Sewers

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Living on a sewer line, I am concerned about the potential back-up. I asked our site plumber about this possibility and whether or not he installed gate valves on the side. He assured me that I didn't have anything to worry about because the sewage would come out of the man-whole covers before it backed up into homes. He's an expert but I would like other plumbers opinions.

-- DGBennett (bennett1@peachnet.net), September 25, 1999

Answers

You say site plumber? If he knows the site and knows plumbing then he's probably right. It seems to me that if there is a manhole between you and the clog, then the flow will come up the manhole (assuming it's lower than any drains in your house.) Seems to me if the clog is below you and the manhole is above you, then you're going to have problems.

As an aside, ignoring y2k, sewer backup damage is often not covered in a standard homeowners policy unless you ask to purchase a separate endorsement.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), September 25, 1999.


Sewer backup, overflows into street, overflows into streams, overflows into freshwater drinking supply. As the sewage keeps overflowing, it would eventually backup into your home if your level with the manhole. There's only two things you need to know as a plumber: Hot on the left, cold on the right and sh*t runs down hill. What are we going to do with the other problem associated with sewage backup? Disease.....it's happening right now due to Hurricane Floyd.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 25, 1999.

Bardou, are you in NC? What's on the local news there regarding disease outbreaks? the most recent thing I've seen was on natl. news talking about setting up the mobile homes to get people out of shelters, shipping drinking water in, the dead animals, coffins, etc., and how no one should be walking around in the water. Any local developments that you know of?

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), September 25, 1999.

[ Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only ]

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1999 16:58:59 ET XXXXX

N CAROLINA TURNS INTO '18,000-SQUARE MILE CESSPOOL'

The viscous soup of floodwater, sewage, hog waste, animal and human carcasses, chemicals, gasoline, fertilizer, pesticides and other pollutants churns in Roseboro, N.C -- more than a week after Hurricane Floyd passed through.

"Floyd has created a public health threat unprecedented in the region," reports Sunday's PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, "and any day now, on the surface of this 18,000-square-mile cesspool, billions of mosquitoes will begin to hatch."

The paper's Richard Lezin Jones reports: "At week's end, epidemiologists, health and environmental officials were expressing concern about the possibility of an outbreak of gastrointestinal and other diseases, such as pathogenic e. coli, caused by contaminated drinking water."

A letter to the DRUDGE REPORT says too much about the disaster:

Dear Mr. Drudge,

The enormity of the calamity that has stricken eastern North Carolina is not comprehended by the national media, federal government officials or American citizens in general.

My town of New Bern, NC, was one of the few east of I-95 spared by most of the mind-boggling levels of flooding in the aftermath of Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd. But from my vantage point, I see a level of destruction and suffering throughout the Coastal Plain region of the state that is indescribable.

The flood has been categorized by government officials and by meteorologists and other scientists as a 500-year or 1,000-year flood. Ironically, most of the areas swamped by the deluge are not even in so-called "flood plains."

The flood is evolving into a catastrophe of Biblical proportions. As the waters slowly subside over the eastern section of the state, corpses are being discovered in buildings, automobiles, trees, etc. You can expect the official death toll to climb in coming days and weeks as thousands of square miles of submerged towns and rural areas emerge from the slowly waning flood.

In addition, millions of drowned farm animals and hundreds of millions of gallons of animal manure spilled from the waste pits of giant hog and poultry factories combined with unprecedented spills of petroleum products, chemicals and assorted toxic substances may well result in an unimaginable environmental disaster.

The destruction suffered by industry, agriculture and other enterprises; the loss of wages as a result of flooded factories and businesses; and the damage to highways, bridges, water plants, utility plants and other infrastructure may well be in the tens of billions of dollars.

Tens of thousands of the people who survived, including those in shelters as well as those in residences isolated by surrounding flood waters, are living like third-world refugees and peasants. When the waters recede, their existence will continue to be pitiful because much of eastern North Carolina will be like a war-ravaged wasteland for months or even years.

Billions of dollars and untold military manpower and assets have been committed by the United States to remote countries all over the world in recent years for political, economic and security reasons. I fail to comprehend why a massive effort on a similar scale isn't under way at this moment to help relieve the misery, bring about stability, safety and sanitation, and assist with the recovery and reconstruction of a region of the American South that is undergoing human suffering on a scale not seen since the Civil War.

The purpose of this message is to bring this desperate situation to your attention. In my opinion, the response of federal agencies to this enormous and ongoing tragedy has been too slow and too meager. I suspect this is because the responsible authorities, though well-meaning, have yet to grasp the apocalyptic scale of the flood and the incredible consequences that are only now becoming apparent.

If you decide to research the situation, as I hope you will, please get your information from the local broadcast and print media in eastern North Carolina, not from the national media. The national media has attempted to frankly report the flooding but they tend to focus on the dire straits of a single town or area without imparting to the public the overwhelming reality that the disaster afflicting the locality they are reporting from is duplicated in towns, villages and farmlands that cover a third of the entire state.

Eastern North Carolina needs help much more rapidly, on a scale far more massive and with a sense of urgency far more acute than what seems to be coming forth so far. Please help get the word out, Drudge.

Respectfully,

New Bern, NC

* * * * *

Developing...

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 25, 1999.


Sheila: No, I live in Northern California. I'm soon going to be the proud owner of beachfront property before the end of November. I live east of the coastal range at an elevation of about 1,000 feet. You see, someone has predicted an 8+ earthquake and I'm gearing up for that (need to buy a boat). No doubt with an earthquake of that magnitude there will be broken water, sewer, gas, oil, you name it mains. I've lived through many earthquakes here and vividly remember the Alaskan earthquake and the devastation that it left. Human life is fragile and mother nature can be lovely and wicked at the same time.

Thanks Leska for the newspaper article, I'd hate to be living there.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 25, 1999.



Moving to a California beach to dodge a California earthquake seems iffy to me. Some of the fault lines at risk lie offshore, and an quake offshore is likely to produce a tsunami which could scrub the beaches clean.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 26, 1999.

Tom: It was meant as a joke. People here in California joke all the time about having coastal property if there's an earthquake and part of California breaks off into the ocean. I live about 175 miles from the ocean (inland). We have the coastal cascades separating us and the ocean. If a tidal wave gets over those cascades or comes up through the Sacramento Valley we're all going to be in BIG trouble. I think I'm going to have to start being REAL serious on this threads.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 26, 1999.

Solution for backup problems for debunkers, pollies, trolls. GET YOUR HEAD OUT!! {*^D`X~~

-- Michael (mikeymac@uswest.net), September 26, 1999.

Here's a godo site for Floyd aftermath news:

http://www.wral-tv.com/news/wral/

If you click on Team Coverage somewhere on the right of the page (scroll down), you'll find more links, one of hwich is ot a forum for those in the ravaged areas.

Here's a site from a Raleigh newspaper with a good search engine:

http://www.news-observer.com/nc_index.html

I remember seeing a heavy National Guard presence after various severe storms, from Camille in 1969 to present, it seems to me that the number of Guard on site is way down--I'd guess about 25-50% of historic proportions. In one town parole and probation offices are doing law enforcement duty during the day--has anyone ever heard of that before? Most footage of clean-up help shows prisoners and civilian volunteers. Some firefighters and police officers from other towns are also assisting. But I remember seeing scores of amphibious vehicles ("ducks") used for various rescue and assistance purposes during flood emergencies and have seen very few in the aftermath of Floyd. Many of the rescues were carried out by untrained civilians, which is why one boat capsized, resulting in the drowning of six family members. It's not as if nobody knew Floyd was coming or what area or how bad it was likely to be.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), September 26, 1999.


The down side to downsizing the military. Just one of the down sides ...

Thanks for the links, Old Git.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), September 26, 1999.



Sewer Back up is one of my top fears. That being the case, and haveing some time to think about it, on my street we do have a sewer cover just off of the main street before our complex. If water travels firstly by the lowest point, then your correct, the sewer cover would first rise and allow out flow before backing up your toilet. However if you have a cellar that my not be the case. I have one. The drain for the washer is open, and thats were I have a problem. However the pipe were the out-flow is has threads on it. I bought a screw-on cap, and that will be caped if some of the main Utilitys go out...---... Good luck

-- Les (yoyo@tolate.com), September 26, 1999.

Those of us depending on the Manhole cover to limit backup should remember to loosen it before the sludge backs up that far. As it is, they are on pretty tight to contain odors.



-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), September 26, 1999.


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