A wide range of the Southeast US is getting hit by floods in Feb 2020.
Drowned Crane
A Manatowic 2250 crane got caught in flash flood in Hazard, KY. A quick look at a map confirms that Hazard is in a river valley in the mountains. A heavy rain on the watershed gets funneled down into a narrow valley gap and can cause a significant rise in the river level. I read reports that Main Street in Hazard was closed because it was under water.
I think they have removed a lot of trees along the river for the construction because I believe this is where they are doing the construction. So that is
a little north of the KY-15 bridge.
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These signs around -0:03 on the video confirm I have the correct location. That looks like major road construction, but I could not find any information on it with either Google or the KYDOT web site. Because it is a new road, the construction does not cause lane closures, so KYDOT doesn't seem to talk about it. I did discover that
McConnel is no stranger to government officials doing favors for each other. I did find a map for active projects, but it was 2016.
A dam has a "race" between pumps and rain
I learned about the problem with a dam from this blurb in the News Briefing section.
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| Chicago Tribune, Feb 12, 2020 |
After seeing photos of the pumps, I finally found the spillway. A problem is that they dare not let the lake level get high enough to use it because the dam is too weak. It would probably produce boils at the base of the dam and burst before it got to the spillway level. The slope should have been 3:1 but it is between 1.5:1 and 2:1.
There was a slope failure and a decision to pump water out a month ago.
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cdispatch
The slope failure shown here in 2009 was in the same location on the Oktibbeha County Lake Dam levee as the slide that county engineer Clyde Pritchard found in January. Water was seeping between the dam and the bedrock underneath it last month, pushing sand boils to the surface and forming a crack on the slope. Photo by: Courtesy photo/MDEQ |
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The emergency spillways are too small, the slopes on both sides of the levee are too steep and the box culvert under the County Lake Road bridge is cracking and coming apart, according to MDEQ and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inspection reports." The county supervisors have known the 1965 dam was bad since 1985, they just never bothered to figure out how to fund the $8m needed to replace it. The dam has had a significant history of slides. The 2016 slide alone cost $800,000 to repair. [
cdispatch]
They did bring in some pumps and were able to lower the lake 3.5' in a week. The plan was to empty the lake so that they could remove the outlet tower. The demolition of the riser would keep the lake empty.
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wlbt, Jan 21, 2020
The pumps are removing water from Oktibbeha County Lake. (Source: WTVA) |
Unfortunately, the video never captures a view of the pumps. But this pavement allowed me to go back and find the emergency spillway in the above satellite image.
It appears the pumps are under the bridge over the emergency spillway.
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Screenshot
[The video does not include views of the top of the outlet tower.] |
The current problem (Feb 11, 2020) is that they didn't get the riser removed before another heavy rainfall. "Crews have been removing water from the lake for several weeks to reduce pressure against the dam. This week’s heavy rainfall is not helping. The water level has risen more than 8.5 feet from its lowest point during pumping and continues to increase."
It looks like they have brought in even more pumps.
A landslide shoves locomotives of an ethanol train into a river on Feb 13, 2020
At the beginning of this year [2020],
a landslide forced some BNSF locomotives into a river in Idaho. A few weeks later a landslide forced some CSX locomotives of an ethanol train into a river near
Draffin, KY. But in this case, there was a fire. As with the BNSF wreck, the crew members were rescued with a boat. In this case the rescue was by Millard Fire and Rescue. The two crew members suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital for observation.
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Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet via WYMT and a post
[The brown streak near the right is the mudslide that caused the wreck. These flames are a lot smaller than what I have seen in some of the videos. A man who was woke up by the train horn saw flames 50-60 feet high by the time he got to his backyard. ] |
What we are seeing in the above photo is probably just diesel fuel that is still burning. The initial fireball quickly burned the ethanol from two tank cars that were "breached" in the derailment.
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Kentucky Transportation Cabinet District 12
[I'm learning that KTC is what KY calls their DOT. The good news was that the trees were too wet to burn.] |
Investigators and cleanup crews can't get into the area because the hillside is still sliding! [
WYMT, Feb 14, 2020]
A comment on
a video share confirms there is a risk of an ethanol car having a
BLEVE: Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion. If a tank car with ethanol is not punctured, you run the risk of the ethanol getting hot enough that the vapor pressure of the ethanol rips open the tank car due to metal fatigue and the entire contents flashes to vapor and effectively explodes. (I saw a comment that one team calls a BLEVE a Blast Leveling Everything Very Effectively.)
William Shanaman Hope they evacuated those homes. Ethanol is dangerous. The fire departments should set up a few monitor streams to cool the cars and stand off for a bit.
This video says an entire town was evacuated, but I never did catch the name of the town. They were allowed to return to there homes by 11:15am. So they were forced from their homes for just a few hours because initially the authorities said there was no danger. Someone must have taught someone about BLEVEs. The text says it was
Ratliff Bottom, KY that was evacuated.
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WOWK, FOX13 (source)
"A CXS crewmember helped the train crew from the engine to the riverbank. Rescue personnel responded to the scene with boats, police said." |
The locomotive was an island between the cold water and the hot fire. One report said a crew member had jumped in the water by the time the boat rescuers arrived.
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Screenshot @ -3:49 (source)
[Later he zooms into the locomotive and you can see a man with a yellow vest in the doorway. Later I saw another guy was already out of the door. Look at the current around the trees in the foreground. The river was running high and fast. Someone said the black smoke is diesel fuel burning and the orange flame is ethanol burning. The boat did not arrive during the remaining 3:49 of video.] |
an early Mountain-Top Media video caught the ethanol flame. (
source)
a later Mountain-Top Media video that I include for completeness (
source) -1:30 is a scene that includes the high river in the foreground and the mudslide near the right side. He then pans overs to point out the mudslide.
a bad video of rescuers shows the river is flowing fast. It looks like maybe the flames got closer to the front of the locmotive.
Update: Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet
posted two photos with the comment:
Kentucky Emergency Response Team (ERT) personnel, along with officials from the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 4 (Southeast Region) and CSX Railroad and local emergency managers met today to plan the safe removal of the CSX train cars that detached in the derailment. The water intake of the Mountain Water District remained open, as water testing of the Big Sandy River showed no elevated levels of contaminants.Photos: Feb. 13 site of the CSX train derailment; Feb. 14 temporary access being constructed for removal of rail cars.
[I still can't find any information on weather or not CSX had landslide sensing fencing in this area.]
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Unlike most DOT organizations, this Facebook page provides some informative photos.
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Stopped Trains
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Aaron Bryant posted, Feb 7, 2020
Severe flooding in the regions of southwest Virginia, and southern West Virginia, has kept rail traffic at a minimum today. SD70ACe 1100, idles in Alfredon Yard, as the rain showers gave way to snow showers, but none of the bad weather kept the area coal mines from digging black diamonds out of the earth. Tomorrow may be a busier day for rail traffic.
Carma L Coleman 200 miles of I-84 has been closed due to flooding, don’t know how it affects the rail that also goes along that interstate. |
Several roads are not going to be usable even after the flood waters recede because of too little dirt (washouts) or too much dirt (landslides falling on roads). [
weather.com]
Update:
Tree derails NS train and then a bridge washout
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rtands-derail
Norfolk Southern suffered another train derailment on Feb. 7, the second such accident for the Class 1 railroad in less than 48 hours.
[I could not find info on the first derailment. WLTX19 provides the information that the cause of this derailment was a tree that fell on the tracks. I presume the tree fell because of rain saturated soil and heavy winds.] |
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rtands-washout (source), NS
On top of derailments, Norfolk Southern now dealing with a bridge washout
[I presume this was a stock photo rather than the actual bridge that washed out because I doubt there would be that much ice in South Carolina. Was it NS PR or rtands that was lazy and grabbed a stock photo?] |
It sounds like they were optimistic about the 24-48 hour estimate on Feb 14.
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