5 to 10 km from my place I am On that floodplain

Discussion in 'Off Topic International' started by hezzey, Nov 20, 2021.

  1. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    And so is my Mom. It is raging and flooding far worse for her over there it is farther up the river (Fraser river is perhaps the third or the eighth biggest river in the world ) and it is rural area and not properly irrigated and not properly pumped. Much of the low lying land is at sea level and some is lower than that and all of it is behind Dykes and earthworks….. Levies…
    My little town is properly pumped and properly maintained unlike where my mom lives which is farmland and not as well cared for meaning many fewer pumping stations and quite lousy irrigation…. Suitable for farming crops and raising livestock but not housing. There are only a small handful of towns up there and life is going to be hard for them of course also.
    My hometown is not damaged and only its surrounding farmland is flooded.
    Mom says she is OK and she has some stuff stored.
    I know where my mom lives and she lives in those lowlands some of them are in the picture.
    I hope she is smart enough to get the fuck out of there and find some place to stay until the downpour stops I think perhaps June might be OK….
    I am in an apartment building and I am also on a floodplain. The same one but on a different tributary …. And the tributary river is about a kilometre south of me and it is a raging torrent right now.
    I have nothing to lose I am an old man without any property except my smart phone and my I tab and I am insured.
    I will get out of here if I am told to if there are sirens about and yellow tape and stuff like that I will just leave here and go to Highground and rely on charity.
    My mom says she’s smart and that she will get to Highground but who knows maybe she isn’t smart.
    So far there are very few deaths in southern British Columbia I don’t know anything about Washington state in the USA.
    It is going to be many months and perhaps a year before all this mess is repaired.

    I think millions of hoofed livestock and perhaps tens of millions of poultry chickens and stuff like that have died by drowning and even exposure.
    It is really going to start to stink rotten around here over the next couple months.

     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2021
  2. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Canadian Armed Forces are flying different types of helicopters all over the place I hear one every few minutes important note they are painted red they are not those other kind that attack things!
    And that means there are right now thousands of troops landing at local airports and perhaps even in the middle of towns.
    I think in the next few days there will be those huge 6 Wheel drvie troop carriers driving around. I don’t know if the emergency services/troops will be helping out with food distribution. Are the provinces leader that is Premier Horgan says that the province and its emergency services will try to keep us supplied.
    Vancouver which is a city about 40 km west of us has a half million people and they have no supplies of food and drugs or toilet paper (toilet paper is very important we learned that last year and the year before during the pandemic time).
    We may not have the streets in public buildings taken over by the Canadian army but to be honest I have my doubts I think that the population is going to have to Pitchin and treat this like the emergency that it is.
    I suspect the Premier and his government of trying to not cause panic but it has not begun to stink yet and I think in the next couple days it will…
    I expect to see one of those gigantic helicopters coming to my little towns municipal airport perhaps before sun-rise.
    There are mountains in all four directions from us we are surrounded by them there is plenty places to go so that we won’t get underwater that’s sad where the hell are we going to live? Any buildings made for humans to inhabit are unfit after they have been flooded.
    So there may be a half 1 million people living in those emergency tents that the Red Cross and UN sets up…
    Our government isn’t talking about that and like I said I think that is because they don’t want to freak people out.

    there are no railroad networks in and there are no railroad networks out.
    Hey the highways are all busted and broken because of rockslides and landslides.
    Washington state in the USA have course will help us we are friends we are allies but that will take weeks to get that running and working.
    Not to ignore the terrible fact of the flooding in the USA side of the Fraser valley there are perhaps 1 million perhaps 2 million people that live there and they have terrible problems also but they do have the advantage of having a population that dwarfs ours.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2021
  3. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I am watching that film clip that I posted and that music and the scenery shake me up….
    I am crying.
    Yeah no kidding I have family right there right under the camera perhaps six of them.
    My mom is the one I am most worried about she’s in her mid-80s and she thinks she can do anything and that is able to get her in a mess. Perhaps my most able sister who is Chrissy has come to hang around with mom or even stay with her Chrissy knows what to do and if something has to be done she will do it and get mom out of there!!
    She may own property and she can tell people what to do she is so used to helping the younger people by signing checks.
    In this situation signing checks can help on a strategic level sure.
    I wish my mom would just hire a cab and get the fuck out of there if she can..
    My sisters and their kids them too of course!!
     
  4. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    This is terrifying from what I hear this is just the eye of a great big weather system that we are in and we’re going to get it again just like we did over the last week….
    I have to look a bit more at the news networks who knows??
     
  5. mcgru-

    mcgru- Well-Known Member

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    is it going to that water to be frozen?
     
  6. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    We are at the 49th parallel it doesn’t freeze very often at sea level.
    Yesterday and the night before it was below Zero C.
    And I would suppose that all the mountains that are around us would be frozen.
    In Southwest British Columbia we seldom have so-called ice storms.
    But 1000+ metres above us it’s snows like hell and there are avalanches sometimes really big ones.
    As you know Canada is not densely populated so usually a snow avalanche will only affect a local population if it affects anyone.
    Snow avalanche can tear a highway apart and make it into a nothing. That has happened with both our road networks out words won the rail road net work and two the trans Canada highway.
    All the local grocery stores and the methods of getting supplies in are now restricted and sum are shut right down. There are so-called trunk lines that lead railroads into this area and out of course.
    But those wouldn’t be the main line they would just be trunk lines not the same thing.
    There is the so-called interstate five which leads into Vancouver add that road Netwerk connects depending on flooding and geography but isn’t really suitable as the soul supply route for a major city…
    The rail line from here to Washington state USA ships heavy freight like containers and stuff.
    Yeah of course will change and real soon we will start getting supplies from the USA.
    We do of course have these so-called trunk lines that connect to real networks and we can get some local food and goods using that method.
    I have never studied supply and logistics but I would bet anything this is a hell of a problem to deal with!
    I think that there is going to be some major engineering projects to seal up the Fraser delta!
    It is said that we have global warming and that the sea levels will rise an inch or maybe two in the next 50 years and that is just going to make the dykes and the levees and the drainage system in this valley in need of repair and maintenance and improvement.
    Hi I am Canadian and much of the news I read is of course Canadian and I hear a little bit about what’s going on in the USA.
    I would imagine that the Pacific Northwest area of Washington state USA is having a hell of a time right now probably as bad as we are but the USA‘s population is huge.
    We Canadians can rely on the USA to help us when we were in need and vice versa of course we are all going to help out in this situation.
    Time we need time.
    What we don’t need is more winter weather to isolate us even more than it has.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2021
  7. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    Hi hezzey, sorry to see this disaster is happening to you.
    I can imagine the pain to lose home and neighborhood.
    I saw areas affected by conflict, in Syria and Iraq, that managed to recover to what seemed like normality very fast, after the fighting had passed. I believe your life will return to normal soon, hang in there.
    All the best!
     
  8. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I am not really worried about the geography of this place.
    This earth is made out of a lot of rocks and gravel and dirt and mountains and oceans and stuff like that and sometimes those things will move this way or that way!
    I am really glad that I don’t see it happening like a time lapse film you know where everything was Sped up…
    Do you know the films that mean when you see a flower grow in fast motion well I have seen graphics done that way where you can see mountains grow and rivers shift and stuff like that…
    Those things are cool to see but I think that as far as geographical features it is best for my sanity and my safety if that is in real time.
    It is kind of cool seeing farmland get turned back into wetlands again.
    That is pretty cool it is in real time and I have got to watch it in person.
    Say a great canyon growing would take millions of years and nobody would be around long enough to witness that.
    I have just watched in over a few days a geographical feature change and a mass movement of humanity moved.
    Oh yeah there are still farmers and towns people that live there but they’re not gonna be there for very long in the blink of an eye really.
    I am really worried my mom is going to do something stupid.
    She threw her last husband‘s ashes into the Chilliwack River and I could just see my mom doing something insane like thinking she could just stay there and go down with the ship.
    And join her fine dead husband (mr. money bags).
    My mom has not always been right in the head and that’s the sort of stunt that she would pull off too…
    Go down with the ship you know!
    No Mom! I say Mom don’t do that! don’t be crazy Mom!
    All I want to take out of that great geographical change that is happening is that my mom gets her daughters and her grandchildren and great grandchildren the hell out of there!
    Some years ago she gave up her nice little house over here on the high ground and she moved to that shit hole town and there she sits waiting to die.
    She has gathered three of my sisters next to her warm embrace and all three of those sisters brought their husbands and their children and they’re all gathered there together….
    Why the fuck did that group of stupid women put all their eggs in one basket?
    Well maybe my mom will grow a brain and find some sanity and pack up her goods and take her girls and grandchildren and great grandchildren out of there!
    (Correction there are only two of my sisters that have gathered in close to my mom and brought their kids there too)
     
  9. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I don’t know where my third sister is I think she is on Vancouver Island and she only ever sees my mom when she needs something (like money)
     
  10. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    I am a man I am on my own and my son lives about 20 miles from me he is also on his own.
     
  11. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    @vasco
    I think I can keep on keeping on as long as my heart keeps ticking.
    And my son too who is 2 m tall he is a welder he does the high tech sort of kind he could weld submarines and things like that.
    He doesn’t like me he doesn’t need me he never phones me or comes to see me and that’s just fine I never phone my dad or go visit him either I think dad‘s and sons have complicated relationships…
     
  12. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Wow wouldn’t that be a romantic thing if my mom went down with the ship and brought all of her daughters and grandchildren and great grandchildren down with the ship (except for one that’s Marian she lives on Vancouver island).
    I mean if my mom managed to drag almost all of her family/descendants down with her in that flood and all that was left were her son and her grandson and a drunken woman from Vancouver Island…
    Hi don’t think that will happen I think that emergency services will come to pick up the pieces from the remainder of the city of Chilliwack and they will be damaged but they will leave they will have to because the soldiers and the police will make them!
     
  13. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    Hope your family will be OK, Hezzey. There are some eternal truths/rules about where to settle or set up camp. On higher ground not subject to flooding, etc. I understand that this is a 500-year-event and shocking. I don't want to be too autistic about it, but that Rogers guy and his Ranger rules still apply today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rogers'_28_"Rules_of_Ranging"

    Or as my favorite local anthropologists once advised in a moment of ideological weakness: "Just do what the local Indians/Native Americans/First Nation types around here did."
     
  14. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    @OldUncles
    Indeed!
    I was on a hunting or fishing trip maybe I was four maybe I was six I don’t know but I know that I was with my grandad because he was the old guy that I was used to hike me into the bush and we were walking I guess carrying our fishing gear or our rifles…
    And I would learn lots of stuff because I was a city boy but my grandad wasn’t he was a hillbilly born and raised and he used to point things out he showed me how to clean fish and how to make a pheasant or grouse into dinner and other stuff like that…
    He told me don’t worry about a bear if he can see you and he’s not coming at you he won’t come at you just don’t piss him off and you’ll be fine.
    And don’t feed wild life.
    Little things like that that lots of city kids never get to learn.
    And I used to look at clearings that had gravel and rocks on them and I thought one is much the same as the other.
    And I and my friends used to call logging roads and stuff like that because they would leave gravel exposed and they looked like a slash across a mountain while me and my friends used to giggle and laugh and tell jokes about the side-hill gouger.
    Yeah those gashes in the sides of a mountain they’re caused by a weird animal with a asymmetrical legs called a sidehill gouger.
    And my grandad he said hey see that and I said yeah that’s a trail made by a side-hill gouger and grandad said nope.
    And I might’ve said oh I know it’s just a joke or something like that but my grandad said never walk across that never ever walk across that that is a slide area there are rocks the size of a house roll down that thing don’t walk on it.
    Of course I learned the difference between a logging road who’s bed was made out of boulders of course I learned about that but those ones the covert vertically up and down the sides of a mountain nope you don’t walk on those you don’t cross them find another way around.
    But grandad
    And he said shut up kid
    Of course I learned all about them later I think my grandfather for a lot of stuff because I was born a city boy and most of my life I was a city boy and if it wasn’t for men like my grandad and some of my uncles and a couple neighbours I would never of learned anything like that.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2021
  15. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Yep all true!
    And there are surprising ways to the city boy could get himself killed or eaten by mistake.
     
  16. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Well it has been a few days of peaceful weather a.k.a. that was the eye of the storm now comes the opposite side of that storm
    I have read that the weather is going to be just as nasty as it was a week ago this is part two the wind will be blowing in the other direction and we will have just as much rain. Well we might have a little bit less but on that wing of the cyclone ring it’s going to be just as fierce as it was down here last weekend.
    I don’t know if BC and indeed the rest of the country Can I handle this there will be some human tragedy but a lot of structures and engineering are going to come down and we are all interconnected…
    I think that mid Alberta is going to get it in the teeth also and their drainage is down south I believe that would be in the Colorado basin I’m not sure. But Alberta is also going to get it in the teeth. I have heard and read through the prairies and the interior of the USA has really crappy drainage problems so when they have localized flooding and things like that it’s really agonizing to wait for the drainage basins to drain out.
    Yeah the agony has just started we’re not even finished being injured so we really have a little idea of what the healing and repair work is going to cost.
    Get on your stupid YouTube and perhaps it’s the history channel or something like that you know documentary find out about the Tigris The Euphrates valleys….
    Hey used to be called Mesopotamia.
    The so-called cradle of civilization it’s not anymore.
    It’s all OK though remember it didn’t really happen go to sleep now.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2021