xpost: "Flood from nowhere" plagues OH city

[phantom power]

BY NANCY HOGLAND | BELLEVUE, OH | April 22, 2008

Hundreds of volunteers from faith-based organizations around the nation stand ready and waiting to help families in this city who are experiencing flooding in their homes. The problem is – no one knows when the water will go down – because they don’t know why it’s coming up.

Although the weather has been fairly dry, for the past four weeks, water has been seeping up through the ground, flooding farmers’ fields, surrounding homes and filling basements, in some cases, to the tops of the stairs.

Mary Woodward, president of the Ohio’s Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) described the entire situation as “bizarre.”

“According to geologists who have come in to study the situation the water is coming from an overfull, underground aquifer, but no one is exactly sure of the source. Because we’re so close to Lake Erie, several people think that might be what’s feeding it, but truthfully, it’s just a guess,” she said. “In the meantime, while it’s sunny and warm with only a few clouds in the sky, people are busy sandbagging trying to protect their homes from rising waters.”...

http://www.disasternews.net/news/article.php?articleid=3664

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=39851&mesg_id=39851

[Dead_Parrot]

1. "volunteers from faith-based organizations"

Have they tried praying?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. yes, with the same results as always.

LOL! ! ! !

[peace13]

3. You know where these organizations got there money...us!

You have to pray with them and then you'll get a cheese sandwich and a bucket to clean up your basement. Gotta love America. * has tied everything to religion in just eight short years.

[fed-up]

4. 1st time I read this story as I thought it was about a freak storm-melting glaciers maybe? nt

[TheWraith]

5. They don't have many glaciers in Ohio. nt

[fed-up]

7. just read one of the news stories and found this theory

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=88071

There are no visible rivers or streams for miles around that would explain the destruction.

When you look at the "KARST Geological Data" -- a special map of sinkholes, caves and caverns put out by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in 2007 -- one of the worst areas in the state is around Bellevue.

One of the biggest caves in the area, the Seneca Caverns, has seven huge chambers with the lowest one sitting at a depth of 110 feet. The flood waters have now filled the bottom four chambers. Icy cold clear artesian water can now be found about 50 feet from the surface of the earth.

79-year-old Dick Bell has been studying the cave system in the county for more than fifty years. He says there may be hundreds of similar caves and sink holes in the area surrounding Bellevue. He says that normally all the water flows like an underground river toward Sandusky Bay.

"It's all loaded with water down there and it's all flowing downhill to the north," Bell said. "Every 30 years or so, something happens to block that flow and, boom, the flood appears."

[pscot]

9. Zebra mussels

gotta be.

[TheWraith]

6. My first guess would be that an underground reservoir popped for some reason.

I've seen cases where you can get tons of water flowing to the surface from underground springs and pockets, sometimes due to shifting pressure on the ground.

[The Blue Flower]

8. Possible link to the earthquake in that region?

n/t