When it comes to protecting your property from a flood, time can be a really crucial matter. Once you live in an area where floods are habitual and maybe even routine, you may be used to see people starting to deal with sandbagging in advance or maybe even react the sandbagging dikes yourself. What if a flood comes unexpectedly, leaving you only several hours to install your flood protection?
In this article, we shall explain how to recognize warning signs of the upcoming floods and interpret them to understand how much time you may have to arrange flood protection of your property.
What type of flood are we dealing with?
Meteorologists and flood experts may distinguish several types of floods. They depend on the type of terrain as well as body water that is turning into the disastrous flow. It is also essential to consider what exactly might have caused the flood.
However, once we talk about everyday life and you finding yourself one-on-one with the disaster, there are generally only two types of floods:
- Those that leave you couple of days to prepare
- Those that hardly leave you a couple of hours.
It is essential to understand that a "long-term" flood may bring the same level of distraction and property damage as the flash one. However, in the first case, you will definitely have much more time to install your sandbagging dike.
When it comes to flood protection from an unexpected disaster, time is never on your side. Even 1-foot flooding,, in this case,, may cause thousands of dollars of damage to your house or business, destroy or devalue your property.
Therefore although sandbagging is considered an inexpensive flood protection measure and is even provided by local authorities for free in certain areas, hardly will you manage to benefit from those savings if you don't manage to build your sandbagging dike on time.
By the way, building a sandbag dike will also require some extra effort and energy. You may need assistance or even professional help, which will end up in additional costs in investment. Therefore, you may want to research some alternative flood protection methods.
Moreover, since our grandparents mastered the art of sandbagging, the market came up with numerous fresh and innovative ideas that made flood protection much easier and more efficient.
How fast do floods come?
The biggest problem with floods, just like with any other natural disaster, is that they are extremely unpredictable. Especially considering the ongoing unstable and constantly changing climate.
Floods come to the areas that might have seemed to be safe from those types of events before. They become more aggressive, long-term, and destructive.
technically, there are 2 possible scenarios:
- You will be warned about the upcoming flood by local authorities;
- The flood will come unexpectedly.
The first variant can be considered an optimistic scenario. After all,, "forewarned is forearmed Once the flood threat occurs, local authorities will make sure to announce and contact all local citizens through all available means of communication - from radio and television to SMS services.
The main idea, in this case, is not to neglect the warning you have received and start preparations as soon as possible, even if there is not a cloud in the sky.
As for spontaneous floods, they are considered most unpredictable and therefore dangerous. However, practice shows that there is no smoke without fire, and certain warning signs had always occurred even before floods that were considered to be spontaneous and unpredictable:
- Unusual weather conditions - global warming has lead to the fact that temperature difference is more dramatic between seasons in various regions. It leads to a rapid shift of air pressure which becomes the reason for storms and heavy rainfall. Once you are going through a heatwave and the weather forecast predicts a dramatic temperature decrease, big chances you will also face a flash flood due to heavy rainfall;
- Spring floods are often the result of massive snowmelt. Once you notice that the winter was especially snowy, it is essential to think about flood protection methods in advance.
Another important thing to remember is that floods cannot be predicted in the long term. It men's that if you are leaving your property for a long time and it is located next to any kind of water body, it is essential that you install flood protection devices and fortification the house or business not to find it flooded and damaged the day you return.
How much time does it take to protect from a flood?
It is essential that you know precisely how much time it will take you to erect the sandbagging dike or flood barrier. That way, you will be most efficient, won`t waste your precious time, and protect your property thoroughly.
- Make a drill built/installation to have a timeframe estimate;
- Film the process and watch it over;
- Try to detect moments, where you can "cut corners", eliminating unnecessary moves, inviting help, optimising flood defence storage, etc;
- repeat the drill several times to fix the timelione.
There are some additional things you may want to consider:
- what kind of additional flood protection materials you may need if you want to endure your sandbagging dike (polewthilene, additional layer of bags, etc.)
- Whether you have a pump or another mechanism that will help you del with the water that leaks or overflow you dike;
- What is you evacuation plan if the flood protection fails.
You can save yourself a great deal of time, effort and money if you do a modest homework and check out dome alternative flood protection methods. For example Flood Barriers are becoming increasingly popular today mostly because it would take you only several minutes to install an efficient and reliable flood protection for your property.
Contact Dam Easy now and learn about innovative flood gates and other solutions that will guarantee you peace of mind and safety even in the face of massive flooding and unexpected spontaneous disaters.
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