Bay 12 Games Forum

Uh. Most of the fatalities have hopefully already occurred, as horrible as that sounds. If they haven't something is going to go tits up with enough fervor to flip an elephant. Unfortunately, that's still pretty damn possible.

Not entirely sure the fatalities will even be the worst of it, though, especially if they're not particularly egregious as historic floods go. The houston area has a GDP of around 400 billion. Economy the size of, say, norway, is likely in the process of getting largely paralyzed for weeks to months (to years if shit turns out to have gone bad enough).

Add that on top of a possibly overdue recession waiting to happen and however much damage is going to be tallied in the end (roll the bones, folks, let's see if we hit 13 digits), well. Extra fuckage for houston and company, with spare fuckage left over for the rest of the sodding world.

Kinda' just hit me this whole thing is real damn likely to be a trigger for that, honestly. Bloody hell.

Oh, yeah. It's already broke the continental. Last reading I heard was 51.88 at its highest, so it's literally less than an inch from matching the worst our entire country has seen since records were being kept.

They had <72 hours from point of existence in the gulf until landfall, and didn't expect things to get this bad until even later. There's also a few million people in the region getting hit, and... well, we attempted that in short order before.

Texas reported the most deaths from the hurricane, where 113 deaths were reported, 107 of which were associated with the evacuation of the Houston metropolitan area.

There's been mention of trying to get people out of particularly endangered areas first, but, y'know, they've been trying that just about as soon as they know something's coming. Is just literally unprecedented flooding. They're getting into "shit we've never seen and didn't think to model for" territory.

That said, there is more official stuff than that, quite a bit even. It's just they're fucked enough they need all the help they can get, and the national + coast guard + other military branches + gov't emergency response stuff + FEMA + everygoddamnthingelse isn't quite cutting it.

Buncha' other stuff, too, really. Goddamn mess, kinda' always is when it's not hella' more telegraphed than this was. Often enough even then because of political shit RK requested not to get into in here.

I'unno, property gospel is a thing. Harder sell might not mean a hard one.

Is why I said it might not be first by thursday, heh.

... or not heh, because seriously, they're already kinda' fucked. They're not expecting addicks to peak until the 31st; i.e. even with controlled release and the overflow happening now, they look to be expecting it to get higher. Have had at least one bridge collapse, over greens bayou. Levee breach, more possibly/probably coming. Houston area's already taken the first place spot on most rain in the continental US, got three inches to go to beat out that hawaii record. Think it's contending or took fastest, too.

Also looks like the first first responder type's kicked it. Cop got trapped in their cruiser.

There's two, actually, at least that I'm aware of -- addicks and barker. Addicks has actually hit its first overflow point just recently. Despite, yeah, intentionally releasing water for several hours, now. Dunno if it's actually got out entirely or not, but it's at the right height for it.

That said, it's a bit more complicated than just "overflow" -- there's three or four stages of overflow for addicks, due to how it's built. The first stage happens when it hits 108ft (where it's at now), which is where it starts uncontrolled spillage at one part of the thing (north end). Then there's a point at 111 (south end), 112.5 (northern spillway), and the final at 115.5 (southern spillway). Each of those means water's getting loose at the point mentioned, until it goes over the last and wet hell has officially broke loose all the way.

The sorta' bright side to that is that once it starts going over one point, it becomes harder to hit the others. Since, y'know, water's going out at the quickness from part of the dam.

... now, all that said, all that also assumes everything stays in one piece and functioning. If something else happens -- earthworks collapse, rapid erosion, etc. -- all bets are more or less off. And it's unfortunately worth noting that pretty much every point it goes uncontrolled makes something like that happening more likely.

'Course, it ain't the only thing happening. Inverness levee's apparently damn close to overflow or outright breaking, ferex. Shit's getting closer to really starting to throw down, when it ain't exactly been gentle up to this point.

E: Oh. Yeah, like this. Shit.

Given the amount of crap, I'm surprised the death toll is at only 3 so far. Really underscore how good the US is at not dying.

Up to at least 9 by the last time I saw anything about it, actually. Family of six drowned after getting trapped in their vehicle.

It's also worth noting that no small amount of that low number is that it's very, very possible there's a fair few more than we're actually aware of. Hard to tell if there's a corpse inside a house that's a pile of debris or literally under water until folks start clearing stuff away and the flooding recedes. Disease is pretty certain to start killing people over the next few days/weeks, too. These sorts of things don't tend to have terribly high immediate body counts unless some holy shit level things happen, and even those tend to be lowballed in the beginning just due to lack of ability to confirm.