5 worst floods in US history
The top 5 times in US history when you wished you had a boat dock underneath your house. This list excludes flooding produced by hurricanes.
5. Rapid City, South Dakota (1972)
Flash food with a death toll was 237. That’s extreme, considering a flash food is simply rain over a short period — just a matter of hours.
4. Santa Paula, California (1928)
The St. Francis Dam collapsed, killing 450.
3. Ohio River (1913)
Rain over days, weeks, and months caused the Ohio river to exceed it’s banks and convert nearby cities and towns into part of the lake. New meaning for lakehouse, I guess? (Har, Har).
2. Mississippi Valley (1937)
Heavy rains took the lives of 1,100 people, destroying 75,000 homes and leaving 600,000 homeless.
1. Johnstown, Pennsylvania (1889)
Several days of heavy downpours caused the upriver South Fork dam to collapse, sending millions of gallons of water downstream toward the town of Johnstown. This was the first major disaster relief effort handled by the American Red Cross and it’s founder Clara Barton.
United Water Conservation District wants to reassure the residents of Santa Paula and the Santa Clara River Valley that the safety of Santa Felicia Dam is the subject to constant and ongoing review. Santa Felicia Dam is under the regulatory jurisdiction of the California Division of Safety of Dams (DSOD) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The DSOD came into existence as a direct result of one of California’s worst catastrophes - the failure of the 2-year-old St. Francis Dam in Southern California one chilly night in March of 1928 (http://www.damsafety.water.ca.gov/). The St. Francis Dam failure prompted the State Legislature, on August 14, 1929, to create what is today the DSOD, under the California Department of Water Resources.
Division engineers and engineering geologists review and approve plans and specifications for the design of dams and oversee their construction to insure compliance with the approved plans and specifications. Reviews include site geology, seismic setting, site investigations, construction material evaluation, dam stability, hydrology, hydraulics, and structural review of appurtenant structures. In addition, Division engineers inspect over 1200 dams on a yearly schedule to insure they are performing and being maintained in a safe manner.
The DSOD inspects Santa Felicia twice a year while the FERC performs their inspection annually. District personnel perform formal internal inspections on a quarterly basis. In addition the FERC requires a safety review of the facility by an independent consultant every five years. The dam is surveyed every two years to monitor and measure any movement or settlement of the structure. The District works very closely with the Ventura County Office of Emergency Services (OES) to ensure the safety of all those living downstream of the dam (http://www.vcsd.org/oes/index.html).
Santa Felicia Dam’s primary function is the storage of stormwater for recharging the downstream groundwater basins of the Santa Clara Valley and the Oxnard plain. Although not specifically constructed for flood control purposes, the structure does attenuate the stormwater flows and thereby reducing potential flood damage downstream of the dam. The District completed its annual conservation release last month resulting in more than 62,000 acre-feet of available storage behind the dam. When the reservoir reaches capacity it becomes a “pass through facility”. With 23 vertical feet between spillway crest and the top of the dam there is sufficient temporary storage to attenuate the stormwater discharging from the facility.
The spillway was design to pass a discharge of 160,000 cfs with 5 feet of freeboard to the crest of the dam (elevation 1075.0 feet). The maximum reservoir water surface elevation of 1061.45 feet MSL and spillway discharge of 28,800 cfs observed was February 25, 1969. This was the first time the reservoir filled to capacity and discharged over the spillway. The watershed experienced the second highest precipitation on record during the 2004-2005 water year since 1969. The estimated storm inflow to the reservoir was 18,500 cfs on January 10, 2005.
One final piece of trivia associated with the St. Francis Dam disaster: The California Legislature also created the Board of Registration for Civil Engineers in 1929, following the failure of the St. Francis Dam. The Legislature determined that the unregulated design of construction projects constituted a hazard to the public and passed laws to regulate civil engineering and to create the Board of Registration. (http://www.dca.ca.gov/pels/board_history.htm)
thats horriable! just this last year we had one of the worst floodings iowa has had in a very long time. i thought we had it bad, but after reading this i feel lucky. we just need to be praying for the people that have went through this and them that are goin through this.
lol in marietta, lancaster, pa…. there is an old building that has a line on it at the top…. that is the mark of how high the water was…. this is a 3 story building. stupid susquehanna river lol