Dam nears collapse due to Isaac; thousands reportedly evacuating
Source: NBC
Updated at 12 p.m. ET: Up to 50,000 people in Louisiana's Tangipahoa Parish were ordered to evacuate Thursday morning when water from Tropical Storm Isaac threatened to overwhelm a dam across the state line in Mississippi.
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Residents were given just 90 minutes to leave, parish spokesman Jeff McKneely told NBC affiliate WDSU-TV.
Mississippi officials, however, said they didn't think the volume of water in the 700-acre lake at Percy Quin State Park near McComb, Miss., would add enough flow to threaten communities downstream.
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Read more: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/30/13565654-dam-nears-collapse-due-to-isaac-thousands-reportedly-evacuating?lite
= new reply since forum marked as read
This is not a sea level issue, but a man made dam failure issue.
I have three dams upriver of me. One lake is 34.9 sq miles in size, one is 10.21 sq miles the last is 611 acres. My lake is 29.58 sq miles in size. If any of these dams fail there are 100 of thousands, to millions of people, depending on which dam and the current lake level, who will be impacted because we're so far above sea level.
Just wanted to point that out.
As to the lack of infrastructure, I can't understand them not having used the federal money recently available for repairs. Maybe it's just overwhelming it so much it's caused a small breach? I don't know. 
> Please do not post responses until you understand the situation..
(or be required through regulation to do) : build retaining ponds.
When Tropical Storm Allison devastated Houston in 2001 with catastrophic floods, the City of Houston (or maybe the Corps of Engineers) began building retaining ponds all along the major bayous/ditches throughout the city. We haven't had a catastrophic flood like that since, but by the looks of just how many they have built, I'd say any future flooding will be reduced. No matter what, you can't stop the kind of flooding you get from a storm that sits on top of you, pumping moist air from the Gulf in the form of deluges on the ground. But you can alleviate it to an extent.
Here's an example of some large ponds, with some huge ones further to the east of this area (just follow the ditch/waterway to see them.)
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=29.883183,-95.544384&spn=0.008819,0.012735&t=h&z=17
Those republicans could keep their homes if they lobbied the local city or state to build retaining ponds instead. Everybody wins that way, as you get additional green space, water space, and save people's homes 
It's part of FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. http://www.fema.gov/hazard-mitigation-grant-program
It allows the government to buy and return properties to greenspace, along with several other approaches to deal with repetitive losses. Like any government program it is limited by funding in what it can do, i.e. the Federal government can't buy all of southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. 
in the US but the NE. Unless you go and add blizzards to that list. 
my mom is calling right now to check in and make sure her cousin is okay.... she's elderly and alone and our other family back there are on vacay so we don;t know who in the neighborhood is around to take care of her... hope she is okay 
and the house is on pretty high ground...but we are more worried about the trees and winds, there's tons of BIG old pecan trees all through her neighborhood...
I'm sure if my mom can't get a hold of her, she'll make some more calls. I'm thinking cousin mary elizabeth is a pretty hardy old bird she's probably just sitting in her living room, reading by lamplight...
Soldiers Grove came roaring through the village. The Kickapoo River quickly topped
the levees, and water didn’t recede for about 10 days. Years earlier the center to the
town had been moved.
Residents experienced floods in 1907, 1912, 1917, 1935, 1951, and the “big one” in
1978. From 1969 to 2007, the state had 25 nationally declared flood disasters in 38
years. The flood of record in 2007 inflicted the worst damage in the state just 10 miles
downstream in Gays Mills.
1951 flood pics...
http://www.soldiersgrove.com/Floods.htm
1978 flood...
