The rains are apparently beginning to push in for the weekend, meaning our lovely masses of thick snow and compact ice SHOULD start melting away. All that water is going to have to go somewhere. The city is issuing a plea to help clear drainage areas (if you can find them right now) so there aren’t major backups in the system, and possibly into homes.
Everyone get out your ice picks, shovels, rubber boots, and metal detectors. The city of Seattle is counting on YOU to 1) FIND and then 2) unclog your neighborhood’s drains and make sure the cluster f*%k that has been the past 12 days doesn’t end up as an urban flood! Let’s get busy!!
I am more than happy to get out there and de-ice and/or unclog our street drains but I don’t know where the doggone things are.
A CHS reader http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2008/12/26/dig-those-stree#comments) suggests Google Street View as a way to locate street drains.
Example (my baby): http://tinyurl.com/7h2a6m
i’m working today but i already decided this A.M. to work around my neighborhood this weekend.
look for the lowest end of your street and the drain will be there.
look for the lowest end of your street and the drain will be there.
Wow. Someone needs to get out of the house and unclog some more drains. She’s got a lot of pent up anger from being cooped up in the house for so long. It sounds like you are projecting.
I just did a round of clearing at 29th & Olive/Pine. Often the manhole covers are melted out first which should, if you follow them to the nearest curb, give you a starting point for finding the drains. The drains uphill from us looked like someone at already hit them once but responded well to a second round of clearing. The downhill drains were covered and digging them out unleashed quite a bit of water. There are a lot of elderly people in our neighborhood who are unable to do this kind of work now that the snow is saturated and heavy. If we all walk a block or two and hit a couple of extra drains I think it will go a long way to keeping melt damage to a minimum. I also walked around our house and checked our downspout diverters, some of which had detached from the downspout probably as a result of the big chunks of ice weighing on them. Good luck.
I cleared a few drains this morning while walking the dog. I got some weird looks while walking around and carrying a big shovel though. There was a mix of old leaves and sludge/snow in the drains and water began to go down into it almost immediately. Most of the drains are near the corners on the lower side of the street. It is easy and only take a couple minutes!
Goodness! I was actually trying to help out by asking a question that I didn’t have an answer to and thought other people might not know either, so that I and others could go out and clear drains without the excuse of “but I don’t know where they are”. Take it easy, and ease up on the caffeine.
And I have helped my fair share of neighbors stuck in the snow and even a stranger or two on my walk to work.
thanks for the help!
Ok I didn’t expect more of this snow.
ZING!