Mike Thorouhill, C.E. - The LA Flood Project (sitios de interés)

Mike Thorouhill
Civil Engineer
Southern California Earthquake Center

Stage: 1
15, 700 cubic feet per second
5320 cfs.
17000 homes.
that's n-values of .01234 and
.1.02
Oh, God.

18, 200 cfs
6400 cfs
K-values of .00076 and .00013 feet
2700 homes -- no
3500 homes

1600 tons of sediment
in 38 months
not possible

But what would it cost to fix it?
Hmm

erosion of concrete damns
3 feet of concrete
must be wrong

$18 million dollars
to save 2700 homes

(typing)
Los Angeles:
fluctuations in the water surface
associated with depths of flow
in the unstable zone
will be delineated in the model

insufficient data for recommendations
further models to be proposed.

ah! God help us.


Stage 2
(sings a little of the song -- The New Year's Flood -- to himself)
Oh, my friends, do you remember?
On that fatal New Year's night...

I just had to drive up to see it.
up the 5
to where the water comes over the mountain
just before the Newhall Pass
usually its such a cute site
like 2nd graders coming down the stairs
at the end of the day
running to see their parents
but now those kids are ten feet tall
and they are not using the stairs anymore.

(sings a bit more)
No, you could not see it coming
Till through our town it rolled;

We thought we dammed her up.
We thought we hemmed her in.
When you create a statistical model
you tend to leave out the ends of the curve
that tend toward the apocalypse.

There's nothing more sobering than
watching a craftsman home
body surf down a hillside.


Stage 3

There are times, when you survey all that God has wrought,
all the wreck and all the ruin
when you could, if you were so inclined,
calculate a number to represent all the water
pouring into this basin,
not just the volume,
the loss of property
the loss of life
a few measurements, even a guesstimation,
and be, and this is how far we've come,
probably accurate within a gallon or two,
but you don't
because differential equations, at a time like this,
seem, well, disrespectful.

Back last January, I saw this call
for a conference on Atmospheric Rivers,
The ARKstorm they called it,
Thought, of course,
it was a joke.
Not so much because of the atmospheric rivers,
nor the infinite improbability of such a deluge
but because to stage such an event
fly all those people in
and get those projector's whirring
meant that they truly thought
an academic conference might get people
to listen.

No, they fund our research
and ask us to create our models,
do our calculations,
in secluded, highly productive labs, precisely so that
they don't have to sit next to chicken little
at a dinner party

Now figuring out where to get enough
potable water
for what remains of the citizenry of Los Angeles
that will take a little math or
what did that one President call it
fuzzy math?

100 gallons per day, per person,
10 million people...
in cubic feet that would be --
Hmm, this is going to take a little figuring...

MCM