
Home of Strategic Command and Some of the USAF's Most Prized Aircraft Flooded - howard941
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26991/home-of-strategic-command-and-some-of-usafs-most-prized-aircraft-is-flooding
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deadmetheny
I've noticed an almost complete lack of coverage of the flooding in Iowa and
Nebraska - I have a lot of family there and the amount of damage has been
astounding[1]. Nebraska has more miles of rivers than any state in the US, and
many of them are flooding or close to it. It's a complete disaster there.

[1][https://weather.com/news/news/2019-03-17-flooding-before-
and...](https://weather.com/news/news/2019-03-17-flooding-before-and-after-
images-midwest-nebraska)

~~~
protomyth
Its not on the coast or in Chicago or Denver, so it really will only get
regional coverage. The book about fark.com "It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass
Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News" has a section illustrating this with a
crane collapse in Manhattan and then one in St. Louis.

A few years back with that winter storm hit South Dakota and killed a lot of
cattle (the cattle were mostly in the summer fields and the weather actually
went from freezing rain to blizzard), it wasn't really reported and people
wondered what the heck was going on with steak prices. I sometimes wish there
was a "trend news" website that reported supply to consumer news.

------
aquova
Just to give my experience: I'm from Nebraska, and was back there this past
week. When I arrived home (in Lincoln), there was still 4-6 inches of snow on
the ground, following the snowiest winter they've had in decades. It turned
about 60 degrees on a rainy day and all that snow melted, but the ground was
still frozen and had nowhere to go. We didn't have bad flooding in my area,
but my parents yard was ankle deep in water for about 24 hours. The
interstates were closed, and I got detoured twice driving out. It really is
something.

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dev_dull
I just heard about the flooding yesterday. Sometimes I don’t get the news.
I’ll see wall-to-wall coverage on some inane thing, but only learn about huge,
destructive flooding from random people I follow on Twitter.

Maybe we’re just sleeping in the bed we made, but how do we get out of it?

~~~
jnurmine
Well, some people think that we can't, the only thing left to do is to brace
for impact.

The one getting most media visibility recently is Jem Bendell's "deep
adaptation". This is not a new invention though. It was preceded by various
resilient communities/resilient cities approaches, post-societal crash prepper
books and prepper forums in general, and so on.

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dd36
Wow. Why have this much critical infrastructure near flood zones? Given that
climate change is increasing the frequency of major floods, why hadn’t they
hardened their protections?

~~~
adwww
To be fair, The Pentagon has repeatedly listed climate change as one of it's
biggest threats for a number of years, but it's currently too politically
touchy to do much about.

One report in particular...

> The 22-page assessment delivered to Congress on Thursday says about two-
> thirds of 79 mission-essential military installations in the U.S. that were
> reviewed are vulnerable to current or future flooding, with more than half
> vulnerable to current or future drought. About half also are at risk from
> wildfires, including the threat of mudslides and erosion from rains
> following the blazes.

~~~
giardini
Yes, but concerns about building air bases in locations that flood predate the
Pentagon's relatively recent concerns about "climate change", which is little
more than political spin.

The truth is that the location of military bases is a political decision and
the wisest decision-making processes (e.g., one that included good flooding
estimates) are not always used. Of course, reality has a way of intruding into
political thinking and decision-making but usually only long after critical
decisions were made. But the crows eventually come home to roost.

IOW not everything is driven by the political topic "climate change".
Sometimes its simply flooding, flood zones and extremely capitalistic local
land developers.

~~~
dd36
Frequency of extreme flooding is increased by climate change. It's not
political. It's climate science.

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zackmorris
The Cooper nuclear power plant 59 miles from Omaha is also shutting down
temporarily due to flooding:

[https://www.omaha.com/news/iowa/cooper-nuclear-station-
still...](https://www.omaha.com/news/iowa/cooper-nuclear-station-still-
operating-but-preparing-for-shutdown-
as/article_f0edca08-0454-5795-8622-3646e954ae5e.html)

The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant 18 miles from Omaha was shut down
permanently on October 24, 2016 due to flooding:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Calhoun_Nuclear_Generatin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Calhoun_Nuclear_Generating_Station)

~~~
deadmetheny
The river isn't necessarily going to reach the 45' point that CNS requires for
shutdown - it might, but no guarantee.

FCNS shut down due to budgetary concerns - its operational costs were too high
to justify keeping it open. The flood was just the last of a long series of
issues they had down there.

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protomyth
I'm actually a bit worried about the Red River in North Dakota. 1997 really
was not very fun (well, the 96-97 winter was horrid). This rapid melt with too
much snow and frozen ground is hitting a lot of places. My parent's place in
MN had water coming in the basement apartment. It looks like the Twin Cities
(MSP) have a large amount of flooding given how backed up the work crews and
insurance adjusters are.

~~~
mitchty
> It looks like the Twin Cities (MSP) have a large amount of flooding given
> how backed up the work crews and insurance adjusters are.

I'm from ND originally and remember that flood, and yeah, it floods here in
the cities a lot. This was more due to the super: zomg cold+snow, to... zomg
its 40F and the entire streets a river cause nobody cleans out the drains in
the fall prior to winter so that thaws are ok.

I'll just say in St Paul, rapid thaws means almost everyones basements flood.
Even on the hills, its insane how easily it happens.

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ycombinatoracct
Offutt AFB isn't too far from GCP us-central1. Anyone know if Google Cloud has
said anything about the flood?

~~~
kevin_b_er
[https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144691/historic-
flo...](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144691/historic-floods-
inundate-nebraska)

See the interactive slidable map. A google data center that is probably us-
central1 is just above the lake above the 'e' in Detail. The waters appear to
still be a ways off. Google says it is in Council Bluffs, Iowa and there's a
large google data center there you can find on google maps. A link to the
location on google maps:
[https://goo.gl/maps/xEJt83kKoe22](https://goo.gl/maps/xEJt83kKoe22)

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SiempreViernes
This is the national emergency that you hear about on the news, right?

~~~
war1025
It's not getting a lot of coverage on the news, but it will absolutely get
state and federal emergency funding.

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cowkingdeluxe
Related to this base, if you want to see the F22 fly up close, go the day
before an airshow there to the east end of the runway and you will only be
hundreds of feet away.
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Offutt+AFB,+NE/@41.1108278...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Offutt+AFB,+NE/@41.1108278,-95.891636,754m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x879477c2e10f0c3d:0xd7d7cf14fa470392!8m2!3d41.1242718!4d-95.9145568)

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newnewpdro
George Carlin used to criticize people living in flood planes back in the day,
catastrophic flooding is such a regular occurrence it made its way into his
stand-up routine.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUUbItrDjKw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUUbItrDjKw)

