It sounds Biblical: the same forces that led Pharaoh to \u201clet my people free\u201d. We already are living under the \u201cplague\u201d: waiting for the real impact of Corona-Virus, the surge of serious illness that may well overwhelm our healthcare systems. Americans are used to disasters that happen NOW: hurricanes and tornados, terrorist attacks, fires and earthquakes. We don\u2019t wait well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Waiting for the \u201cgraphs\u201d and \u201ccurves\u201d to come to pass.\u00a0\u00a0Will we peak like Italy, with all of that unbelievable death, or will we flatten (and lengthen, they don\u2019t talk much about that part), so that we don\u2019t overwhelm our hospitals?\u00a0\u00a0We distance ourselves from each other, hope, and wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s Biblical, apocalyptic, something out of an existential expressionist novel of the 1950\u2019s. If only we could sit around a seedy bar and talk about it, in black and white of course.\u00a0\u00a0But then we wouldn\u2019t be \u201csocial distancing,\u201d and anyway, the bars are closed.\u00a0\u00a0I remember reading in college, a \u201clong hair\u201d with torn jeans and flannel shirt, thinking deeply about the absurdity of trying to control the uncontrollable.\u00a0\u00a0In the 1970\u2019s we thought we could \u201ccontrol\u201d almost anything. Existentialism’s ideas then seemed out-of-date and historic.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So floods are almost like a welcome relief.\u00a0\u00a0Flooding requires movement, problem solving, and action.\u00a0\u00a0They too are inexorable and uncontrollable, but at least there is a visible \u201cfoe\u201d to attack.\u00a0\u00a0Flooding is a \u201cnormal\u201d disaster.\u00a0\u00a0Americans can deal with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of this is because it flooded here in Pataskala this weekend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pataskala is that little farm village that grew.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cCity planning\u201d wasn\u2019t really a part of the growth process.\u00a0\u00a0When you talk to the government, they say the drainage system for what now is the city was built on the flat farm fields of Ohio a century ago.\u00a0\u00a0It was probably later for our neighborhood. The first round of development just outside the village occurred about seventy years ago, when the old Van Atta farm, just beyond Vine Street, was one of the first housing additions.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s where I live now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the developers built storm drainage out of big red clay twelve-inch tiles, laying them across the fields and hooking up to the century old existing village system that went to the river.\u00a0\u00a0No one at the time thought about easements and right-of ways.\u00a0\u00a0They were burying tile in fields, just like the farmers did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When more developers \u201cfilled in\u201d the middle, building in those remaining fields between town and Van Atta, no one worried about the storm sewers running below their houses.\u00a0\u00a0They built right on top of them.\u00a0\u00a0Tiles were everywhere in the old fields, some worked, some didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clay tile is a lot more durable then you\u2019d think. With all of the houses built, the seventy-year old storm drainage line struggled to handle the increasing volume of water. A really heavy rain might flood the neighborhood, but give it a couple of hours, and the water would soon go down. It used to be a neighborhood joke, a nuisance. Folks would bring out their rafts and kayaks and play. But just recently, the water comes up, and it doesn\u2019t go down nearly as fast. In fact, it stays long enough for a second round of storms to drive water into basements, garages, and crawl spaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the thirty-eight I\u2019ve lived in my house, built on a small rise above road level, the garage has never flooded.\u00a0\u00a0Friday there were four inches and more, flooding the room and pouring into the crawl space under the house. It sounded like a waterfall.\u00a0\u00a0The actual structure of the rest of the house is lifted about two feet above the garage level.\u00a0\u00a0Yesterday, I had six inches left before water hit the joists, the electric wires, and came up through the hardwood floors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happened?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a newer house \u201cin town\u201d built directly over the storm sewer, the old clay tile line. That tile started leaking, and the owner demanded that the city pay him damages for a flooded basement. The city responded that the house was knowingly built on top of the line and they weren\u2019t responsible. The owner replied by cutting the line and capping it off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So now there is no drainage from the old Van Atta farm.\u00a0\u00a0The water flows down the clay tile towards the river \u2013 then it stops.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201clakefront\u201d property that used to be our occasional joke now faces serious ongoing damage.\u00a0\u00a0That’s bad for me, and my house is NOT the lowest house on the street. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The city has a long-term solution. They may not have an easement for the old clay tile lines, but they do own the roads. So, this summer, a brand new sewer line, big PVC pipe and concrete drop boxes; will be installed under the roads, replacing the seventy-year-old tile. Instead of dropping money in nuisance lawsuits to defend old red clay, they are putting money towards a modern solution. Then, if a pipe breaks, the city can dig up wherever it needs to. It makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in the meantime, every time there\u2019s a heavy rain, the City sends workers with a pump and water lines.\u00a0\u00a0They hook at up to the old tile, and pump around the blocked off sewer line and back into the system.\u00a0\u00a0It seems silly, but it\u2019s the literal \u201cwork-around\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The only problem:\u00a0\u00a0water from a twelve-inch tile has to travel through a three-inch hose.\u00a0\u00a0The whole drainage process is slowed way down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It rained three inches in as many hours early Friday morning.\u00a0\u00a0High winds accompanied the rain, lashing the houses and street.\u00a0\u00a0Friday is trash-day; the dumpsters were knocked over, drifting down the street now river, spreading neat trash bags around the edges as the water lapped up against the houses.\u00a0\u00a0The recycling bins are kept \u201cloose\u201d, no bags to organize the trash.\u00a0\u00a0You could tell how far your stuff went by what kind of beer bottle ended up in the neighbor\u2019s yard down the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I woke up at 6:00am to go grocery shopping. Kroger\u2019s opened at 7:00am\u00a0\u00a0(out of toilet paper at 7:05).\u00a0\u00a0But when I saw the flood, and the garbage, I had to go find my dumpsters, and try to pick up my trash.\u00a0\u00a0It was dark, but I had a \u201cGorton\u2019s Fisherman\u201d yellow coat on. A (deleted) pickup truck driver decided it\u2019d be fun to soak me.\u00a0\u00a0The neighborhood got an early morning shout-out of Dahlman profanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were late responding to the crisis back at the house.\u00a0\u00a0It took us a while to realize what was happening underneath in the crawl space.\u00a0\u00a0But once we got it, we sandbagged the doors to the garage, and starting pumping the water back into the lake outside the door.\u00a0\u00a0We used my little pump to empty the hot tub, and it took hours to get the water level to drop.\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile the water crept up in the crawl space, coming ever closer to the joists, the wires, and the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took until late Friday afternoon to realize the flow was stopped, and the house wasn\u2019t going to flood.\u00a0\u00a0Saturday the garage was a mess, soaked, but the standing water was gone.\u00a0\u00a0The crawl space still had a couple of feet of water, and there was still a lake all around the house.\u00a0\u00a0But everything is slowly draining away.\u00a0 The sump pumps under the house were hard at work, and\u00a0I can still hear the city\u2019s pump at work even now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is going to be a week for cleanup, when the water finally goes down.\u00a0 They predict another two to three inches of rain is coming. \u00a0But one thing\u2019s for sure \u2013 whatever Governor DeWine decides about \u201csheltering in place\u201d they\u2019ll be a lot to do at this place.\u00a0I haven’t even looked in the shed at the back of the yard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0So it’s time to stop writing and get to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"