Past and future flood impacts are discussed in this section. Impacts are reviewed under four categories: impact on people (e.g., safety and health), damage to buildings, damage to critical facilities, and economic disruption (damage to businesses and infrastructure).
Safety: A car will float in less than 2 feet of moving water and can be swept downstream into deeper waters. This is one reason floods kill more people trapped in vehicles than anywhere else (see table). Victims of floods have often put themselves in perilous situations by ignoring warnings about travel or mistakenly thinking that a washed-out bridge is still there.
P | |
|
Vehicle
|
Outdoors
|
Indoors
|
Total
|
|
IL
|
US
|
IL
|
US
|
IL
|
US
|
IL
|
US
|
1995
|
|
39
|
1
|
35
|
|
6
|
1
|
80
|
1996
|
|
79
|
2
|
39
|
|
13
|
2
|
131
|
1997
|
1
|
46
|
|
60
|
|
12
|
1
|
118
|
1998
|
|
75
|
1
|
40
|
|
21
|
1
|
136
|
1999
|
|
26
|
1
|
34
|
|
8
|
1
|
68
|
2000
|
3
|
24
|
1
|
13
|
|
|
4
|
37
|
2001
|
1
|
24
|
|
20
|
|
4
|
1
|
48
|
Total
|
5
|
313
|
6
|
241
|
0
|
64
|
11
|
618
|
Deaths are from river and flash floods. Most of the deaths are from flash floods. Source: National Weather Service
eople die of heart attacks, especially from exertion during a flood fight. Electrocution is a cause of flood deaths, claiming lives in flooded areas that carry a live current created when electrical components short out. Floods also can damage gas lines, floors, and stairs, creating secondary hazards such as gas leaks, unsafe structures, and fires. Fires are particularly damaging in areas made inaccessible to fire-fighting equipment by high water or flood-related road or bridge damage.
W
|
During the February 21, 1997, flood, the Elgin Fire Department evacuated 47 people in boats. Thirty-nine people needed to stay in shelters provided by the Red Cross and Elgin Township.
|
arning and evacuation: The threat to life posed by a flood can be avoided if people can evacuate before the waters reach their buildings or close their evacuation routes. This requires advance notice that a flood is coming and a system to disseminate flood warnings. Flood warning programs are discussed in Chapter 7. Only on the Fox River is there enough lead time to allow protective steps, such as sandbagging, to be taken.
Other, smaller, streams rise so fast during a heavy local rain, that expensive systems of remote rain and stream gages would be needed to provide adequate notice to emergency managers. Even then, there would be little time for people to do much more than escape to high ground.
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