Isn’t that what’s Happening already - not in Manhattan, but Close by on the East Coast? After Sandy, some Areas have flooding once or twice a week, damaging not only the houses, but also washing away the streets - but because mostly poor and minority People live there, the City/ community doesn’t build a dam and pump the water out, they just … don’t spend any Money.
I was not aware the area between Germany and Doggerland having a different name …
I can’t say that I know specifically what you’re talking about. It doesn’t sound accurate, although in this large country of ours damn near anything is probably happening someplace.
Here’s something 100% real that may be similar, or may be the origin of whatever you heard or read after much distortion in the repeated telling.
There are urban areas here in the south of Florida in and around Miami where a few inches of seawater floods the first couple streets immediately along the coast. This happens for a couple to a few hours whenever the tide is extra high. Which it is a couple times a month most months and especially over a two-week period in the fall which have the highest tides of the year.
This is not widespread; the several affected areas are each about 1/4 mile long by a couple blocks wide. This in a continuous urban/suburban area extending along 100ish miles of coastline and extending inland 10 to 20 miles deep.
This has been going on for years and has nothing to do with severe weather or any recent events or changes; it happens on calm sunny days or nights. It also doesn’t damage anything. People expect it, the immediately local buildings take countermeasures, and other than perhaps an increased rate of corrosion nothing much happens.
The areas where this happens are not poverty stricken hellholes. Lots of middle class to very expensive condos and houses experience the minor tidal flooding. I wrote here a bit ago about one area near me where the affected houses average in the $20million range. These are the castles of the ruling class, not the hovels of the peons.
Naturally these areas are extra vulnerable to both hurricane-driven flooding in the near (year-to-year) term and to further sea level rise in the decades ahead. So far it’s a quaint nuisance, not a crisis. And is being treated by the public as exactly that; a bit of local color scarcely worth mention.
Do you have a cite for this?
I’ve both worked & play in highrises & have never heard or seen that one should go up in case of a fire. The one building I worked in had three different messages, fire/alarm floor, floor above & below the fire/alarm floor, & the rest of the building.
[ul]
[li]Fire/alarm floor was enter the fire tower. [/li][li]Above/below floors were stand by the fire tower.[/li][li]Other floors were keep calm, but otherwise do nothing “while we investigate this emergency”.[/li][/ul]
Well, it does. It’s called “the North Sea”, since that’s what was there by the time the Romans existed, and had been for millennia. Your cite refers to coastal inundations of the North Sea coast, way, *way *after Doggerland wasn’t even a memory.
Or raise the bottom level of the city and extend all of the entry shafts and holes into the subterranean system up a half dozen yards, and rename the city Neo-Venice.
Forget the buildings. The entire place will be uninhabitable because of nasty water. unless you can get a hydraulics engineer knowledgeable about tides and currents and show the flooded areas will be “refreshed” with the Atlantic Ocean, the entire place will make a cesspool look pristine. Add rotten bodies, decaying vegetation, chemical pollutants–who cares about structures? Add hepatitis, typhoid, amoebic dysentery…I don’t think even the most rugged, well-prepared survivalist would last very long.
~VOW
Doggerland isn’t a name from memory … it’s a modern term used to describe the lands currently under the North Sea … as late as 1953 the North Sea claimed a fair chunk of Holland forcing the evacuation of 70,000 people … it’s an on-going process recorded as early as the 3rd Century AD …
Isn’t this true without sea level rise …
I didn’t say the *name *was gone from memory, I said the place itself was gone from memory.
And no, it doesn’t refer to *all *the lands currently under the North Sea, it refers to that portion that was finally inundated 6 millennia before Rome even existed. And that portion wasn’t attached to the Netherlands when it was finally covered, it was already an archipelago by then.
If a Dutch polder were to get flooded today, nobody would say “Well, that’s the last gasp for Doggerland!” (except, seemingly, yourself: )
I also call both continents America … not just one of the countries …
That’s nice, but it’s a complete non sequitur from the fact that you use Doggerland in a completely idiosyncratic way that no archaeologist does.
Found it - it’s New Jersey, not Florida (Florida has had to deal with flooding for some time now)
Well, we have idfferent atitudes, then: I consider poor people who can’t afford to either move away or fix their houses to be in a crisis, esp. compared to middle-class and rich neighbours, who can either move away or afford repairs.
Thanks for the research.
I believe you have misunderstood my take on the political aspects of this. I have zero patience for the wealthy folks demanding that the taxpayers at large arrange to rebuild their yacht docks at higher elevation at no cost to the yacht owners.
If we are to do anything, my belief it needs to be for everyone based on need, not skill at being spoiled, demanding, politically-connected children.
In the section you quoted I’m merely saying that right now there’s no political will here to do anything other than jaw a bit. The risk is considered too far in the future for the famously short-term get-rich-quick mentality here in Florida.
I predict that they’ll only wake up long after it’s too late to do anything really useful or cost effective.
What about foundation undermining and fatigue from wave action and tidal forces?
Sorry for misunderstanding you.
So isn’t the footing not even the weak point? The first floor (and above), there’s just window glass around the outside and lots of leaks, so it’ll flood. Once it floods, all that sheet rock will rot off. And behind the drywall and located throughout each floor of a skyscraper are the load bearing steel columns that hold the whole thing up.
Different designs put the columns in different places - the WTC used columns around the outside and in the core - but regardless, I don’t see how these columns are going to be all that well protected. Especially the ones that are supposed to be inside a dry wall. It’ll just be exposed iron, very vulnerable to rust.
With this said, it doesn’t sound impossible to deal with. Couldn’t you clear out the lower floors, move the electric junctions higher, and paint the columns with something? Then use sacrificial electrodes and an active cathodic protection system?
If the flooding were over decades it seems like you ought to be able to do something like that. Other ideas include building a levy, but to reduce structural stress on the levy, flood the lower area with fresh or distilled water. Much easier to keep the buildings intact if it isn’t saltwater. You’d then need to replace or move all the streets higher, of course.
Eh, don’t worry about it. If it gets too bad in Manhattan we’ll just wall it up and send all our criminals over there and let them fend for themselves.
The main advantage of Venice was that it was a refuge after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Lagoon was treacherous and too shallow for decent-sized boats, so any invaders were sitting ducks coming across is small boats; a favorite trick was to yank up all the channel markers when invasion was imminent to foil the invaders. Then, as a city that did not have to build expensive defensive walls, and had access to the sea, they became a big sea-trading nation. That protection lasted until the day Napoleon showed up at the shore with new technology, canons that could reach the three miles across the lagoon. They surrendered without a fight.
The city was built from the start to live on a lagoon with occasional flooding; “Venice is sinking” was because industrial Mestre on the mainland started pumping out large quantities of groundwater, thus causing subsidence in the bedrock under Venice. Once the cause was determined and the problem stopped, Venice has sunk somewhat but has stopped sinking. They still get flooded every so often, typically in seasonal high tides. AFAIK global warming and rising sea levels are not yet part of the equation.
Being in a river-fed lagoon on the far end of a giant Bay (the Adriatic) on an inland sea with low tides to begin with, Venice was not adapted for immersion - it was built on land reclaimed from the lagoon. (And on pilings of logs pounded into the mud over the centuries). It is convenient that the construction materials are not that badly affected by now-regular immersion. Yes, there are some ground floors of old palazzos that flood often enough they are simply left as “wet cellars”.
The point is - Venice is not a city that “became” flooded. It was built as islands with no provision for future higher water levels. As the discussion has pointed out, New York is a complex city where a lot of the infrastructure (pretty much all of it) would require significant alteration or replacement. When the only advantage of “Manhattan” becomes that the shell of the building is already there, then it’s unlikely to be useful. Too much else in a complex modern city would have to be completely replaced. Electrical and communication, water, sewer, transportation and access from the mainland… you name it.
Even worse - Manhattan is not flat. Beyond Wall Street, you are quite a distance above the water level. There’s a lot of downhill (or uphill) What would be first-floor flooding in Times Square would be several stories in the further downtown or along the shores. At that point, why bother? A 10-storey building half submerged is less likely to survive.
If we’re just talking the Wall Street area - then it’s simpler to abandon the area than to try and reclaim it… but then so much of the infrastructure is interdependent; The subways around Times Square are useless if every direction from there ends in a flooded tunnel. And so on…
It’s certainly not great for skyscrapers.
Keep in mind that a skyscraper is designed to stand more or less on its own for 500 to 1000 years. Maybe soaking the foundation in the Hudson River halves or quarters that time.
“Not falling down” doesn’t mean “livable” though.