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Charlotte Flooding


tozmervo

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I hadn't realized how bad the flooding in East Charlotte was until this afternoon when I saw some aerial footage. I know there are some UPers over in that area - I hope everyone fared well.

From the news coverage I've heard, it sounds like most people along Briar Creek knew they were within the 100-year floodplain and were insured appropriately. Doral Apartments, which has gotten a lot of coverage, apparently includes flood insurance in the rent. Another complex nearby is now owned by the city and they were implementing a plan to move out the residents - a plan which should probably be accelerated.

My overall impression is that CLT does a fair job of vacating the flood plains that were hastily built on in the past, but then again I'm not overly familiar with the natural flood plains. Are there other areas of the city like that stretch of Briar Creek that are in immenent danger?

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I was going to start this topic earlier but I got lazy. East Charlotte got hit bad, but Concord and NE Meck got it also. Over 11 inches of rain in a 30 hour period up there. Pretty crazy stuff.

Something like 45 people had to be rescued this early morning and a few add'l hundred have been evacuated. I forget the exact number, but there are a good number of homes that have been deemed "non-livable" and are needing to be gutted and cleaned out. On some of the video updates they showed pictures where homes had water up 2 feet in hallways.

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The data on the creeks in the county can be seen here. There are digital monitoring stations on all of them and you can see the flow over the past few hours. It is amazing the amount of water that flowed through here last night. McDowell Creek which flows through Huntersville went from an average of 1 ft deep to 14 feet in just a few hours, overflowed its banks and shut down several roads in the town. One of the more dramatic examples was McAlpine creek that crosses Colony Rd. that crested at 18 feet.

In the past 20 years at least, the county has required that any housing built, be built above the 100 year flood plan which seems to be the difference between the flooding or not. This can be done by either building up the land with fill, or building the house specifically for flooding as was done with a number of expensive homes in SE Charlotte. But as the videos are showing from the news organizations, much of the city, especially in East Charlotte was constructed before these rules were put into place.

I've seen floods here before, but I have never seen anything this bad in the 3 decades that I have lived in the county.

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While not as bad off as some other parts of the area, University got a beating, but didn't seem to take any damage. I'm not sure if anybody else went onto UNCC's campus on Tuesday, but at about 2pm I was riding down there with a friend and the tiny, 1 foot deep creek that runs through campus was about ten feet higher than normal and completely cut the campus in half with what seemed like a fast moving lake. What's worse is that the campus didn't send out an email to notify students of the road closures until 15 minutes after we found out the hard way. It's a good thing that both campuses are built on the higher elevations of campus land because there easily could have been a lot of damage. It's a wonder that the areas of N Tryon St and Mallard Creek Church Rd that go over the creek weren't submerged as well.

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Yes in some areas. There was one on the news where it rose beyond the 150 yr floodplain!

Did anyone see the picture of the Chickfila that had flooding in front and placed on their sign "Now with Lakefront Dining",then placed some seating right up against the flooding? Thought it was pretty humorous to shed some light and sneak in some easy and fun advertising on what is not the best of situations here.

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