Showing posts with label flooding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flooding. Show all posts

Saturday, December 28, 2013

More proof of why South Florida is NOT the Land of Lincoln! Local10 News video re govt. incompetency (& secretiveness) in Miami Beach; Reader comments show how many Internet trolls South Florida has who reflexively defend govt. over individuals and their rights

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Pump stations built directly in front of homes Miami Beach residents say city officials never asked for their input 
Author: Jeff Weinsier, Reporter, jweinsier@Local10.com 
Ben Candea, Senior Web Producer, bcandea@local10.com 
Posted online December 19 2013 11:00:00 PM EST
http://www.local10.com/news/pump-stations-built-directly-in-front-of-homes/-/1717324/23567002/-/jm4r9oz/-/index.html

Here's my comment to the Local10 story above and the predictable reader comments that appeared the first week after it aired. 
I only came across it Saturday night.

Watch that and read those comments first before seeing what I've posted below.

"I can't say specifically that we went door to door and say you all have this type of facility directly in front of your house," said David Martinez, acting director of the city's capital improvements.
Martinez added that he didn't believe an impact study was done.

Yes, local government making conscious decisions to NOT do an impact study.
No, THAT can't possibly have any bad consequences, now can it?

This reminds me so much of the half-assed nature of municipal bureaucracy here in Hallandale Beach. A few years ago, the city paid for a consulting firm to do a Transportation Master Plan.
The consultants they hired were clearly smart, savvy, motivated and were very open to hearing from residents about their concerns, certainly more open to ideas and suggestions than the mayor and the city commission and City Manager and their retinue ever were. 
But then the former were being paid to listen to the public -the electeds just pretended to be.

But at the heavily-promoted final presentation meeting -heavily-promoted on my blog, not by the city on any of its portable electronic message boards - I asked a series of logical and common sense questions during the Q&A that nobody else though to ask before me, and then made some predictions about things to come.

Did the city make drivers of its FREE Mini-bus system available to speak to the consultants to answer any questions about common complaints or suggestions they heard on a daily basis, since they were the city's eyes and ears on this subject? No.

That sort of managerial genius and decision-making explains why so many years later, the #1 place in the entire city where passengers utilize the service to get on and off the city's mini-buses is a place where there is NO timetable or map at all for passengers to check -the Publix on Hallandale Beach Blvd. & SE 14th Avenue.

Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders, the city commissioner who claims he primarily represents the city residents who use public transportation on a regular basis, in NW HB, despite the fact that all commissioners are at-large, DIDN'T even bother showing-up for the meeting. 
Years later, that is crystal clear since residents show a facility and knowledge of it that is continually above his head. Where's the sense of personal accountability?

That failure by an elected official like Sanders to even show-up meant that Sanders could NOT only NOT hear anything said by taxpayers and residents at the meeting, but also meant that he couldn't be asked hard questions by me and other residents about about why nearly 90% of the city-maintained bus shelters had lights that DIDN'T work at night -for YEARS at a time, despite it being self-evident, as any drive at night will show, including the bus shelters closest to HB City Hall.
A fact that is STILL TRUE!

In all of Hallandale Beach, there's but one city-controlled bus shelter on the east side of busy U.S.-1, north-bound, one of the three main streets in the city. 
And that one bus shelter is NOT at or near Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino or the next-door Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex, but rather 2 blocks south of the Hollywood cityline. Why?

No explanation has ever been publicly given for such stupidity or why all these years later, the city can't manage to keep more than 10% of its own bus shelters lit at night for its own residents. 
Again, where's the sense of personal accountability at HB City Hall among elected officials or city employees? MIA.

And I didn't even mention yet that there are now LESS bus shelters in the city than there were five years ago, much as I predicted would happen, given the mindset here.
Does that sound like any kind of Transportation Master Plan that you would want your city to have?

So, those of you commenting here that there may've been public meetings about where the pump stations would be located, how come Jeff Weinsier couldn't find any record of them and how come the city officials couldn't refute him by stating when and where they were held.
No, instead, you impugn these particular residents as being too lazy to get involved.
Based on what evidence???

What we all know now is that the one person who appears on camera who ought to know the answers says nothing at all about any such meetings, and even while stating that he doesn't think an impact study was ever done, also never adequately explains why some pumps stations were placed on medians and some weren't, which is something that residents directly-affected were certainly entitled to know about beforehand. 
And yet they weren't, now were they?

Again, that sounds exactly like how things happen in Hallandale Beach -conscious stealthiness to keep the residents in the dark.

Some of you folks ought to stop reflexively defending government bureaucrats who can't or won't explain their own actions and decisions when given a chance to, instead of being sympathetic to the plight of the residents who were just minding their own business. Instead, you choose to bash these residents with legitimate and justifiable concerns just because you don't like the fact that someone else chooses to make a housing/lifestyle choice that's different than yours.

I wouldn't live there, but would I want to wish that person's home gets flooded, like some of you clearly do?
You're biased.

Only wish the Local10 website was better and required people to use either their real names or a certified name that couldn't be changed so that in the future, I'd know better than to waste my time reading the comments of dopes, given so much of what I've read here.
C'est la vie.
-----
One of my most-popular blog post on that City of Hallandale Beach Transportation Master Plan debacle was posted on June 9, 2009, and has been seen 3242 times as of right now, titled, Tonight's Hallandale Beach Transportation Master Plan meeting is a Sign of the Times in HB: We Need Change!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/tonights-transportation-meeting-is-sign.html 

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Battening down and bracing for a battering! Met Office warnings re UK weather has Britons buzzing amid very bad memories of the Great Storm of 1987. As most powerful storm to hit Britain in 26 years approaches, much-wider area than first expected will be pounded by gales, downpours and powerful winds of 60-80 mph, with flooding and widespread power outages expected; @metoffice

Battening down and bracing for a battering! Met Office warnings re UK weather has Britons buzzing amid very bad memories of the Great Storm of 1987. As most powerful storm to hit Britain in 26 years approaches, much-wider area than first expected will be pounded by gales, downpours and powerful winds of 60-80 mph, with flooding and widespread power outages expected; @metoffice

Even as your faithful blogger posts from his home in South Florida, two miles west of the Atlantic, way across the North Atlantic, a huge storm riding the jetstream from east of the United States, is preparing to batter southern England & Wales on Sunday night and Monday morning, bringing gales and downpours and causing widespread disruption, with powerful winds of 60-80 mph winds expected.
Winds are expected to be even higher in coastal areas, where risk of damage to property can and should be expected.

The storm, moving SW to NE, will then continue across The North Sea and arrive in Norway, Denmark and Sweden on Monday night, with heavy snowfall expected in parts of western Sweden currently experiencing autumnal temperatures.

I've been watching SkyNews the past two nights and have seen their video of much of the advance preparation for the storm that's expected to lash parts of Great Britain for hours, with ferry and shipping cancellations already taking place, trimming of some trees to reduce damage and possibility of becoming projectiles, and removal of anything movable on piers and in dockage areas, where some destruction seems highly likely.


Two storm-related video pieces done by veteran Sky News correspondent David Bowden that aired Saturday night:  
http://news.sky.com/story/1160250/britain-braced-for-severe-80mph-storm
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/video/warning-major-storm-way-172515226.html

Shortly after 8:30 p.m. Eastern Saturday, I heard a number mentioned during the newscast as an estimate by some group (?) that total clean-up costs could hit 1000 £1m, i.e. a Billion Pounds.

Again, there are still memories present among many over what can happen when there is a lack of proper preparation by those in charge and they are caught up short:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1987

Last I heard, there's an expectation that very windy and rainy conditions will exist in the affected areas from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m.

That means cabin fever.
I'd have those candles, junk food and coolers of ice-filled drinks and pre-prepared sandwiches ready for when the lights go out -and stay out .

Below, a screenshot I snapped of Aftonbladet's website mid-Saturday night about the approaching storm:


HÖSTSTORM PÅ VÄG! (Autumn storm on its way!)
Early Sunday morning, SMHI, the Swedish equivalent of NOAA here in the U.S., issued Gale Warnings for ships in and around the Baltic Sea, and they have also issued a warning to my friend Andreas and everyone else living in Gotland that there is a very great risk of powerful dust storms there, though that will obviously be before all the heavy rain gets there and soaks them as well.








The most recent public dispatch from the Met Office is this one:

Severe storm heading for the UK
26 October 2013 - The Met Office is warning of the risk of a significant storm bringing exceptionally strong winds to parts of England and Wales on Sunday night into Monday morning

Currently forecasts suggest a low pressure system will rapidly deepen just to the south west of the UK on later on Sunday, before moving across the country to be out over the North Sea by the afternoon on Monday.
This is expected to bring gusts of 60 - 80 mph widely across the southern half of the UK, with gusts of more than 80 mph possible in places - especially on exposed coasts.
Any major storm which occurs in early autumn has the potential to cause widespread severe disruption through falling trees, structural damage, transport disruption or power cuts and possibly flooding.
Frank Saunders, Chief Forecaster at the Met Office, said: "We are confident that a severe storm will affect Britain on Sunday night and Monday. We are now looking at refining the details about which areas will see the strongest winds and the heaviest rain.
"This is a developing situation and we'd advise people to stay up to date with our forecasts and warnings over the weekend, and be prepared to change their plans if necessary. We'll continue to work closely with authorities and emergency services to ensure they are aware of the expected conditions."

Saturday, June 8, 2013

More Flooding & Operation Sandbag in Hallandale Beach: HB gets drenched-to-the-bone with 8 inches of rain by powerful trailing storms of T.S. Andrea, but the city and Mayor Joy Cooper still act like ostriches when it comes to simple tasks that would serve the largest number of residents in the most-efficient manner possible when they need help. Why? Because that's the way things get done here with her as mayor; Flood relief project is 2 years late; #Hallandale, #andrea, #susierusso, @FanSusieQ


Local10 News, Miami, WPLG-TV
Floodwaters strand drivers in South Florida
Floodwaters left by Tropical Storm Andrea turn roads into rivers
Local10 reporter Baron James is on the ground and in the water as northeast Hallandale Beach is yet again the scene of standing floodwater after the remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea pass thru northeast Miami-Dade County and southeast Broward County on Friday afternoon and evening, after many days of rain and with the ground already saturated. 
Published On: June 7, 2013 11:06:31 PM EDT, Updated On: June 8 2013 12:11:20 AM EDT

High-tech in Hallandale Beach, 2013 -Orange safety cones! May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
More Flooding & Operation Sandbag in Hallandale Beach: HB gets drenched-to-the-bone with 8 inches of rain by powerful trailing storms of T.S. Andrea, but the city and Mayor Joy Cooper still act like ostriches when it comes to simple tasks that would serve the largest number of residents in the most-efficient manner possible when they need help. Why? Because that's the way things get done here with her as mayor; Flood relief project is 2 years late; #Hallandale, #andrea, #susierusso, @FanSusieQ







The Dept. of Public Works (DPW) location that the City of Hallandale Beach is telling residents to go to in order to pick up sand bags if they need them due to flooding, 630 N.W. 2nd Street, is adjacent to one of the great exercises in make-work that any South Florida government is currently engaged in, in this case, the so-called Historic School House Restoration that is taking years longer to do than it'd have taken to build from scratch.

Almost everyone who knows me reasonably well knows how much I revere history as well as my longtime concern for historical preservation, a fact buttressed by my stack of ten years worth of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Preservation magazine in banker's boxes in my garage, back when I lived in Arlington County, VA for 15 years, something I've mentioned here previously.

http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/#.UbLhwefVCSo

But as for this particular building, well, it's the proverbial exception to the rule.
It's preposterous on its face and nobody I know here has any idea if there's even an actual meaningful deadline for the rehab of this school, or where it will be located for good when it's finished, to say nothing of who'd actually come visit it, given how the city has treated other publicly-owned properties over the years, to say nothing of the deplorable condition of the beach.
(Like the North Beach Building on State Road A1A that the taxpayers of this city own but are NOT allowed to use unless they pay for it, unlike city employees in the past few years who've used it as the site for holiday parties, though most of you reading this already know all this very well.)

In short, this out-of-the-way, nothing little building that is barely thought about is already a White Elephant before it's even finished.

Lack of attention to detail, lack of accountability, lack of...

May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Trust me when I tell you that it looks the same now as it did six months ago and nine months ago, and that I have the photos to prove it.
I also have friends who can confirm this who also share my anger at what this place represents, since it's a place I drive by at least once every ten days to see how much time is going by without anything tangible actually getting done.
Therefore it serves as the perfect example of how things really get done here.
They don't.

That's the mediocre neighborhood where the city's sand bag operation calls home.
That too is an eye-opening experience to behold, and a case study in how simple things have been botched and remain half-assed in Hallandale Beach for so long, that some citizens choose apathy instead of normal civic engagement because it's easier than dealing with the mind-set at City Hall.

It's long been perfectly clear that the sandbag operation is now so unsatisfactory that it no longer meets many residents's basic expectations because it's neither well-organized nor well-managed, and so is actually bypassed by many residents who prefer to buy sand bags at retail shops because it's more predictable and organized.
Yet the city persists in acting like it's actually accomplishing something.

This operation has for years been one of the five most-widely told HB anecdotes by both myself and my friends in explaining to new residents, outsiders and the news media how much this city genuinely seems to be run more for the benefit of the city's employees rather than for the benefit of residents, since nothing else explains the level of absurdity that's apparent to the naked eye.

If you were starting such a program from scratch in your own town, there are any number of things that you would want to ensure were done and in place before a storm in order to satisfy the residents of this city -your customers!
However fascinating and original that list in your head is, though, frankly, it doesn't matter, since those are NOT now the primary considerations of the City of Hallandale Beach, nor have they been in the nine years that I have lived here.

Here in Hallandale Beach, 
a.) The sand is dumped inside a fence and on the side of a two-lane road
b.) Both the immediate area and the sand itself are uncovered, not even by a tarp
c.) The sand is deposited in an unlit area
d.) They use large orange safety cones as funnels.
Really


May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.


May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

May 12, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.


For many years I've asked a number of common sense questions of the city about how this particular set-up could possibly be anything but a Keystone Kops routine-in-the-rain given all the above parameters.

I've asked why people who live in low-lying areas that are always hit hard -mostly in northeastern HB- are, from what I hear, NOT able to get sandbags in the weeks before hurricane season starts, and even more importantly, why the city adamantly refuses to fix these self-evident problems, or at least relocate the sand prior to approaching storms or once it's clear that clouds bringing downpours are static, like what we had here a week before Christmas in 2009, Dec, 18th and 19th, that left much of NE HB under water.

The city already has the necessary resources it needs to show some common sense and relocate the sand, the bags and the shovels to a better location that is well-lit, has some cover, and that makes it easier to distribute, no matter the weather.
Even a place that can do two of the three tasks is greatly preferable to continuing to have it in a location that has none of them. 

Despite the city patting themselves on the back afterwards, the city was judged by the people I know in that area to have responded very slowly, and actually made things much worse in some cases by needlessly driving their city trucks thru streets like NE 8th and 10th Avenue where the wakes that were created went straight into residents homes.
People were irate!!!

(Because it's HB, once the city finally erected some small warning signs on the north side of Hallandale Beach Blvd., near NE 10th and 12th Avenue, in one case, they actually left some of the signs up for more than four months, which confused drivers, esp. out-of-town visitors coming out of Gulfstream Park's northern entrance at HBB, many of whom go north on NE 10th up to Atlantic Shores Blvd. to avoid the heavy U.S.-1 traffic to the west.)

The whole scene is embarrassing and completely counter-intuitive to helping the largest
number of residents as quickly as possible.
But the city won't budge despite how ridiculous it is and needs a more sane and logical operation.

Just so you know, this is one of the many dozens of problems in the city -and constructive suggestions- I spoke to Assistant HB City Manager Jennifer Frastai about four-and-a-half-years ago that she never followed-up on, and never contacted me about which flowed from our infamous one-hour meeting at City Hall in the City Manager's conference room, mentioned most recently on the blog on April 29th:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/having-long-tradition-of-white-flight.html

If some of this sounds familiar it should, as I previously wrote about this problem on the blog in my post of  August 25, 2012 titled, 
As "Isaac" approaches South Florida, key differences re-emerge between how Hollywood and Hallandale Beach cope: Hollywood Residents, Business Owners Can Fill Their Own Free Sandbags; Hallandale Beach residents can once again get sand-bagged and dumb-founded

*By the way, I noticed Friday night that the street on the west side of HB City Hall that the HB Police Dept. regularly uses was completely impassable, even while U.S.-1 in front of HB City Hall was bumper-to-bumper from HBB south to Ives Dairy Road until about 9:30 p.m., making for a very unsafe scenario for ambulances trying to reach Aventura Hospital on U.S.-1 and N.E. 209th Street.

I know because I live near HB City Hall and ended-up walking along U.S.-1 to the Aventura Target on N.E. 213th Street to get some things because the traffic was so bad.

** Oh, and as usual, as I found out around 8:30 p.m., ALL the street lights on S.E./S.W. 3rd Street near the FEC Railroad tracks were out, AGAIN -and all the ones from Bluesten park north to 3rd Street- meaning during a downpour there, you are literally taking your life into your hands at night!
Even if your car's defrost is on overdrive!

HB comes up at 6:57 in this Channel 7 video:






Thursday, March 10, 2011

Video: Prince William flying to disaster-ravaged areas of New Zealand and Australia next week



Ten News video: Prince William flying to disaster-ravaged areas of New Zealand and Australia next week
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wmtlSkklno&tracker=False

Prince William to visit New Zealand and Australia disaster zones
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-william/8370159/Prince-William-to-visit-New-Zealand-and-Australia-disaster-zones.html

http://www.youtube.com/user/ten
http://ten.com.au/

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Like Rust, Water ALWAYS Wins: Flash floods in Cornwall, and the real fear of flooding on The National Mall and downtown Washington, D.C.



Channel 4 News
- Floods hit Cornwall
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid601325122001?bctid=678927206001


See also: http://www.channel4.com/news/cornwall-floods-more-rain-expected

Latest news on the floods in Cornwall:

http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Cornwall%2C+floods

By the way, in case you forgot. Camilla, the wife of Prince Charles, is the Duchess of Cornwall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camilla,_Duchess_of_Cornwall

-----


The Washington Post

A wall on the Mall protects against a long shot
By Michael E. Ruane
Tuesday, November 16, 2010; B01

Eighty thousand cubic yards of dirt. Thirty steel girders. An eight-foot-high concrete wall.

All to hold back floodwaters that may, or may not, surge across the Mall in the next century or so.

But in the apocalyptic, post-Hurricane Katrina world, no chances can be taken.

So government officials announced Monday morning that work is about to start on a $9 million flood-control project that will alter the landscape of the Mall west of the Washington Monument to protect it, and part of Washington, from potential catastrophe.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/15/AR2010111507471.html

See also:
National Coalition to Save Our Mall
http://www.savethemall.org

http://www.channel4.com/news/

Monday, September 20, 2010

Rania Abouzeid in Foreign Policy Magazine: The World's Worst Place for Women Just Got Worse

The World's Worst Place for Women?

So many possible "winners" but the answer is Pakistan.

-----

FOREIGN POLICY

What the Waters Washed Away
The rural, conservative refugees from Pakistan’s floods have not only lost their homes, but also their entire way of life.


By Rania Abouzeid

September 17, 2010

CHARSADDA, Pakistan-Zeynat wipes her tears away with the edge of her donated, cream-colored dupatta. Her family was separated shortly after raging floodwaters destroyed her modest, mud-brick home, and it has been well over a month since she last saw her three teenage daughters. For the past week, Zeynat and her mother-in-law have been sharing a tent with her friend and former neighbor, Bach Sultan, and four of Sultan's children, in a makeshift settlement here in Charsadda, in the socially conservative and insurgency-plagued Khyber Pakhtunkwa province bordering Afghanistan.

Zeynat's tent, which lies just feet away from the dozens of others pitched alongside Charsadda's Sugar Mill mosque, is sweltering inside. The front and back tent flaps are kept open in the hope of attracting a breeze, but they merely serve to expose the women to the view of passersby. The women say that custom prevents them from idly sitting outside. The camp's proximity to the mosque means that the building's bathrooms are available for use by the flood victims. This ensures them a modicum of privacy absent from many other camps, which lack sanitation or rely on outdoor toilets.


Read the rest of the post at:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/17/what_the_waters_washed_away


See also:
Foreign Policy
New attacks stun Pakistan

By Imtiaz Gul
September 10, 2010
http://www.imtiazgul.com/Sep_10_2010.html

http://www.imtiazgul.com/


http://www.foreignpolicy.com/

-----

U.S. Fund for UNICEF: Alyssa Milano on Pakistan flooding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjIhTici7JM

Friday, July 23, 2010

In this part of Broward County, being sandbagged is a good thing! Tropical Storm Bonnie; my Leighton Meester: Bonnie Bedelia analogy is proved!

CBS-4 Miami's Carey Codd was in Hallandale Beach Thursday to examine how the city was preparing for Tropical Storm Bonnie, given the disastrous flooding problems in NE Hallandale Beach and our northern neighbor, Hollywood, the week before Christmas on Thursday December 17th. http://cbs4.com/local/hallandale.beach.rain.2.1819725.html

In Hallandale Beach, the worst areas then and now are those north
of East Hallandale Beach Blvd. (HBB) and east of U.S.-1/Federal Highway towards the RK Plaza retail center on N.E. 14th Avenue.


There is still visible damage from the two-foot flooding in December along East HBB which HB City Hall has completely ignored all this time, despite how obvious it is.

First, two retail stores on the north side of the street that suffered damage and which were featured in TV news stories on the flooding at the time have since closed.

(More empty storefronts!
Not that the HB Chamber of Commerce
is paying any attention to that sort of thing, since they've got executive board lunches at Gulfstream Park to worry about.)

Second, the bricks on the FDOT-built medians on HBB from roughly
NE 8th Avenue to NE 12th Avenue popped-up everywhere so that it's not only unsightly, but unsafe.

Though originally built by FDOT contractors, the city is legally responsible
for maintaining the medians in a safe manner, yet the only thing they have done with regard to them since the first day of flooding -besides throwing sand on them, which dissipates with the next rain!- is leaving a single safety barricade there where the median bricks have caved-in, which I've been taking photos of every week since December 18th as I walk by.


There's even a Mini-Stonehenge on the median near N.E. 12th Avenue that I also snap a shot of once in a while, as people show their displeasure with the city's apathy to their responsibility by adding one brick to a pile that was already there.

It's another self-evident example of Mayor Joy Cooper and HB DPW head John Chidsey's obliviousness to problems that need concrete solutions that HB residents see left to fester, day- after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year during their completely unsatisfactory reign of ruin.


Early last month, one of the sort of slow-moving thunderstorms we often get here in the summer created a mini-version of the December debacle, even being featured in news stories across the country.

The general sense of outrage and frustration as well as the city's very unfavorable press as one resident after another complained to TV reporters about the city's laggard and incompetent response, led to the city convening a public meeting recently at HB City Hall that was packed with angry residents, mostly from the NE. area.


I was not there the entire time, but from what I heard as well as from what attendees who were there from the beginning told me afterwards and thru anecdote-filled emails later, the rather uncomfortable sense from residents that the city is continually playing catch-up to events like the Keystone Kops, even though there's ample warning about any troublesome upcoming weather from the National Weather Service, NWS., is really starting to get to people in a way that other previous issues didn't.

Local residents may think we're in Hallandale Beach, but to the
NWS, we are affectionately known as Latitude
25.98°North, Longitude 80.13°West

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Hallandale&state=FL&site=MFL&lat=25.9856&lon=-80.1417


What REALLY infuriated residents in December and June according to every person I spoke to who was personally affected was the city allowing non-emergency vehicles from outside the area to drive thru the flooded residential streets and create a wake that forced even more water into neighborhood homes and businesses, causing more serious damage.


How did I find out about the meeting at City Hall?
Thru a flyer taped to a glass window near an ATM on the north side of the Bank of America branch on N.E. 8th Avenue.
Really.
You think I could make that up?

According to Codd, "the City of Hallandale Beach is handing out free
sand bags to residents" at the HB Public Works Dept, at 630 NW 2nd Street.

For those of you far from Hallandale Beach and Hollywood, much of which seems to almost be below sea level, this particular
area I'm speaking of is less than 1.5 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.


Speaking of Bonnie, Hallandale Beach Blog, who's your favorite Bonnie?
I'm glad you asked me that: Bonnie Bedelia, whom as I've mentioned before, absolutely wowed a much younger me a few years after seeing her in the 1969 NBC-TV drama with Michael Parks, Then Came Bronson, first came out.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063955/

I sometimes think in retrospect that the whole time I was at IU, I was looking for a Bonnie twin. 
And thanks to my friends who were in them, I knew just the sororities which had strong competitors for that crown, esp. Delta Gamma, Kappa Kappa Gamma and Kappa Alpha Theta.
Those were always the girls I connected with the most: smart, great personalities, sporty but who loved wearing sports apparel as much as classic clothing and looked great in either.

The talented and oh-so lovely Leighton Meester reminded me of a young Bonnie from the first time I ever saw her in NBC's cute sci-fi show "Surface" five years ago.
Now, every time I see BB I think of LM and vice-versa.

Blake Lively and Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl,

Rolling Stone 1075, March 2009.

Blake Lively and Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl, Rolling  Stone 1075, March 2009.

As I put it at the time I first ran this photo of the issue I bought last year: You scream, I scream, we all scream for... Gossip Girl. Photo by Terry Richardson.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/8818/52599

Check these videos out and tell me what you think about my analogy, and before you ask, BB was twenty-one years old when she made this film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xe920YgWts





Then Came Bronson (Intro) S1 (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYsztoaU9Ls

"Then Came Bronson" NBC Fall Preview for 1969, narrated by Hugh Downs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW79P5jLoU4&t=9s


Michael Parks as 'Jim Bronson,' a former San Francisco newspaper reporter turned motorcycle-driving vagabond, seeking to make sense of his own life and connect-the-dots in an ever-changing world around him. Shown above in still of video, the delightful Bonnie Bedelia.

http://www.georgeduning.com/soundtracks/Then_Came_Bronson/Then_Came_Bronson.html

http://www.jimbronson.com/


I was originally going to run a couple of pertinent photos to illustrate some of my points, since I've been taking them for reasons such as this, but due to time constraints and a lack of sleep, I'm going to have to come back here later and drop them in to connect-the-dots a bit better, so please come back and check them out when you can.

You won't be disappointed, since as is always the case in Hallandale Beach, seeing is believing.
And sometimes even that is not enough!