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Thread: Mid Michigan Flooding and 2 Dam Failures (lots of pics)

  1. #1
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    Mid Michigan Flooding and 2 Dam Failures (lots of pics)

    No deaths, no major injuries reported. We are still under the state wide lock down too. Most people in this area ignored that to see what happened and such including myself. I have a couple pics of right before the dam went, but dark crappy shots so didn't bother posting.

    I live on high and dryish land so I didn't have much for flood problems. I do know people in Sanford area that had their house under water though, from what I've seen their houses should be fairly easy to repair, basically a major remodel, structure looks intact. Kind of a pain to get around with a ton of local roads washed out from the flood/rain plus the major bridges in the area all down from the dams. Couple days ago it was about a 60 mile trip to get to the other side of the river, one of the bridges reopened near Sanford that was recently built and was very tall vs the others in the area so that cuts the trip down to like 30 miles or so.

    The real kicker is we just had a "100 year" flood in 2017 and this event was worse.

    Figured I'd post some photos of the area, stuff you likely won't see on the news. Kind of wish I would have taken pics right when I got news the dam washed out, I was around 3 miles from the M30 bridge at that time and heard it on the radio for the local fire department effectively right when it went.





    Here's a few pics I took. This is the major road that goes through the area just south of the first dam that broke called M30.






    This is the 2nd bridge down stream of the first dam, Curtis road.










    This is what's left of Wixom Lake after 2 days of draining.






    About a mile upstream from the last shot (roughly 2 miles from the dam). The last pic is the first dam that failed with 42x zoom from that






    Some misc pics farther yet up stream. The good spot I was heading to was closed down by the state police.





    Sanford Dam (2nd one that burst), couldn't get an angle to see the failure point due to a few guys in uniforms. This lake (Sanford Lake) is also drained now like Wixom, I haven't taken photos yet though.






    Back down stream (between Sanford and Edenville dams) near a friend's 2nd home.






    Same spot, still not sure what this is, looks like a grass patch... in the middle of the lake though? Maybe a section of sod washed and settled there? Maybe just the weeds and such from the lake that didn't wash away.

    Last edited by ps2fixer; 05-23-2020 at 03:29 PM.

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    Drone footage before the dam went (something like 6hr before it went)


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    2 days after. That bridge that's completely wiped out is after the M30 Bridge I book pics of, I can't get to that area. The bridge was always a pain to get under on boats since the height was always so close. Hopefully when it's rebuilt the bridge will be higher and potentially longer so it doesn't have such a risk of being washed out again.


  4. #4
    fabiodriven's Avatar
    fabiodriven is offline Aspiring romance novel cover model, and the Official 3WW slayer of thieves and swindlers. Catch me if you can
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    Boy oh boy, someone dropped the ball there. Thanks for sharing. It seems the only news reaching anyone anymore is mostly political.
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  5. #5
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    Well this can be political too. Dams are privately owned, they lowered to lake not long ago and the state sued them over destroying wet lands. Lake was drained for federal inspection which the Hydro dams failed and their federal operating license revoked in 2018. Dams have been known to have problems since 1999. Who's at fault, I think it's shared, private owners and the state. Federal already determined the dams were unsafe.

    Dams were built in the 1920's, there's a steam powered "shovel" that fell in the lake when it was constructed and it's still there on the dry lake bed now, my dad got pics of it.

    M30 is a state highway, 1 damaged bridge, 1 bridge completely wiped out
    US10 bridge got damaged (minor wash out)
    Curtis road I'd assume is a county road, huge section of the road washed out after the bridge including the bridge approach

    I haven't seen it myself, but Saginaw road that runs through sanford is majorly wiped out too, saw that in a drone vid.

    There was something like $300k of repairs done on the Edenville dam berm not too long ago, the dams were currently in process of being sold to the 4 counties and there's documents I found of plans for repair and building a new spill way for this winter. I guess as the saying goes, day late and a dollar short.

    The raw power of that water is crazy, it's a fairly small dam since it's a man made lake on a stream bed. I couldn't imagine the destructive forces of a much larger dam failing. I heard in one of the random videos I watched that 10mph water as the destructive force of 300mph winds. Who knows the flow rate when the dam went, but I'm sure it was a lot more than 10mph.

    Looks like there's a current lawsuit being built against the dam owner.

    https://www.forthepeople.com/dam-flo...SAAEgIXQfD_BwE

    Here's a pretty good unbiased reporting on the situation.

    https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-b...d-midland.html

    Either case, this will likely take years to repair everything. I don't expect the bridges to be fixed by winter, the gov moves too slow here for that to happen. Trump did declare a federal emergency here, so maybe with the federal level of help they can beat my expectations.

    Here's the steam powered shovel if you wanted to see it. Besides that, there's some misc junk on the lake bottom, found an old bike, old wash tub but nothing of super interest. Up north at another dam (different water way I'm pretty sure), there's two old cars on the river bottom, when the dam is closed off you can get to the cars. I think they both have straight 8's in them, looks like 40's-50's era. Don't know the story behind them, but there's a short bit of woods then a road, guessing maybe they were stolen and ditched there, or someone missed the road corner in bad weather or something like that.

    There's also an old rail way that's closed now but the train was in Sanford yet. Not sure if it's still there, it was quite close to the river. The towns around here popped up because of the valuable wood being cut and floated down the river.

    https://www.ourmidland.com/news/arti...photo-19446157

    To give a little context, another town east of the Edenville dam was known for the logging camps. They don't make horses like they used to xD.



    I've seen photos of logs floating down the river before the dams were constructed and I remember one pic that I never fully understood what it was. It was a massive area clear cut and hilly ground. The towns are flat where the main buildings are for the most part, but now I'm thinking that was the Wixom lake bottom or Sanford lake bottom before it was flooded. Sadly I couldn't find the pic, I bet it was from around 1923-1925.

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    Glad to hear you’re all right

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    Yea I'm fine, directly family didn't live in the path. I have a cousin in Sanford that had around 10-12ft of water at their house, he waded through the water to check the house, interior is trashed, structure seems ok. Another person my dad knows lived about 1/4 from the river and his house had about 5ft at it. He was working on that place to retire in. Another guy my dad knows has major damage to his house, I haven't seen the place, but the water was in his yard in the 2017 flood so I suspect it is a similar story to my cousin's house.

    This is the worst I got in my yard, the sandy part under water is part of a drive I'm building up, there's also a ditch there.



    Here's an after shot 1 day later. You can't really see the ditch, it's really small, never had flooding problems before like that, just drainage problems. Couldn't do much since the swamp on the other side of the drive was full as well as the ditch along the road.





    Here's the major ditch across my road.






    For the pics in the first post of the tube draining out, this is the opposite side of that. I heard it was flooding over the road. The night before while it was still raining it was real close to that point.






    Here's a link to my youtube with some videos showing what happened.

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRv...RwXATlTTKIToDQ

  8. #8
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    Glad you're OK

    Did you wear a mask?
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    Nope, no one had masks on, I wasn't within the 6ft hazard zone either lol. State police no masks, the only people around here with masks is when you go into the store because businesses can refuse to let you shop with out one. I also heard some stores refusing cash payments too, but that was like a month ago.

    I heard there was thermo imaging done via satellite and whoever determined that the Governor's stay at home order was being ignored.

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    Wow Cory that's just crazy! Wonder how many old firearms are buried in the drained lake bed, you might be surprised. I'm glad we're boring when it comes to weather events like this......and we'll keep it that way!
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  11. #11
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    Normally it's pretty boring here too, flooding once in a while but nothing major. My dad walked a fair bit of the lake bed and all he found was the steam powered shovel and a golf ball. Bunch of people have been riding quads on the lake, I guess updated news is that the ground is unstable and not allowed there any more, sink holes possible and such since it's a sand based lake. I guess there's a bunch of underground lakes and such, I've herd of plenty of stories about that but never seen anything first hand.

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    Well if you need any really good top soil that’s where to get it ! Man I bet there’s alot of finger-pointing as too is responsible for this.
    If its on the internet its got to be true they can't put any lie's on the internet

  13. #13
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    Yea, it's hard to really know. Most I know is the company that owns the dam lowered it around 2018 for federal inspection, it failed so the hydro license was removed. State sued over the lowering of the lake and from my understanding the judge ordered them to raise the lake to normal levels. You can point your finger at the company for not building the extra spill way and repairs, but they claim they didn't have enough funds for that, or you can blame the state for ordering the lake level to be increased when the dam was known to have issues. If the lake level was kept low this might have been avoided somewhat. Midland and Sanford would get their "normal" flooding, but not wiping out houses and such.

    One thing is for sure, no one can blame Federal gov for it, they already deemed the dam unsafe in 2018 and turned regulation back to the state (no power generation allowed).

    As for top soil, down stream of the dam might be good, but up stream it's all sand, nothing grows in sand till something is added to it. My parent's front yard has taken years of throwing apple cores, banana peals, etc in their front yard to get any grass to grow. There's wood land all over here, the top soil in the woods is the best top soil I've seen around, but it's also very hard to extract with all the roots and plants in it. Swamp bottoms are very thick with black dirt/mud, stinks a bit but I'm sure the smell would go away in time.

    My dad and I have been helping people long the effected area we know by fixing their small engines. My old bus driver's dad's bother has like 15 engines at my dad's place right now including a small side by side, quad, go cart, power washer, mowers, etc. His garage was under about 3ft of water, the house was around 4ft or so. Another guy we know has his house as a total loss. He has flood insurance but I guess they have a ton of things they don't cover. Hopefully FEMA does a better job than he's dealing with currently. He's living in a 5th wheel camper in a parking lot currently.

    I heard there's a group of volunteers coming up to help with the clean up too, there's several donation funds setup for this too.

    Consumers must have been working on the power circuit in my area, my road had no power yesterday, I saw one of the sub power stations light up like a football game at night time. It's near the dam so guessing it was flooded.

    There's a road near my parents that was being worked on yesterday too, it has the shoulder washed out a tiny bit, looks like they were doing inspections and such to see what all was needed to fix it, road completely closed off.

    Also, there's tons of traffic on my road, one point of the road you can see the lake from and there's a bunch of cars parked in the road.. even though there's a store on the corner they could park at and walk 15ft to see it w\o effecting traffic.

    I heard there's some law or something that people can't pick up flood related items from the side of the road, not sure how true that is. Metal scrapers wouldn't like that. I'm sure my garbage schedule will be delayed since there's so much junk for the truck to pick up.

    Oh, when I was working on helping yesterday, the smell of the lake is getting pretty bad, lots of fish on the ground sun baking. Pike, bluegill, etc.

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    ATCKevin is offline At The Back Of The Pack Arm chair racerFirst time rider
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    I drove through there the other day on my way to deliver a trike to a guy. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It’s heartbreaking to see everyone’s lives and homes devastated like that. I couldn’t believe it


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    There will be more dam failures for the next several generations. The US went on a dam building frenzy in the early-mid 20th century, without much thought as to what subsequent generations will have to endure financially to maintain or remove them.

    Here is a website showing past dam removals, and that group continues to work on removing more. https://www.americanrivers.org/threa...m-removal-map/

    Something to think about before buying expensive lakefront property, or living below a dam.
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