What if: Katrina hit the UK

NorthernWave

NorthernWave

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As you can imagine it's all over the news here in the U.S. and the aftermath of Katrina is in no uncertain terms SHOCKING. But seeing the way they were so badly affected got me thinking, what if it hit the UK. The big difference would mainly be the fact we are above water level so the flooding wouldn't be nearly as bad, but Katrina was in fact bigger than the UK. If it had desroyed the entire UK in the same way, what would it do to the economy? (or is that a silly question) who would help us? How would the UK citizens behave?
I for one believe we would come together and become more patriotic as we did during the war. I think looting etc would be fairly localised and the police would maintain control. Our buildings would withstand the winds WAY better than they did in the states (just look at the storms in 85 and 86). Also our power lines are mostly under ground so maybe restoring power wouldn't take so long.

Chris
 
Main point is that the land is higher and afaik the main prob no is the water level is high but the land is very low. All of a suden the whole place has become Waterworld innit.

additionally, i believe that buildings in the uk are a bit more substantial than those in the US. We see telly pix of wood-blown devastation inamongst which are brick/concret bldg with windows blown out and that's it.

The preponderance of wooden shack-type bldgs seem to presuppose that they are only going to last 50 years instead of over 100 and that's what has happened.

However, the telly pix of a road bridge that snapped at every possible stress point as though made of playing cards is especially indicative of the yank preference for the very cheapest of the cheap stuff. A simply supported non-suspension road bridge should surely be able to withstand deluge or winds of under 150mph when made of steel/concrete units. If you look carefully, the ultracritical damns/levees seem to be single skin and oh woops it's broken, there goes 100 square miles under water. They seem unable to detect good quality at almost every level.

Specific recent UK examples i suppose might include Boscastle - but altho no high winds, that was a narrow ravine through which tons of water rushed down. AFAIK, not much of this happened cos again, New Orleans is pretty flat everywhere. And even with all that water force, the boscastle houses stood up albeit half full of mud.

With high winds, the tornado near b'ham was another recent one, but again the woodenish roofs got damaged, not the brick structures.

Civil engineering (and indeed quite a lot of engineering) quite reasonably starts with the lesson called "the three little pigs".
 
and the modern houses we build with timber frames, and a single skin of bricks round the outside to make it look solid: are these equally hurricane proof compared to breeze blocks+bricks or lumps of rock ?

dv.
 
Hate to admit it but tcm is right about the building durability, with regard to housing anyway /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif. Unfortunately I suspect that our modern commercial and industrial buildings are stucturally very similar to those built in the U.S. so are likely to be damaged in the same way.
 
I have a new house that is double skinned. Large solid breeze blocks take the weight on the inside, the bricks are tied in on the outside and add waterproofing, a cavity and of course looks! The roof is cemented and tied in (as per latest regs) so when the wind blows there is no howling like in a timber frame. I hope mine will stand up better, only time will tell.

Must admit some manufacturers do build lesser buildings but not all! I had one of those timber frame ones last time, nothing but trouble.

Still it will not be as strong as the old farmhouses with 2ft+ walls!

Paul
 
hurricane-proof

my "3 little pigs" remark was tongue in cheek. In reality, i reckon it would be quite possible to build a wooden house and "brick" house with the woden one MORE resistant to high winds. I am not at all sure that the timber frame of the brickhouse would make it necesarily less susceptible. I had a timber-frame house and it was incredibly warm. No hurricanes, but the house seems all fine, light enough not to develop cracks but heavy enough not to move.

But much more important than any particular strategy, i reckon it is be the indivdual nature of parts of the house, and the way in which those were attached that determines its dtrength in extreme conditions. So, frexample, the quick way of putting up a roof is to use cheap light tiles with minimum overlap and not-steep pitch (smaller roof area is cheaper) and not too many copper nails cos they're expensive. This (from telly pix) means that the rooftiles won't even stay on as a helicopter comes close - and lots of people have blgs where helicopters come close. Once one or two tilees are flicked off, the rest come off much more easily in sustained winds.

But you could use even wooden tiles with much larger overlap and more nails/fixings which would not be so susceptible. Its not hard to make a rooof so strong you can turn it upside down and bounce it around and the tiles don't flick off or come loose.

Individual issuues like the number and nature of fixings are critical, so (morre expensive) longer and annulated nails would hold rooftile frinstance far longer than shorter pin-nails of the type likely to be used by yanks building a quick house using a nail gun.

Some modern uk houses use v weak mortar mixes of 12 or even 16 to 1 which is cheaper than olde 3 or 4 to one. So with the mild stuff you can lift off the top layer of bricks by hand and brush out the mortar with a toothbrush - and high wind rain will be able to do the same. Much harder with more powerful mortar mix imho. And so on.

Timber frame would not at all mean nec less wind resistance. There was one N Orleans prefab bldg that stay as a bldg even though it moved around. So it was strong enough - just not anchored properly.
 
when I was a lad in the 50,s the east coast had a tidal surge due to high tides and northerly winds,this caused a surge which built up because of the narrowness of the dover channel,the flooding nearly got to Louth which is way inland,many people lost their lives.down the eastcoast.so yes it could happen again,probably worse because the Environment agency etc.are no longer dredging rivers they are only building up banks as its cheaper.so if we get heavy rains the water does not get away.The yorks.ouse is a prime example of a mismanaged river.
 
hi AW. Good to see you are not otherwise occupied by hurricane issues other than wall2wall news. You must be er buried under all this.

"unable to detect quaility at every level" is a huge generalisation of course. We see tv/film representations of very elegant americans with elegant lifestyles living in tasteful offices and homes and so forth but in reality, a visit to the US does make one turn a bit socialist: everything tangible from food to cars is done with the cost in mind first and foremost. Even the roadsigns seem to be the very cheapest possible, and the police wear plastic shoes and crimplene trousers. Now, other readers won't know that you helped me source a spectacularly fab fountain pen which seemed only to be stocked in the US and not anywhere in Europe, and altho (i think?) mont blanc is European (swiss?), there must be at least SOME of these very tasteful people hiding away somewhere in the USA able to recognise and purchase high quailty stuff - but they so not seem to hold sway in any position of government. They must be very reclusive, or they are few in number, or both.
 
er, far be it to let the facts get in the way of a good story but the reason that the rivers are no longer being dredged is to manage floods.

Dredged rivers let the water run off quicker that then floods downstream qucker rather than the slower runoff that occurs when you don't dredge. The water stays around longer in the higher reaches where there tends to be lower population densities rather than flooding the lower reaches where the pop densities tend to be higher.

So I guess you must live in the higher reaches.
 
Couldn't agree more, trash and high art seem to live cheek by jowel in the US. Whether people in the states are more materialistic, I dunno tho' . They generally have more disposable income so have more toys than us but not sure whether they are less spiritual/godly/whatever.
 
American civil engineering and building codes

are indeed very different to ours.

A well known example, quoted approvingly by American historians, is that the cost per mile of building the US railroad system was one tenth that of the UK railway system - and that was in the mid-nineteeth century!

There is a very good example of the British approach to hurricane proofing a large city; it is called Hong Kong, and the contrast with the reasonably adjacent city of Manila, built by the Americans 600 miles away, is stark. Manila has US building and civil engineering codes, including the overhead power lines. Its storm drains are laughably inadequate - Hong Kong's are massive, and every vulnerable hillside and tree in Hong Kong is stabilised.

Hong Kong's entire population, rich and poor, much larger than that of New Orleans, is housed in tropical storm proof housing.

America has a lot of land and historically it was short of labour - things were run up on the cheap.

The availabilty of cheap insurance has allowed this attitude to persist - sadly it is mainly we Europeans whose insurance companies are paying up once again.
 
mont blanc

Off thread, I know, but I think Mont Blanc writing tools are made in Hamburg by a subsidiary of the Dunhill tobacco empire.

R
 
weak mortar

loads! Well, i worked on building sites to fund university etc in the eighties and there were lots then. in fact, on some sites the formen got us to "knock up" the previous nights unused mortar and use that, which is a bit rubbish. Can't do it on exposed little garden-type walls, but on big sheer walls incl face brickwork that inspectory types can't reach to tickle once the scaffold has come down, no prob. If worried about this, keep clear of the brown-brick and blackmortar 14-storey sunalliance (or whetever it is now) building just off the corner of Queens Square in Leeds - the one where the bricks change colour 2/3 of the way up...
 
Re: weak mortar

The americans do have more disposible income I think!! There does seem to be a huge amount of debt here in Florida. But you've already seen the cost of petrol here, boats also are really cheap compared to the UK and then the cost of cars..... I paid $20,000 for my brand new Ford Exploder. They are incredibly materialistic and everything has to look perfect, even if it isn't (in the respect of houses). My boss is building his new home, a 7 bedroom, 4 garage house in the style of an old english manor house. I have taken him to see the uk architecture and it just blows him away at how old they are and that they still stand. Then to rub it in more I show him the HMS Victory which was built before most building in the US. Now the house is upto the third floor and what is he building it out of??? Timber frame!!! I said it should be brick and block and if you want it to look old don't make evrything so damn perfect!!!.
Who would build a city below sea level? Oh the americans!!!! (new orleans)

Chris
 
Err

Whats all this about being above water level

My house is 17 ft above sea level - LAT.

It is on the bank of a river (River Ouse)

A big spring tide can reach 6 metres

My house is 40 miles from the sea

You do the sums.

You might try looking on Inet for 1953 east coast floods - I think around 300 people died in UK, many more in Holland.

Or look up Selby floods 2000
 
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