IF WE ARE WISE, WE WILL PREPARE FOR THE WORST

GEORGE WASHINGTON

It seems we all have to live through a catastophe or two before we actually take steps to prepare.

We (Peter and I )have survived two fires and two floods in the past decades. One fire and flood in our home and one fire and flood in our business. I am here to tell you, amazingly enough we did survive and what I would characterize relatively minor in view of the events in the past weeks.

The first fire and flood happened in our home in Woonsocket. We had a flooded basement, I had stored some things in a fibre barrel but lucked out with little to no damage. The fire was scary, it was our fireplace. It was a zero clearance fire place in our den/living room but the actual chimney was on the outside wall of our house. We were watching television and heard some crackling. I looked up to the vents in the wall to see fire coming out of them. We called the fire department who responded quickly and we had little damage which was limited to the outside wall of the house.

We moved to Alcester, established our business and home there. The fire in Alcester was more catastrophic and at our business. Some time after the second shift left at midnight, something ignited a cardboard gaylord of 600 pounds of plastic. Usually plastic will only burn with a direct flame so it was assumed something had ignited the cardboard gaylord and it kept the flame alive. The gaylord was situated in the middle of the building. It burned all night, the next morning when the supervisor showed up to start the day shift he walked into a cave-like smoke filled black hole. He called the fire department and then notified us. I remember walking into the building, noted something draped over the rafters (it was PVC water pipes that literally melted from the heat) and everything was covered in black oily soot. The state fire marshall determined the heat in the ceiling area was around 600 degrees fahrenheit. The interesting thing was there was no fire that could be seen at that time. The fire literally had consumed all the oxygen in the building and put itself out. It pulled the oxygen out of drawers and replaced it with black oily soot. All surfaces were covered with the 600 pounds of oily soot. The fire had transformed the 600 pound of plastic to 600 pounds of oily soot. Clean up was a long, filthy process. The clean-up company we contracted with to clean up the mess, hired our employees to help with the clean up.

The flood of our business was not expected. I had already taken steps to place anything stored in the building into plastic tubs with lids. I had it covered. Yeah 2011 when the trees went down on the east side of the bridge on Hwy 11 blocking the culverts, the high water in the creek went around and flood everything from the bridge north to the Total Stop, south to Mrs. Boetel’s home and property east and west of the bridge. I had to call the County road department to get someone up to clean the blockage from under the bridge, otherwide they were going to lose the road and possibly the bridge. Then I had to retrieve the tubs which floated just fine from the east warehouse door to the north door on the far west of the building. I didn’t consider the ‘float’ option.

We are in a situation where the culverts at the intersection of Iowa and South Street are all but completely occluded due to deadfall trees and chaff. Volunteer trees were allowed to grow along the creek, eventually falling into the creek and moving down stream whenever the water level and flow speed was raised due to storms.

I was directed to State Yankton Area Engineer Greg Rothschadl with whom I had a discussion concerning the issue. I certainly had a personal interest in getting the deadfall and agricutural trash our of the culverts at the bridge and down stream. All Engineer Rothschadl could pontificate was, “…I can’t/won’t cut down trees…” Then he told me, “…you can go out and cut them (the trees) down…” to which I responded, “…I cannot go onto private property…”.

To which Engineer Rothschadl responded, “…we wait untill the trees fall down (into the bridge) and then we remove them…”

Now folks I volunteered/worked with the Union County Emergency Management group. We trained, trained others and the goal was to take steps to manage and control emergent situations BEFORE they happened and not pick up the pieces AFTER they happen. Perhaps Engineer Rothschadl you consider that in your attitude. Definition of an engineer is what? Oh yeah,

“...Engineers apply scientific principles to analyze, design, invent, code, build, and create to solve all sorts of problems and make the world a better place...” (AUTHOR unkown)