The Flood Insurance Guru Podcast Episode 10: The Macon Georgia Flood: Lessons Learned 25 Years Later

When time keeps changing, it's best to look back at history and see what we've learned.

In today's episode, we dive deep into the Georgia Great Flood of '94 that hit South Georgia and Middle Georgia. Since this is the 25th anniversary of the natural disaster, we have to talk about the lessons learned and the things that were impacted by this Great Flood.

In 1994, Tropical Storm Alberto pressed through South Georgia and South Alabama. It sat around South and Middle Georgia for about ten days dumping around fifteen and up to around twenty-eight inches of rain and devastating wind throughout that period that crested rivers significantly. This unfortunately took the lives of 33 people in two different states.

There were a lot of things faced the consequences of flooding in '94 like dams, levees, water treatment facilities, highways, and communities with their respective properties. These damages amounted to about $1.3 billion, so we want to cover how these changed and improved throughout the years. One can only imagine the flood cleanup for these communities severely impacted by flood damage.

Dam and Levee

Like I mentioned, 15 inches of rain is a lot especially if it falls down rivers like Flint, Ocmulgee, and other rivers in the Macon area. That's drastically more amount of water for these dams and levees which caused them to fail due to this massive amount of water. Now, it's important to note that these dams and levees didn't break per se, but there were some significant leaks that caused water to come out and there were overflows that dumped water into areas that already had significant flood water on them.

Water Treatment Facilities

Another failure that happened at around Day 8 and Day 9 of the flooding was through the water treatment facilities that were inundated with water. When this happened, areas of Macon didn't have clean water and lost general water supply for three weeks.

Highway

Due to the same flood disaster, both I-16 and I-75 highways were both shut down completely. These are two of the most important interchange highways we have in the U.S. Since it was shut down due to dangerous and high flood water, there were no means to get to and from the affected areas. This also meant that whoever were in these areas were stranded for the course of the highway being massively affected by the flood. To give an example, helicopters were needed to get doctors and first responders to area that needed them like in Dougherty County instead of using boats or maybe the usual firetrucks and what not.

Now that we know how this Great Flood impacted these communities, it's important to understand how the federal government and respective communities improved on flood mitigation, flood risk reduction, alternatives, and certain flood risk management to help minimize if not entirely remove these impacts on the community.

Let's start from the one that directly impacted each and every member of these communities...

Water Treatment Facilities

We mentioned briefly how these facilities were overwhelmed by huge flood water which caused the communities to lost water supply for weeks. To prevent this, the federal government relocated these facilities to higher ground to avoid what happened in '94. Some of them were moved 90-feet above ground just to make sure that the facility won't be impacted.

Highway

Another great flood risk reduction make towards the I-16 and I-75 wasn't to rebuild the damaged highways, but to build them up. This means that the two major highway systems were built a good distance above the water. This shows much investment in flood preparedness were made in order to make sure that these highways won't ever be shut down again due to flood.

Dam and Levee

It's important to mention that these dams and levees have been upgraded since 1994 to meet the highest standards set by the National Flood Insurance Program and the government today. They might not have met the standards for 1994, but there's only so much a dam and levee can do when faced with 15 to almost 30 inches of rain.

One of the important things that have been done was to make sure that the trees around the area were removed to avoid them growing into the dam and levees creating cracks and impurities in the system which eventually may lead into levee breaches. These also help prevent these trees from falling into these dams and levees. The improvements also included that the water flows away from Albany instead of directly hitting the city. This in turn forces the water to avoid the city instead of directly being dumped into them.

Now, if you ask, will we experience this flood again? Yes, we will given the right circumstances and it's not really helping that storms bring more devastating aftermath, but nowadays we're more prepared after the flood mitigation efforts made by FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program, there are now better flood damage preparedness and awareness for these communities, dedicated task force against flood, and we can say we have more control when these types of situation occurs.

If you look at it, Macon hasn't had any devastating flood like the one from 1994 and we're all happy to see it.

That concludes our podcast for now as we look back into a flood cleanup that was best for everyone and remember, we have an educational background in flood mitigation. If you have any questions on how flood damage can impact you, how the National Flood Insurance Program works, tips on flood risk reduction for your own property, or anything about flood. Please feel free to contact us or visit our YouTube channel to learn more.