I went back to where I grew up just outside of Detroit this past weekend. It was a great treat to eat at the places I loved as a kid (Buddy’s Pizza), go to a Detroit Tigers baseball game in their awesome ballpark, and spend time with family.
My wife & I flew in just before a huge storm. When we landed the sky turned dark green and teal with streaks of purple. It was eerily quiet and then the sky opened up with sideways rain, driving winds ripping up trees, etc. In fact, there were a number of reports of twisted trees in the area. The trees had sustained such force that they were actually twisted in a circle without falling over!
My father-in-law drove us home via the Southfield Freeway which is a trenched road. It was built at a time when civil engineers in Detroit thought it was a good idea to build the roads below the ground level like a giant trench and then just put concrete on the walls.
As the rain fell it began to fill the trench, which always happens, with small lakes. I noticed, however, after about 5 miles that some of the sewer covers were spraying water up to 4 feet in the air! They had become fountains. It was much worse though.
The pressure of the water spewing forth from the covers actually lifted the manhole covers off their manholes and into busy rush-hour traffic. When coupled with the driving rain, the effect was incredibly dangerous.
The manhole covers were at all angles, some had been lifted clear away from the manholes, and were laying across lanes. Adding to the difficulty was the seemingly random placement of the sewer covers! They were not uniformly spaced or in the same lane or location in a lane. Some were right where tires would strike them.
Another mile up I began noticing people checking their bent wheels and blown tires. In fact, I saw a compact car with its driver’s side front tire in the hole unable to move! It was on one of the parallel ramps and had traffic completely stopped behind it.
The number of design flaws that were revealed by 2 days of rain is staggering. Everything requires a design that is well thought out, consistent, and can stand up to commonplace natural conditions.
If any one of those things had been in place on the Southfield Freeway a lot of damage to cars could have been avoided. The danger these flaws present cannot be under-estimated. The speed limit is 70mph with most motorists going closer to 80mph. Should a sewer cover be removed on a dry day the results could be tragic.
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