Dayton pledges quick help for ‘terrible devastation’
June 21, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
With most Northland residents apparently safe from immediate danger, state, federal and local officials began assessing damage Thursday from this week’s torrential rains and flash flood and already are putting the price tag well beyond $100 million.
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I’ve nothing to back-up my uninformed opinion but I think Ness’ damage estimate is way too conservative. The City of Duluth had a street maintenance fund for scheduled improvements/repairs that was in the region of that figure. Facing utter devastation to the street network citywide, surely there must be in excess of $100m in apparent damage – now. Who knows how much subsidence, etc is going to occur once the water recedes and the subsurface of the roads dries out.
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Duluth Mayor Don Ness said a back-of-the-napkin estimate by city engineers and others puts damage to public property in Duluth alone at $50 million to … Sounds like they admit they’re just guessing at this stage.
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It almost sounds like, while hindsight is 20/20, you’ve got to wait until you have the hindsight to score 20/20 on the test…
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Bump up that number significantly. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it closer to the 500M area when you consider that the variable costs will skyrocket.
On the bright side though, with so many streets needing repairs, it’s now possible that perhaps some of the below-ground infrastructure could finally see real repairs, not just the little patch & pray system that they’ve had in place for decades.
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I too think that estimate is way to low. I have nothing to base that on other than my own opinion, but before any numbers were officially mentioned, I was thinking more like several times the 100 million that’s been mentioned.
I guess maybe the devil lies in the details. Some/many of our streets/infastructure were in abhorrent condition before the rain….so I guess maybe some of that damage isn’t counted since the rain didn’t really cause all the damage, they were barely passable before, now they are totally ruined. It’s probably not fair to ask the state and feds to pay us to upgrade our infastructure when lack of proper scheduled upgrading and/or maintenance on our part is what really allowed some of the damage to happen.
Much of our infastructure, including the underground utilities such as water and sewer etc…, is so old and weak, I’m just afraid this event may have stressed things to the breaking point, or very close anyway, and much more damage will present itself in the coming days, weeks and months that we’re not even aware of now.
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The first way to tell it’s too low is to remember it’s government. Any time they tell you a price, immediately double it.
The supply/demand curves will also shift considerably. Gravel, rails, asphalt, cement, any good that can/will be used for repairs is potentially a good that could be used somewhere else, so that’ll also cause prices to jump (Like the costs of lumber in areas after a hurricane).
In the overall damages, say from Willow River to the Range, one billion dollars total damage isn’t an unreasonable estimate.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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The money to repair should be easy to find in Minnesota, because it is being used to build a stadium for a bunch of muli-millionares as a playground.
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How many miles of street has the City historically rebuilt each year since the street reconstruction program began? I can’t remember but it’s not much in the scheme of things. Says to me that it’s very, very time consuming. 3000 miles of city streets and how many miles have been destroyed? This is going to take years, inexhaustible patience and a helluva lot of inconvenience. The infrastructure repairs have to be in excess of $100m.
Now, on the bright side – and I’m not one to see the glass half full very often… maybe Duluth will get better streets than it had before the flash flood. It will put a lot of construction workers to work and bring the community together (I hope).
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I hope they replace the water and sewer mains at the same time they fix the street. Replace all of the underground utlities as needed. It will pay-off in the long run.
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Since nobody got killed or hurt seriously, I look at this as a blessing in disguise. Duluth’s theme song should be “we’re in the money”…. Hopefully that is.
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Most likely will be. If you take a look at how Comfrey came out after the twister they had, Duluth should be on the gravy train!
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They do NOT replace the utilites when they have done the streets in the past and I don’t see it happening this time
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Thank our lucky stars that MN has a governor that believes it’s Okay to ask for federal help. Those tea party types have turned it down for damages due to tornadoes and floods, in other states. Thank you, sir.
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I agree. Just read where Wisconsin’s gov doesn’t even plan to show up in Superior until next Tuesday. And was quoted as saying that he’s going to try to find the money in the state.
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Why would Walker care about Superior? There are just a lot of people who have jobs and families there, not a lot of lobbyists who can scratch his belly and tell him about how there’ll be ice cream for supper every day after he makes sure they can do their business without checks or balances.
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Mr. Digits, give Scotty a break, he’s just waiting for a permission slip from the Koch boys.
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~~ringing phone~~
~Hello?
Hey Charles, Walker here, just wanted to make sure with all the flooding your Georgia Pacific plant was Ok?
~Yeah it’s fine, no problems thanks for checking.
Ok then, no point in my going up to Superior until a week after disaster then…thanks.
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Don’t worry, Scotty declared a disaster area, one week after Dayton. Congrats…….forest.. The national guard just said, hey we really could have helped out last week.
I’m a freeking libertarian for god’s sake, and I hate this guy.
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