Watch Along The Watershed (1981)

in towns that have been flooded a heavy rain can bring painful memories of lives lost property ruined jobs that vanished because industry shut down this is the story of people who are prepared they built a system to keep flood losses down a rain still brings memories but not despair people know the system is there the harder it rains the quicker that system will spring into action this is Carl Stefan on the lower loyal sock I got 2 in of rain here at my place okay 2 in on the lower loyal so right okay we'll take care of it a single phone call from an upstream Observer to an emergency services Center is enough to activate the system unit 161 caller Center unit 161 caller Center 0925 R we've got a call from Carl Stephan he's got 2 in of rain on the lower sock maybe you better call the rest of the coordinators and find out what's happening Howard you can call the Larry's Creek observers if you would and get their readings within minutes some 2200 mil of rising streams are brought under round thee clock surveillance yes we' got a we just had a report from Carl Ste on some rain out there he has got 2 in if you could uh get in touch with your people and get back to us what happens afterwards depends on the rain if it stops this becomes an exercise but if it continues this can become a matter of life or death so now we wait see what's happening [Music] in some ways a flood plane is an attractive place to live and work but a risk is always involved in 1972 along the Susana River and its tributaries tropical storm Agnes brought flooding that caused billions of dollars in damage A Private Industry on the flood plane was among the first to respond with a comprehensive plan that would reduce its losses Sprout walren is a division of the copper company it employs more than 12200 people at its Muny Pennsylvania plant Sprout Waldron's vice president and general manager Les Murray during the 1972 Agnes flood the water level was about halfway up the windows over the canopy that's equivalent to about 8 ft of water in our shops and about 6 feet of water in our offices the out- of-pocket uh uh loss was approximately a million dollars with another million dollars in loss of business we had a little bit of warning at that time and we took some steps to minimize our losses but without accurate information your efforts are almost misguided and we in fact probably would have been just as well off not to do anything as I remember at the time most of our workers were very concerned about our ability to stay in business and during the height of the flood and cleanup period afterward the main concern was whether or not they would still have jobs it caught us completely by surprise the river was coming up but so what it came up before only this time it never [Music] stopped mud debris all over the place the stch alone was enough to discourage anybody every motor had to be taken off and [Music] disassemble disaster just 3 months that I don't even remember 3 months right out of my life just 12 hours a day you work till you drop and then come back in the morning and work till you drop and come back in the morning work till you drop for 3 months that's something I never want to go through again that's for sure after the 1972 flood uh we decided that we couldn't live in a flood plane forever without doing something to minimize our losses during the flood we had noticed that there were a number of Old Timers around that had their own flood warning system so we decided to develop our own flood warning system and try to predict the height and the time of the crest of any uh possible flood FL we uh also decided that we would never again make any Capital Investments of any major size in a flood plane and we made permanent changes to our uh plant uh facilities but the most important thing is we had a temporary flood warning evacuation system developed where every employee knew exactly what his job would be in the event we decided to evacuate our plant and those moves alone I think minimized our flood losses considerably permanent changes included raising of vital [Music] equipment wooden flooring was replaced with concrete new doors were cut in some buildings and equipped with manual backup controls any new buildings were located on high ground in a flood emergency this one becomes the command post of the company's own flood warning system brout Waldron's plant engineer is on the line now to the County Center okay and if uh any new data comes down indicate any significant change the next half hour or an hour please let us know okay thank you system is now part and parcel of the system organized by loming County warning center it's raining hard now all over the county but how much is falling and what percentage is reaching the streams as runoff that data is coming in from a core of volunteers monitoring each of the six major watersheds in the largest county in Pennsylvania ly homing county is bigger than Rhode Island though the county seat at Williamsport is protected by levies such protection is Not Practical for the entire County with the flood of 72 in mind the County Commissioners authorize development of a County wide warning system a full-time employee of the Planning Commission was designated flood warning coordinator this person is not a flood specialist but was able to get immediate help from state and federal agencies such as the National Weather Service part of its flood warning mission is to encourage and assist local effort the head of the Weather Service Office near Williamsport is John Murray the well equipped to provide forecasts of the river the weather service does not have the resources to monitor each tributary so the Weather Service proposes that counties uh prepare their own self-help programs and in this respect uh we will uh cooperate to the utmost with the counties to uh help them set up these programs in doing this we will provide not only the technical uh assistance to select the sites where stream gauges rain gauges should be placed but we'll also provide the limited amount of Hardware that's necessary that is rain gauges staff gauges with help and technical assistance from the Weather Service the Corp of Engineers the Susana River Basin commission federal and state Emergency Management agencies and others loming County's flood coordinator was able to start organizing the system now in the act of coping with what looks like a flood it's a simple system based on a network of volun it's a rowing Branch 1.95 and there is no staff gauge there 1.95 okay Hills Grove 2 in of rain staff gauge 2 the volunteers about 50 in all have been recruited by the flood coordinator from names supplied by local service clubs industry associations environmental and other groups bottom of the sign there yeah never expected that much well that's what we're trying to do now is we have a pretty good system for industry and the public and businessmen like yourselves will have adequate time to be able to react uh say 8 6 8 hours ahead of a flood which give you time to get your stuff out the volunteers collect information about rainfall and stream height this they must do at least once a day every day rain or sh during bad weather this procedure may be required every 15 minutes when there is an alert uh when we have been advised or we know that there's more than an inch of rainfall uh we have to start uh observing the water when she starts to rise we come up here and redis gaug and we redis gaug every hour on the hour uh day or night and most often the emergencies happen at night but that doesn't make any difference you get up here with a flashlight you walk out in the bridge you look over here you look at the gauge you immediately get in touch with the coordinator and he gets in touch with the uh radio Center in Williamsport or the or the flood watch Center and this way we feel that we're helping ourselves and we're helping people down the creek and those that are reading the gauges up the creek are helping us [Music] by good morning sir it's still raining and the data is pouring in some of it from adjacent County start taking a look at these indexes here and see what we're going to get ra data however is meaningless the flood warning staff must interpret it to decide if the flood threat is real flood specialists at the National Weather Service and elsewhere have developed a simple procedure for calculating the severity location and timing of a potential flood it considers the average rainfall of a watershed as well as the capacity of the ground to absorb water information derived from tables furnished by the National Weather Service get done this procedure makes it possible to determine how severe a flood to expect next reading we came up on meanwhile at Sprout walren Engineers are performing the same kind of calculation to take effective preventive action the company must know which of its facilities is likely to be flooded by how much water and when latest readings up the river from theil side this procedure enables Engineers to determine the rate of Rise of the streams and the river and to calcul at the time and height of the [Music] crests by now the flood warning center is fully staffed some of these workers are County Employees others are volunteers it's raining harder now all over the county flooding seems likely around the flood plane thousands of families are waiting for official word we'll wait a b what the figures you have them here at Sprout Walen Executives and Engineers are already considering evacuation of low-lying plant areas the company's prepared the location of all vulnerable machinery and material is listed on a single chart along with personnel and vehicles needed to move it we're going to have to do something in The Foundry and the pattern we're going to need uh at least two forklifts let's send three Dan wooden pallets enable heavy equipment to be moved by forklift with the trucks waiting to transfer it to Higher Ground lift bars make it easier to load generators onto waiting flatbed trucks special fittings enable workers to quickly disconnect hundreds of motors which have been numbered so they can be put back quickly yep [Music] [Applause] how about at the flood warning center potential trouble surfaces Steve I haven't heard anything from Chuck coage on Pine Creek and I tried to call out there I can't get through uh okay let me go see if I can raising with the radio people it's trouble this system is well prepared to handle hey I can't get a hold of Chuck coolage up in a Slate Run area I think the phone lines are up can you have one of your people in get in there3 okay good enough good wb3 Howard just looks like uh these readings are starting to look pretty heavy now by now the County Center has a prediction and is just about ready to recommend that a warning be issued but first two final checks hello wal 2 we Steve we might have minor to moderate flooding in some few areas along M Creek company and the county check their predictions with each other National Weather Service and B check with the Weather Service I'm glad you called uh say we've got some problem shaping this Blood warning system in other words has three separate components Each of which complement and reinforces the others this afternoon it's one system I think we better get out with a warning right away especially on Lycoming and Muny what do you think the National Weather Service says we're going to get about two more inches of rain and uh we got some minor heading toward moderate flooding going on in my country Creek here the decision to issue a warning is made by the County Commissioners about it I thought I better let you people know okay now how much time you do you think that we have the director of Emergency Services coordinates the effort all emergency agencies in the county have to be alerted adjacent counties must be informed the warning to the public will go out over the emergency broadcasting system activate the EBS we also will want to get hold of the Red Cross uh he's looking at a 4-Hour time period until it hits the the populated areas here of of cing Creek so that gives us enough time 35 be advised we have been notified from the flood control like Creek is rising that you should go through the bridges and check the gauges and notify us of any chages headquarters okay we have received word from County that loming cek area in the vicinity of cotage Avenue is starting to flood we have to go rock on doors and back away [Applause] people how many more do we need just a couple more K1 350 mgy defense control 171 yeah this is skip the WK do you have a message hi Skip let's B down flood warning system about 10 minutes for going to broadcast over the EBS system a uh flood warning will you be ready at that time yeah I'll notify the other stations right away we interrupt this program because of a local emergency important instructions will follow the national weather service has issued a warning of moderate flooding effective until 900 p.m. for persons along loming at Muny Creek in loming County this [Music] afternoon this is not the flood that came that [Music] day it's the flood of 1972 which occurred with very little warning [Music] now the federal and state governments the Private Industry and the county are cooperating to see that there is a warning thousands of people are able to take action to protect their property and Safeguard their own lives this situation has lasted 11 hours finally word comes from up country of a welcome change in the weather okay got good news okay thank you very much Doug about the moderate level yeah rain stopped up at Forksville hard all right the rain has stopped that's the wrap but if it were to start again tomorrow this whole system would be activated once again the largest motivation is probably self-preservation I mean for years the Nature has flooded this Valley not very often but when it has it's it's it's done a lot of damage it was the only way that we have of knowing whether we're going to be flooded or not if we you know if we're not on our toes we're we're going to be in trouble and if I have know we could have done something like this here I I'd I'd have helped long before this and uh I'm glad I can I can be part of it flood warning is now a permanent function of government in loming county county commissioner Dave Castlebury the initial cost for setting up the flood warning system in like County was only uh about $500 and uh this is proven itself to us to be a worthwhile investment because in one year alone we feel that there was a a saving of about 34 of a million dollars to the property owners of loming County and certainly uh we're of the opinion that is reason enough to want to continue this project we are committed to continuing this project in the future in Industry executives are pleased with the proven success of the system they've saved money during the 1972 flood we incurred out of pocket losses in excess of a million dollar and some parts of our plant were out of operation for over 3 months this is to be compared with the 1975 flood when we incurred losses of about $75,000 and we were literally back in production in about 3 days since that time the ly homing County flood warning system has been developed that utilizes governmental agencies in addition to the volunteer organization we expect to have much better information and I think we can do an even better job as long as people live and work on it a flood plane will involve a risk to life and property but as long as people pull together to keep watch along the Watershed that risk can be managed [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]