I thought the flooding here in Eau Claire was bad, but not much damage was reported in the city (especially compared to that of other areas, see first link below). I read a Leader Telegram article that said it was because of the prevention actions (like buying private land off the river banks) the city took after the 1993 flood. When I looked into some history on flooding of the Chippewa River, there have been a few really nasty ones. The first one I could find was 1884 at 12.9 feet above the flood stage level. Then the major floods progressively become less and less high. I'm not really sure what this trend shows. Maybe it shows how technological advances help out with flood control or how getting properties off the flood planes reduce damages. Or maybe this is related to global warming in some way.
One thing I found really interesting after today's lecture on Reason's swiss cheese model was that the Eau Claire flood obviously avoided enough holes, like not getting more rain, warning people of the flood and not having to much destructive flotsom. But I believe there may have been one "hole" the flood went through, and that would be the National Weather Service's dangerous flood stage level being too high for the Chipewwa. Granted, everyone knew it was incorrect, but it still sort of shows an example of the holes in the swiss cheese model.
Links:
Leader Telegram article on the damages of the floods in Wisconsin:
http://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/article_dc21a7e6-cc0c-11df-a057-001cc4c002e0.html
Leader Telegram article on minimal EC flood:
http://www.leadertelegram.com/news/front_page/article_c3722832-cb86-11df-a99e-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=story
history on Eau Claire flooding:
http://emergencymanagement.wi.gov/mitigation/stories/hm-eau_claire_success.pdf
I agree that this is a really good example of the Swiss cheese model. We had many precautions in place to ensure that this flooding didn’t become a disaster. Other towns in the area had similar rain and saturation patterns, but suffered much significantly more damage. Even though our flood stage levels according to the national weather service were inaccurate, we still had a vast flood plain and the areas that took the brunt of the damage were non-residential. I think that these are additional “hole blockers” for our Swiss cheese.
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