I wanted to focus on a few things that I saw in the images of the devastation in the Biltmore Village area. Before I watched the Carpetbagger’s video of Asheville, I had seen an image on WRAL TV 5 that showed a very large oil drum that had come to rest on Brook Street beside the White Lotus Boutique and a small tree. This drum was wedged snuggly but it hadn’t bent the tree at all. This meant it had to float to where it was and then be gently lowered into its current position. *I later thought to look for where it had actually come from, and I’m pretty sure I’ve found it. I’ll show the location from Google Maps at the bottom.
So the drum had floated about a block away from where it was originally located, and then made a sharp right turn and started up Brook Street before coming to rest. And the giant oil tank with the spiral staircase had been turned on its side and was a short distance from where it was originally located.
[NOTE 10/09/24]: I was just watching another Asheville Disaster Aftermath video and there was another picture of a bridge that had been destroyed. My thought was, would it be worth it to redirect flooding around both ends of a bridge so that the bridge wouldn’t be destroyed but both ends would be washed out? Rebuilding a bridge takes a really long time, but bringing in fill dirt to repair a road would take less effort. So, how could you do that? Maybe like a cow catcher that comes down into the river or stream and then it redirects the water to both sides of the bridge. Might work for a small/short bridge. *Another thought would be to build drawbridges that could be raised not to let shipping pass through, but to let rushing water and garbage have free flow.
Why come up with an idea like this? Well, it’s not that this is a “once in a lifetime” event. Granted that floods occur not that often, but when they do mountain folk are devastated by the destruction. You’ve got to protect your infrastructure to make for a speedier recovery. It’s not that flooding isn’t going to happen anytime soon, but that it is going to happen. [end NOTE]
I googled and found that I’m not the first, or only one to have come up with the idea of minimizing potential loss. Better to lose the road on either side of a bridge rather than lose the bridge.
Bill Gibson, II 