PREPARE FOR THE FLOOD
Same can be said about nature's fury - if you prepare for it, you can find your way around it.
For those living in the tropical rain forest and mangrove regions (South-East, South-West and South-South) of Nigeria every year experience high volume of rainfall which most times comes off as flood, flash flood, landslide or erosion. This causes massive loss of lives and property year on year.
How do we identify potential storm water routes?
How do we prevent or mitigate collosal lose of lives and property?
A basic information we must all keep at heart is that "water will always find its level".
1. Water no matter how small or huge it comes, creates a path or follows an existing.
2. Water will fill-in any space available.
3. Water flows down hill and never up.
The above listed will give my you an idea of how to identify potential storm water routes.
This leads us to prevention/mitigation.
To achieve this, you have to work on/around the 3 listed precepts above.
1. If you live along a storm water route, there are some options you might take to counter it and it includes:
Dam the water: This is capital intensive and might require the intervention of government or big agencies. This dammed water can be converted to future use like community water source in dry season, agriculture irrigation etc.
Create bumps: The aim of this is to slow down the velocity of the flood.
The higher the velocity, the more destruction that comes along with it.
Create as many bumps as possible with the bump height increasing as the flood goes downstream.
This will break down the flood velocity and gather debris along the bump intervals.
Detour: The flood path can be recreated artificially and directed to a nearby large water body like a stream or river.
Relocate: If your building is sited along the flood path and you can foot a relocation cost after considering other alternatives, please kindly vacate to save your life and life of your family and your possessions.
2. Water fills up any space it sees which includes pores in and around your building foundation.
When storm water falls, many homes experience water surging into their living spaces from the ground. This is caused by reasons which includes: no soil compaction which leaves spaces for water to gather underground and poor damp proofing procedure.
Methods of Damp proofing or Waterproofing of a building differs according to soil structure, topography and building.
Usually, when this process is gotten right from the onset, there is little or nothing to worry about much later.
However, if this process is poorly executed, the finished building may have to undergo a renovation process to solve this.
3. When buying a property, please involve the services of requisite professionals. Consulting a good land surveyor can define the topography of that area.
Plain lands may look flat to the ordinary eye, but employing a levelling instrument will show that it is not what it seems.
Avoid buying property along watershed points.
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