s flood risk plays a huge part in being prepared. Having a ready kit on hand, planning how you will leave and where you will go if you are advised to evacuate are also important. Another key step to being prepared for flooding is making sure you have flood insurance.
Remember, your family might not be together when disaster strikes, so it's important to create a family communication plan. Choose a meeting place outside your neighborhood in case your family is apart and unable to return home due to flooded roads.
David Dyer, Union County EMA Director said with major and unexpected flooding of this scale, EMA directors continually had to warn about the dangers of flooded roads and bridges. Drivers should never drive through standing water. It only takes one foot to float a full-sized automobile and two feet to be swept away.
“We had to remind them to stay off the roads and do not try to drive through this water,” said Dyer.
There were many roads in the county where access was limited to a single way in and out. For families living on these roads, officials had to act quickly to prevent them from being trapped in their homes.
“There were five or six families stranded and this was Christmas time, so we had to work quickly to get these families out,” said Dyer.
By Uyen Le
DISPATCH