Sunday, October 09, 2016
Flood Not Of Colour
Still binge-reading old radio magazines. Ran into an echo of a big event that has pretty much disappeared. This journal published by Western Electric, aimed at buyers of its broadcasting equipment, had an article on the major floods of 1948.
Two radio stations coped with the floods in different ways. WKYW in Louisville knew their transmitter was in a frequent flood plain, so they simply built the whole thing on pontoons! When the Ohio flooded this time, the transmitter building was "cast off from its moorings and anchored." Just part of the routine. SMART.
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KPQ in Wenatchee was not in a known flood plain, but most of Wash flooded in June of '48, and KPQ adapted heroically. They called in a house-moving company to jack up the building, pushed a bunch of surplus inflatable life rafts under it, inflated them, and re-rigged all cables to be flexible. During the weeks of flooding they stayed on the air constantly.
WAIT! The whole state was flooded? Never heard of this.
USGS wrote about it in great detail.
Here's the map of major flooding:
Yup, THREE STATES were flooded. USGS attributed the flood to a convergence of three cycles: (1) High precip in previous year, leading to heavy snowpack; (2) Sudden warming in spring after long freeze, leading to sudden runoff; (3) Major storms at the same time as the runoff, making independent flash floods in many places, adding to the total on the Columbia.
Nowadays we don't need all this tiresome science and detail and attribution. We just say "GAIA IS PUNISHING US FOR THE EXISTENCE OF CHRISTIANITY" and we're done.
The report mentions that this flood is generally known as the Vanport flood because one of the places it destroyed was the wartime company town of Vanport near Portland.
Aha. The light comes on. I've read about the Vanport flood, but those articles didn't mention the rest of three states. Why? Vanport was a City Of Colour, so it existed. Wash and Ore and Idaho are States Not Of Colour, so their deaths and damage do not exist.
= = = = =
KPQ in Wenatchee was not in a known flood plain, but most of Wash flooded in June of '48, and KPQ adapted heroically. They called in a house-moving company to jack up the building, pushed a bunch of surplus inflatable life rafts under it, inflated them, and re-rigged all cables to be flexible. During the weeks of flooding they stayed on the air constantly.
WAIT! The whole state was flooded? Never heard of this.
USGS wrote about it in great detail.
Here's the map of major flooding:
Yup, THREE STATES were flooded. USGS attributed the flood to a convergence of three cycles: (1) High precip in previous year, leading to heavy snowpack; (2) Sudden warming in spring after long freeze, leading to sudden runoff; (3) Major storms at the same time as the runoff, making independent flash floods in many places, adding to the total on the Columbia.
Nowadays we don't need all this tiresome science and detail and attribution. We just say "GAIA IS PUNISHING US FOR THE EXISTENCE OF CHRISTIANITY" and we're done.
The report mentions that this flood is generally known as the Vanport flood because one of the places it destroyed was the wartime company town of Vanport near Portland.
Aha. The light comes on. I've read about the Vanport flood, but those articles didn't mention the rest of three states. Why? Vanport was a City Of Colour, so it existed. Wash and Ore and Idaho are States Not Of Colour, so their deaths and damage do not exist.Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Carbon Cult, defensible spaces
¶ 3:54 AM
