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There's a significant lack of shelters where I live, which can become a survival issue when hurricanes hit. Every time I drive under a bridge (one that's on land of course) I notice that the steel beams running the length of it are usually at least 3-4 feet high. I wonder if we could rivet some kind
of floor onto the bottom of these beams and then add an access door leading into the area. It would provide at least one more safe haven (we're short enough space for well over 100,000 people here). No matter how bad the storm none of the bridges in this area have blown down. Not the ones over land anyway. The ones over the bay tend to come tumbling down now and then.
Overpass Tornado Study
http://www.srh.noaa...apers/overpass.html
Looks like it isn't a safe place to be for tornados. [Worldgineer, Jul 11 2005]
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Funny, I was concerned that the homeless would mess it up. Do we live in such a terrible world that this couldn't work, or are we perhaps a bit too fearful as a society? |
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Access to the shelters would be locked under normal conditions. This would have to be done more as a safety precaution than to prevent the homeless from getting in. |
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As a brooding troll myself, I rather like the idea. What amenities would these shleters offer? |
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Troll shelters have been in existence for
quite some time. Starting with the
"BBS", followed by "Usenet", and
nowadays any number of message
board applications provide plenty of
safe heaven for trolls of all shapes and
sizes. :) |
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crater - Let's see, water, MRE's, first aid kits, air mattresses and some blankets for starters. Those items could be pre-positioned well ahead of time. |
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Bridges tend to be associated with rivers. Rivers rise during storm conditions, potentially trapping everyone in the shelters, particularly in those places where bridges end up going underwater. |
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Sure, making access available through the roof would work, but bridge decks tend to be good rainwater traps, too. |
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Are you sure you want to compound emergency services' problems this way? |
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I think [long] is talking about freeway overpasses, versus proper bridges. |
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Worldgineer - You're right, I'm talking about freeway overpasses. When they decided to improve the flow of traffic on the main road that runs the length of this county (which is at least 40 miles long) they used the roller-coaster model, building a bridge over each major intersection. This gives us plenty of shelter space to work with. |
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UB - I guess I wasn't clear about these shelters only being built on bridges that cross over other roads. |
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That's fine. I don't really think of bridges as being related to freeway overpasses. We have few enough of them as it is, but bridges here tend to be over bodies of water, and tropical precipitation rates mean they are dangerous places when it's raining heavily. |
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I've seen rivers rise several metres in an hour, which is very dangerous. I've also seen rain so heavy that the bridge deck is holding 15-20cm of water, especially if debris is blocking the stormwater outlets on the bridge. |
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When we experience cyclonic (hurricane) conditions it is not unusual to get up to 36 inches of rain in a day. Nothing really copes all that well with that much rain. You just get to high ground and wait for the floodwaters to subside. The Gold Coast got some very heavy rain about 10 days ago. Empty reservoirs filled in a day, thousands of homes were flooded and thousands of cars flooded and stranded. They had 16 inches in 24 hours, in places. That was just a major storm. Only two deaths, when a couple were washed off a bridge at 2am, trying to get home to their new house. |
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I agree that freeway overpasses are safe. They are engineered for far heavier loads than the contingencies a storm might deliver. |
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worldgineer: I think that study just suggests some ways to build these troll shelters - put sturdy walls on and things to hang onto.
longshot: The problem is that these shelters will be abused by the homeless and the juvenike delinquent. |
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DrCurry - The abuse problem wouldn't come up. Neither the homeless nor delinquents coud get into these shelters when they weren't supposed to because the design would include limited access via four locked hatches (two at the top of fixed fire-escape type ladders under each side of the bridge). Home security alarm companies would be happy to compete for the contract to monitor these hatches for unauthorized entry exactly the same way they monitor unauthorized entry into the houses they're paid to watch. |
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I'm sure someone would still find a way, [longshot]. Humans are like that. We can't stand knowing that we don't know something. |
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Emergency shelters you can't get into in a hurry?! My croissant is getting flies. |
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DrCurry - Remember, the original purpose of the shelters was to provide people a place to ride out an approaching hurricane. With the at least 24 hour warning period we have available to us now there would be no need to get into these shelters in a hurry. When the emergency operations centers are opened in a county due to a hurricane's approach the first responders would also unlock the shelters and begin monitoring their usage (pretty much the same way they do when they open schools for shelters now). |
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UB - I'm sure some people would try to find a way into the shelters when they weren't supposed to. I'd also expect the police to be sent after them just like I expect ADT (the local alarm company that's wired our house for security) to send the police after whoever's breaking into my house. (By the way, all of the schools in this area are monitored by security companies. Monitoring the shelters wouldn't be any different.) |
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Fair enough. Anyway, who builds houses that are susceptible to storm damage? Don't local building codes mitigate against the problems of storm damage? If not; why not? |
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UB - A lot of people live in trailers around here (they come to Florida to retire and that's all they can afford). The building codes don't stop them from buying them so when a good hurricane comes along they tend to become box-kites with no one guiding the strings. |
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I thought they were put out in the open to attract tornadoes, in the Midwest. |
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We have an, albeit small, proportion of our community who are similarly suicidal. I've never understood why you'd accept those sort of living conditions. |
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[Longshot] makes a good point, use this steel and concrete reinforced space for some good. The gangs would still mark the outsides of the shelter walls, making it even uglier than the current hidden graffiti. but given that this behavior cannot be stopped, might as well use the space for something good. |
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UB: the degree to which tornados and hurricanes are problems here is highly correlated for the US predilection for cheap wooden housing. |
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I'm sure. Hey, I think this is the worst Idea imaginable. There is no way that people should bring their cars, only to have them be one more bit of flotsam to block drains. Besides the obstacles to retrofitting bridges, and the aforementioned maintenance, supervision, and monitoring costs, there remains the issue of apportionment: who gets to use these? Any mention of the homeless leads me to argue that they are the reason shelters exist <Halfbakery Side Issue> Rant about a wide range of social infrastructure </HSI> |
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Better idea in like vein: Sling multi-kilowatt diesel generators under overpasses, thereby standing backup power within confined areas and placing resource nodes at convenient sites from which to stage response and recovery in the post storm cycle. |
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What's the problem with the homeless living there? If I was homeless I would be very glad for a safe haven like this, and more than happy to share it with all and sundry for the duration of a hurricane. Just make sure that emergency supplies are located nearby where they can be quickly deployed, maybe in a trailer at the nearest police station. |
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