![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Oh...my...god...
Aug. 2nd, 2004 04:46 pmUpper Darby and Cobbs Creek were bad. Really, really bad. The first place we stopped was the intersection of 69th St. and Marshall Ave, just down the street from 69th St. Terminal and a little ways up the street from the Fernwood R3 (to put it in perspective - sorta). There were two gas stations at this corner, and both of them had their pumps completely flooded out. There was a Pathmark down the street where people had to be rescued from the roof, a used car dealership where all the cars had been underwater, and a Wawa that had been completely flooded and looted. Oy.
Two of the bridges on Cobbs Creek Pkwy over Cobbs Creek might have been hit by bombs. They were passable, sure, but they had been completely covered in water. The vegetation surrounding the creek clearly showed signs of having been under fast-moving water. The erosion was absurd. There was a massive pile of sticks and things just upstream of one of the inlets (think beaver dam, but bigger and more above water) that was completely covered in plastic bottles, primarily the 20 oz. kind you find in soda machines. Another bridge (Baltimore Pike over Cobbs Creek) had a gabion bag (big rectangular prism of chicken wire filled with rocks, roughly) completely moved out of position. A section of iron railing had been completely ripped out of the ground.
Tomorrow's fun will be helping out with the internal inspection of a 3,000+ foot culvert. At the inlet, the water appeared to only be about 6" deep but moving very fast. As we didn't have things like oxygen detectors or tanks, and we have no idea how deep it is all the way through, we decided not to do it today. We also don't quite know where it comes out. We're hoping there are plans in the office, but we got back around 4, and I just took off; I'll find plans tomorrow morning. We went looking for the outlet in Cobbs Creek, but didn't find it. We did find a car upside-down in the creek and a U-Haul truck lying askew near the creek (it was probably in the creek at one point).
Fear mother nature, my friends, and buy houses at the tops of hills.
Two of the bridges on Cobbs Creek Pkwy over Cobbs Creek might have been hit by bombs. They were passable, sure, but they had been completely covered in water. The vegetation surrounding the creek clearly showed signs of having been under fast-moving water. The erosion was absurd. There was a massive pile of sticks and things just upstream of one of the inlets (think beaver dam, but bigger and more above water) that was completely covered in plastic bottles, primarily the 20 oz. kind you find in soda machines. Another bridge (Baltimore Pike over Cobbs Creek) had a gabion bag (big rectangular prism of chicken wire filled with rocks, roughly) completely moved out of position. A section of iron railing had been completely ripped out of the ground.
Tomorrow's fun will be helping out with the internal inspection of a 3,000+ foot culvert. At the inlet, the water appeared to only be about 6" deep but moving very fast. As we didn't have things like oxygen detectors or tanks, and we have no idea how deep it is all the way through, we decided not to do it today. We also don't quite know where it comes out. We're hoping there are plans in the office, but we got back around 4, and I just took off; I'll find plans tomorrow morning. We went looking for the outlet in Cobbs Creek, but didn't find it. We did find a car upside-down in the creek and a U-Haul truck lying askew near the creek (it was probably in the creek at one point).
Fear mother nature, my friends, and buy houses at the tops of hills.
