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As if the onslaught of hurricanes Irma and Maria were not enough, the National Weather Service in San Juan is reporting that a major dam is failing in Puerto Rico and that 70,000 people are being evacuated by bus. From CBS:
The National Weather Service in San Juan said Friday that the northwestern municipalities of Isabela and Quebradillas, home to some 70,000 people, were being evacuated with buses because the nearby Guajataca Dam was failing after Hurricane Maria hit the U.S. territory.
Maria poured more than 15 inches of rain on the mountains surrounding the dam, swelling the reservoir behind it.
Details remained slim about the evacuation with communications hampered after the storm, but operators of the dam reported that the failure was causing flash-flooding downstream. The 345-yard dam holds back a man-made lake covering about 2 square miles and was built decades ago, U.S. government records show.
"Move to higher ground now," the weather service said in a statement. "This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order."
"Act quickly to protect your life," it added. "Buses will be evacuating people from these areas."
Wikipedia has a page about Guajataca Dam
NWS report on Twitter; also at Al Jazeera and BBC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @04:19PM
so why is President Bush and his FEMA appointee so badly reported on as well?
It took a team to mess it up. It didn't matter the political bent in that case, because the response and results were incompetent. I'd only have blamed politics if it seemed that someone smart was getting blocked by someone dumb.
then the matter of promising to rebuild in the same places with little differences unless the owners wanted to pony up their own money for a house on stilts...
i really wish that if they wanted to politicize global warming, then fine, but at least frame the infrastructure building, and insurance requirements with different words that reflect the realities of big business expenses and losses due to having to repeatedly rebuild what is being shown to be inappropriate due to recent events, even if they are repeated 1 in 100 year or 1 in 500 year or never before seen events.
Even asphault is falling apart more quickly than it used to be because of some sort of unusual heat wave that is persisting despite there being no climate change. They could change the forumla and silently repave where needed and not draw attention to the fact they are spending more money now to save on the repeated maintenance later.