Sunday, July 18, 2021

‘When will this end?’: Detroit area suffers again with flooding



ED WHITE
DETROIT, MICHIGAN, UNITED STATES
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 JULY 16, 2021

Steady rain drenched the Detroit area Friday, flooding highways and raising the anxiety of frustrated residents whose homes filled with water again exactly three weeks after thousands of basements were wrecked by sewage from a tremendous storm.

A downtown ramp to M-10, known as the Lodge Freeway, was below water and closed, while sections of Interstate 94 in Detroit and suburbs were also flooded for hours.

The National Weather Service posted a flood warning for Wayne County until late afternoon as well as flood advisories for elsewhere in southeastern Michigan.

“When will this end?” Chelsea Parr said on a Facebook page for Grosse Pointe Farms residents.

Indeed, people in the Grosse Pointe communities posted remarkable video of water rising in basements from floor drains, geysers in streets and manhole covers rising and falling, apparently from pressure under ground.


“Beyond angry,” said Sarah Peruski, standing at the top of the stairs to a flooded basement.

Detroit urged residents to clear catch basins in the streets. Dearborn blasted an outdoor emergency siren to warn people about the rain. The rain eased by early evening, though forecasters said it could resume before midnight.

In the Detroit area, some highways are below ground level, making them vulnerable in any long rain event. They depend on pumps to get rid of water.

A state police officer in waders used a boat to rescue a man stranded on top of his submerged car near the downtown convention centre.

The pumps were working, but there was “more rain coming down than we can handle,” said Diane Cross, a spokeswoman at the Michigan Department of Transportation, said of the saturated freeways.

“The rivers and creeks and even the sewer systems, grassy areas that all absorb the rain normally are kind of full,” Cross said.

The rain fell a day after President Joe Biden declared a disaster in Michigan due to flood damage from late June. Thousands of basements in Detroit and some suburbs were swamped with water and sewage when more than 6 inches (15 centimetres) fell in just a few hours.

Power disruptions stalled pumps operated by the Great Lakes Water Authority, sending sewage back through pipes. Piles of possessions from contaminated basements sat on curbs for days before being hauled away by weary crews.

The agency insisted Thursday that it’s “ready for the storm.”

One day after Biden declares state of emergency from June floods
Major floods hit metro Detroit again


Kathleen Martin
WSWS
a day ago

On Friday, just three weeks after record rainfall wreaked havoc on the metro Detroit area, more storms overwhelmed the region’s crumbling infrastructure. The National Weather Service issued a flood warning for Wayne County and neighboring Macomb County due to heavy rains.

One day after President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency for Washtenaw and Wayne counties from the June 23–25 floods, scenes similar to the events of late June emerged on social media. They showed abandoned vehicles sitting in water on the sides of major freeways, stranded drivers awaiting emergency assistance and flooded basements with waist-high water.

Three days before the new flooding, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) announced that over 24,000 households had submitted flood damage claims in the wake of the June devastation. Since nothing was done in the meantime to improve infrastructure and prevent such floods from happening again, many of the residents filing for much-needed disaster relief are the same ones who were hit again by Friday’s flooding.

Interstates 75, 96 and 94 as well as popular commuter routes—the Lodge, Davison and Southfield freeways—were once again underwater by late Friday morning. The Lodge briefly reopened in the early afternoon, but quickly flooded again as the rain continued, stranding one driver atop his car as he waited for rescuers to save him. The Department of Natural Resources lent a boat to the rescue effort and the man was recovered unharmed.

One local news outlet reported that many Dearborn Heights residents were kayaking through their neighborhoods because it was safer than driving.

The floods three weeks ago were the result of a power outage at DTE Energy that led to freeway pump failures. Apparently the pump locations did not have backup generators in case of a power outage. It is unclear precisely what infrastructural failure caused Friday’s flooding, since no major power outages were reported this time around.
Dearborn City Council meeting erupts
Dearborn neighborhood flooded again Friday [Source: Twitter, @safecampdore]

On Tuesday, just a week and a half after residents gathered in Dearborn to protest the lack of response from city officials following the June flooding, a Dearborn City Council meeting erupted in anger.

The four-hour meeting was nearly ended twice by City Council President Susan Dabaja, who claimed she was being “crucified” as residents raised concerns about the floods.

Over 8,000 Dearborn homes were impacted in the June flooding. Many of these residents, as well as residents of Detroit and other surrounding suburbs such as Inkster and Grosse Pointe, had just begun the process of replacing destroyed appliances and rebuilding damaged homes, only to have them all ruined again.

Residents have raised concerns about how they will pay for the damage that has been done, now twice in the span of three weeks. Many have yet to recover from the 2014 and 2018 floods.

Many who attended the protests and City Council meeting voiced anger over the lack of trash collection. Moldy furniture and carpet soaked in raw sewage sat for days on curbs in the sun, creating serious public health concerns.
Grosse Pointe Park residents file lawsuit
A flooded basement in Detroit from the June storm [WSWS media]

Also on Tuesday, 11 households in Grosse Pointe Park filed a lawsuit against the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) and the cities of Detroit and Grosse Pointe Park. Each family has had to deal with hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage.

The suit contends that the authorities were aware of the potential failure of two particular freeway pumps and that they disregarded weather reports warning that heavy rainfall would occur. They also allege that city and water officials are well aware of the failing infrastructure but have done nothing to improve it.

Paul Doherty, attorney at Ven Johnson Law and also a flood victim, released a statement on behalf of the families he is representing in the case. The statement said:

DWSD takes in nearly half of a billion dollars in water and sewer fees annually, yet aging water and sewer lines under their purview regularly fail, devastating anything and everything caught in the path of these floodwaters. Local residents are at the mercy of faceless local bureaucrats who literally put their constituents’ safety at risk by not investing in proper infrastructure. This flooding has upended lives causing stress and a feeling of powerlessness, and a huge financial strain of rebuilding homes or businesses.

GLWA’s General Counsel Randal Brown responded in a statement:

GLWA supports Governor Whitmer’s request for federal aid to provide residents and businesses in the impacted areas with the resources to rebuild after the floods. Seeking federal aid is the appropriate way to address this unprecedented event.

City officials and GLWA spokespeople have maintained in recent weeks that pumps and equipment all operate as they should. While heavy rainfall due to changing climate patterns has been on the rise in recent years, nothing has been done to update or maintain infrastructure to deal with these changes, and officials use climate change as an excuse for shoddy infrastructure.

No comments:

Post a Comment