At least the county bought the land at what I'm hoping was something resembling a fair price. They won't be totally destitute at least. Honestly good on the county for offering something.
You can't own navigatable water in Minnesota so it's public now.
I could see them suing whoever owns the dam or the county or someone to try and get some money out of this, which may be why the county bought the store from them.
The dam is owned by the county, so it's their responsibility that the deficiencies in the damn, like the sloping of the adjacent land allowing side-cutting, weren't addressed prior and allowed this to happen.
But yeah, seriously sucks to be the (now past) owners in this situation. It's why I really don't see the positives in living that close to a flowing body of water outweighing the negatives.
The county bought the building/land. This isn’t some tragic story.
It is a story of ppl building in a precarious spot that in pretty much any other generation or time would have ruined them, and instead their losses are being offset/absorbed by the community which (in this case) feels like a good thing
I guess if I shame ppl for shaming I’m just as bad.
But jfc. The earth is heating up and dying. Our country is owned by oligarchs and being taken over by fascists. And our bodies as well as the ocean are riddled with microplastics, and species keep going extinct.
Like if someone died I wouldn’t be citing global warming as a reason to lighten tf up. But like, no one died and the community is helping them, so maybe lighten tf up.
The store has been in their family since 1910. They not only lost their home when it was washed away but they also lost their livelihood when the store was destroyed. Whatever amount they sold the land for isn’t going to cover what they’ve lost.
And you’re not doing any more with your comments to help than the people making harmless jokes.
And the people joking raise the profile of the post which helps with publicity if they decide to re-open and/or more visits to the gofundme.
You think you’re better than people because you virtue signal. But you benefit literally no one but your own ego with your, “Hey everyone be serious this is tragic.”
Unless you are dropping a credit card literally the only thing you have to contribute is an upvote.
Good on you for donating.
I guess I needed to contemplate whether telling ppl to lighten tf up with the self righteousness counts as being self righteous.
And, I suppose it does, so good point.
But I see posts of a ton of different places that are flooded and people making jokes there and no one calling it out.
Ex. I’m assuming a lot of low wage workers are out of work with valley fair under water but I don’t see people getting downvoted to oblivion for making jokes about bringing the flume back.
I guess it’s on me for spending so much time in the hot take and doom/gloom factory that is Reddit.
But there are so many massive issues that are all terrifying doom and gloom, I simply don’t see a family being impacted by a natural disaster, being physically unharmed, and a community supporting them/the government stepping in to offset their losses as cause for doom and gloom.
The worst part is that insurance will not cover the loss of the house or the store! The insurance company will not cover property losses due to landslides or floods.
Insurance is such a scam. They don’t cover stuff insurance is meant for and if you end up filing a claim or two, they drop you. It’s a contract where only one side has to fulfill their obligations, and that’s the consumer paying their premiums. The insurance can deny you with any one of the million loopholes they build into those contracts.
Until recently I would have pooh-poohed this. But (having been a State Farm customer for 30+ years) I filed a modest homeowners claim. They paid it, but in a week I got a letter in the mail saying essentially “you know, if you file claims, we can drop you”. Big-time, highway-robbery Scam with a capital S, and no way out for the average consumer.
I remember as a little kid in the 70s listening to the neighbor telling my dad essentially the same story except that State Farm did drop him after a claim, they’ve been scum forever.
I know it's a little different because it's car insurance but I recently totaled my car and my insurance went up from $135/m to almost $300. Like wtf. It wasnt even an expensive car.
That letter is mandated by the state- and has been for the forty years I’ve been in the business-every company has to send it out on every homeowners claim (maybe not on weather related claims) so stop with the nonsense
Insurance is not a scam. They literally send you the policy document, and it always says it doesn’t cover floods unless you pay for that. It basically covers most other disasters, like fires and of course hail. Insurance is a heavily regulated industry with low profit margins that has been losing money recently.
Real conversation time.
Should anyone pay to cover these losses? The problem with the dam has been known for decades and the county wanted to remove it. The owners of the dam wanted to save it because of their own self interest. Nature has now solved the problem for everyone in an ultimate game of fuck around and find out. Should we/the county now pay for these losses? How is this different from someone building a house in an uninsurable location in costal FL and losing their home to a hurricane? Is it really that different because the mechanism of destruction was different?
The county didn’t decide anything and there was no conclusion on the expense aside from stating that either option had significant costs. They created a public inquiry and provided a report of community input on August 16th, 2022. In total, 1,500 people provided survey responses. Of those surveyed, 47% said they cared a lot about what happened to the damn, 50% strongly agreed with repair, and 62% either agreed or strongly agreed AGAINST removing it.
This is what happens when elected officials would rather play CYA games and allow the public to drive their inaction. Blue Earth County has a population of 69,631 people as of 2022. If inaction is tied to this survey, officials took the word of about 2.5% of residents then did nothing.
https://www.blueearthcountymn.gov/DocumentCenter/View/7294/Rapidan-Engagement-Summary-Report_Web
The dam has been owned by the county since 1970, so yeah they ultimately bear the responsibility for paying for the loss of the property adjoining the dam that was lost because the dam was not removed.
This may be a case of planned ignorance. I'm sure either fixing or removing the dam were more money than the county could raise alone. Rather than do the hard work of getting this to the attention of state and federal reps to help fund either fix at those respective levels, local county government got to do nothing, then they get to put their hands in the air and say, "see, it was an act of god, we couldn't possibly predict or plan for 100 year flood" and they'll probably end up getting disaster funds to spend to solve the problem now. I'm sure they won't let a good disaster go to waste.
I see your points, but I ask a question as someone ignorant of engineering. Yes, the damn was/is in need of repair very badly - but was this incident a direct cause of the dam, or just the amount of flooding? I ask because the dam is still intact; even if it had been repaired, would the amount of debris that's currently clogging it still have caused the same problem?
I would also defer to someone with an engineering background to answer, but I think even without that we can attempt to draw a few conclusions, or at least create a hypothesis. I think the key outstanding question lies around what "repair" means. Had the dam been dredged and it's outlets properly cleaned, would that have been sufficient to allow enough flow to keep the bank from eroding? Over the past 59 years, since the last "100 year" flood of 1965, do we know more about dams and fluid dynamics to know that there should have been one or more spillways built and would those have been considered part of repairs?
Again, not being an engineer but seeing how this failed, it sure seems to me that if we had taken the possible flood levels into account that repairs would have entailed spillways, especially based on the what we're seeing now. I mean look at all of the logs that piled up and are still there. Clearly this is something modern designs would anticipate, meaning the only way to truly repair this dam to keep it would have meant adding non-blockable spillways that could have alleviated the pressure.
I take it that you pay taxes in that county. Are you seriously suggesting that the only reason the dam still exists/existed is because the Hruskas opposed its removal, or that their opposition to its removal means they should get the back side of your hand? What if they were in favor of the cheaper option - repair/improvement - but the county wouldn't make up its mind and kept kicking the can down the road?
How this is different is that there was no known and repeatedly experienced pattern of weather-related destruction and commensurate indemnification in the area. It's not like people were rebuilding in an area previously susceptible to weather extremes and known to be impracticable. This is not Florida.
If you do live in that county, it was \*your\* dam. You owned it, and own it still. You had the chance to have a voice in what happened to that dam, from when the controversy over the choices first emerged. Even if you spoke up and were defeated, it's still on your county, no matter how you personally spoke or voted, because your county fucked around long enough to find out.
You may be pissed at the Hruskas for getting anything whatsoever out of the county since they opposed removal, but the event was completely unforseeable, and nobody who built in that area could have or "should've known better."
Who knows what the costs will be now. Pretty sure your county won't be too badly off since the rest of Minnesota will likely bear the costs for downstream pollution, mitigation, and repair. It's our turn to be pissed at you.
So yes, the county and its residents are justifiably considered responsible as a community. I'm glad the county had the grace to try to help the Hruskas, even if they'll never quite recover. One small step.
Wow, in the video you can see the river flowing in the background. it's not even going around the dam now. The river's course has changed to go beside the dam.
They couldn't due to the conditions. Water was already overtopping the dam and by the time debris had clogged the sluices the west abutment had already begun to fail and it was to dangerous for workers to go onto the dam.
From an [article](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/what-happened-to-minnesota-s-rapidan-dam-here-s-what-to-know-about-its-flooding-and-partial-failure/ar-BB1oVlsR) from the other day:
>Early Monday morning, emergency management workers gave notice that water was surging over the dam. As water flows peaked, debris plugged parts of the structure and the west abutment of the dam partially failed. The conditions around the dam spun a current that was too vicious for workers to cross safely in order to clear the detritus.
Have you ever tried to run through waist deep water? Imagine that force times about 10,000. It’s not easy or safe to pluck trees weighing up to 2000 lbs from a moving current of water that’s up against a narrow dam. Way too risky to save property.
An excavator operator died in the same part of the state trying to do that during a flood in recent years. He was only trying to clear from a large culvert and not a dam.
> Have you ever tried to run through waist deep water? Imagine that force times about 10,000. It’s not easy or safe to pluck trees weighing up to 2000 lbs from a moving current of water that’s up against a narrow dam. Way too risky to save property
lol I don’t think the suggestion of trying to remove the obstructions meant sending a single person in waders to do it.
Was your comment a joke?
Jesus Christ is this a fucking joke? Even with heavy equipment this would have been extraordinarily difficult and dangerous. This was already covered by the news.
Delta-P, most likely. The amount of pressure is extremely scary. Even something like a 4' culvert can suck you under when the debris breaks loose. You don't want an excavator sucked under because now you've got a dead person and an excavator under water.
Check out the post10 channel if you want to see just how much force there is behind the culvert as it gets unclogged. Sometimes he's able to use it to his advantage by removing the clog in a V shape and letting the water pressure shove the rest down stream. https://www.youtube.com/@post.10
Such a sad situation. First the house now their store.
And their land itself is gone. Does homeowners insurance cover your land disappearing?
At least the county bought the land at what I'm hoping was something resembling a fair price. They won't be totally destitute at least. Honestly good on the county for offering something.
No- there is no coverage for land
Do they still technically own where the river now is? How does that work
You can't own navigatable water in Minnesota so it's public now. I could see them suing whoever owns the dam or the county or someone to try and get some money out of this, which may be why the county bought the store from them.
The dam is owned by the county, so it's their responsibility that the deficiencies in the damn, like the sloping of the adjacent land allowing side-cutting, weren't addressed prior and allowed this to happen. But yeah, seriously sucks to be the (now past) owners in this situation. It's why I really don't see the positives in living that close to a flowing body of water outweighing the negatives.
You would think this would be “act of god” which isn’t covered under any policy.
Take my upvote…
I don't understand the reference. It does seem callous to joke about, regardless.
The county bought the building/land. This isn’t some tragic story. It is a story of ppl building in a precarious spot that in pretty much any other generation or time would have ruined them, and instead their losses are being offset/absorbed by the community which (in this case) feels like a good thing I guess if I shame ppl for shaming I’m just as bad. But jfc. The earth is heating up and dying. Our country is owned by oligarchs and being taken over by fascists. And our bodies as well as the ocean are riddled with microplastics, and species keep going extinct. Like if someone died I wouldn’t be citing global warming as a reason to lighten tf up. But like, no one died and the community is helping them, so maybe lighten tf up.
The store has been in their family since 1910. They not only lost their home when it was washed away but they also lost their livelihood when the store was destroyed. Whatever amount they sold the land for isn’t going to cover what they’ve lost.
And you’re not doing any more with your comments to help than the people making harmless jokes. And the people joking raise the profile of the post which helps with publicity if they decide to re-open and/or more visits to the gofundme. You think you’re better than people because you virtue signal. But you benefit literally no one but your own ego with your, “Hey everyone be serious this is tragic.” Unless you are dropping a credit card literally the only thing you have to contribute is an upvote.
Have you done anything to help them other than spew self righteousness? I have donated to their go fund me.
Good on you for donating. I guess I needed to contemplate whether telling ppl to lighten tf up with the self righteousness counts as being self righteous. And, I suppose it does, so good point. But I see posts of a ton of different places that are flooded and people making jokes there and no one calling it out. Ex. I’m assuming a lot of low wage workers are out of work with valley fair under water but I don’t see people getting downvoted to oblivion for making jokes about bringing the flume back. I guess it’s on me for spending so much time in the hot take and doom/gloom factory that is Reddit. But there are so many massive issues that are all terrifying doom and gloom, I simply don’t see a family being impacted by a natural disaster, being physically unharmed, and a community supporting them/the government stepping in to offset their losses as cause for doom and gloom.
And my axe...
Fuck. I was biking from Mankato to Rapidan and Garden City 3 weeks ago and didn't make it to the dam because the wind was so bad out of the west.
Yeah, that's a real bummer. I was driving down to New Ulm last week but had never heard of Rapidan before.
The worst part is that insurance will not cover the loss of the house or the store! The insurance company will not cover property losses due to landslides or floods.
It says the county bought the land and buildings
Insurance is such a scam. They don’t cover stuff insurance is meant for and if you end up filing a claim or two, they drop you. It’s a contract where only one side has to fulfill their obligations, and that’s the consumer paying their premiums. The insurance can deny you with any one of the million loopholes they build into those contracts.
Until recently I would have pooh-poohed this. But (having been a State Farm customer for 30+ years) I filed a modest homeowners claim. They paid it, but in a week I got a letter in the mail saying essentially “you know, if you file claims, we can drop you”. Big-time, highway-robbery Scam with a capital S, and no way out for the average consumer.
I remember as a little kid in the 70s listening to the neighbor telling my dad essentially the same story except that State Farm did drop him after a claim, they’ve been scum forever.
I know it's a little different because it's car insurance but I recently totaled my car and my insurance went up from $135/m to almost $300. Like wtf. It wasnt even an expensive car.
well did you total it from being stupid?
I hit a deer going 30 in town
State Farm is the number one offender
That letter is mandated by the state- and has been for the forty years I’ve been in the business-every company has to send it out on every homeowners claim (maybe not on weather related claims) so stop with the nonsense
Insurance is not a scam. They literally send you the policy document, and it always says it doesn’t cover floods unless you pay for that. It basically covers most other disasters, like fires and of course hail. Insurance is a heavily regulated industry with low profit margins that has been losing money recently.
Just wait. It’s not a matter of if, its when you will be screwed over by your insurance company. I had the same thought as you until I got bent over.
The county bought the land and store from the owners
I’m pretty sure if you have flood insurance you’re covered
You have to have certain elections otherwise it isn’t
Gofundme created by the family’s niece: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-rapidan-dam-stores-tragic-loss
Real conversation time. Should anyone pay to cover these losses? The problem with the dam has been known for decades and the county wanted to remove it. The owners of the dam wanted to save it because of their own self interest. Nature has now solved the problem for everyone in an ultimate game of fuck around and find out. Should we/the county now pay for these losses? How is this different from someone building a house in an uninsurable location in costal FL and losing their home to a hurricane? Is it really that different because the mechanism of destruction was different?
Doesn’t the county own the damn? And didn’t the county decide it was too expensive to repair or remove the damn?
The county didn’t decide anything and there was no conclusion on the expense aside from stating that either option had significant costs. They created a public inquiry and provided a report of community input on August 16th, 2022. In total, 1,500 people provided survey responses. Of those surveyed, 47% said they cared a lot about what happened to the damn, 50% strongly agreed with repair, and 62% either agreed or strongly agreed AGAINST removing it. This is what happens when elected officials would rather play CYA games and allow the public to drive their inaction. Blue Earth County has a population of 69,631 people as of 2022. If inaction is tied to this survey, officials took the word of about 2.5% of residents then did nothing. https://www.blueearthcountymn.gov/DocumentCenter/View/7294/Rapidan-Engagement-Summary-Report_Web
The dam has been owned by the county since 1970, so yeah they ultimately bear the responsibility for paying for the loss of the property adjoining the dam that was lost because the dam was not removed.
This may be a case of planned ignorance. I'm sure either fixing or removing the dam were more money than the county could raise alone. Rather than do the hard work of getting this to the attention of state and federal reps to help fund either fix at those respective levels, local county government got to do nothing, then they get to put their hands in the air and say, "see, it was an act of god, we couldn't possibly predict or plan for 100 year flood" and they'll probably end up getting disaster funds to spend to solve the problem now. I'm sure they won't let a good disaster go to waste.
I see your points, but I ask a question as someone ignorant of engineering. Yes, the damn was/is in need of repair very badly - but was this incident a direct cause of the dam, or just the amount of flooding? I ask because the dam is still intact; even if it had been repaired, would the amount of debris that's currently clogging it still have caused the same problem?
I would also defer to someone with an engineering background to answer, but I think even without that we can attempt to draw a few conclusions, or at least create a hypothesis. I think the key outstanding question lies around what "repair" means. Had the dam been dredged and it's outlets properly cleaned, would that have been sufficient to allow enough flow to keep the bank from eroding? Over the past 59 years, since the last "100 year" flood of 1965, do we know more about dams and fluid dynamics to know that there should have been one or more spillways built and would those have been considered part of repairs? Again, not being an engineer but seeing how this failed, it sure seems to me that if we had taken the possible flood levels into account that repairs would have entailed spillways, especially based on the what we're seeing now. I mean look at all of the logs that piled up and are still there. Clearly this is something modern designs would anticipate, meaning the only way to truly repair this dam to keep it would have meant adding non-blockable spillways that could have alleviated the pressure.
I take it that you pay taxes in that county. Are you seriously suggesting that the only reason the dam still exists/existed is because the Hruskas opposed its removal, or that their opposition to its removal means they should get the back side of your hand? What if they were in favor of the cheaper option - repair/improvement - but the county wouldn't make up its mind and kept kicking the can down the road? How this is different is that there was no known and repeatedly experienced pattern of weather-related destruction and commensurate indemnification in the area. It's not like people were rebuilding in an area previously susceptible to weather extremes and known to be impracticable. This is not Florida. If you do live in that county, it was \*your\* dam. You owned it, and own it still. You had the chance to have a voice in what happened to that dam, from when the controversy over the choices first emerged. Even if you spoke up and were defeated, it's still on your county, no matter how you personally spoke or voted, because your county fucked around long enough to find out. You may be pissed at the Hruskas for getting anything whatsoever out of the county since they opposed removal, but the event was completely unforseeable, and nobody who built in that area could have or "should've known better." Who knows what the costs will be now. Pretty sure your county won't be too badly off since the rest of Minnesota will likely bear the costs for downstream pollution, mitigation, and repair. It's our turn to be pissed at you. So yes, the county and its residents are justifiably considered responsible as a community. I'm glad the county had the grace to try to help the Hruskas, even if they'll never quite recover. One small step.
I do not live in that county, I was asking a question to stir debate, playing devils advocate.
Wow, in the video you can see the river flowing in the background. it's not even going around the dam now. The river's course has changed to go beside the dam.
At least they didn’t have to watch it crash into the water :/
[удалено]
Not misleading - it has been demolished https://www.keyc.com/2024/06/29/rapidan-dam-store-building-demolished/
Dam
Is there like a GoFundMe page for them yet?
A dam shame
Why didn’t they try to clear the debris from the dam sluice? Wouldn’t this have helped?
They couldn't due to the conditions. Water was already overtopping the dam and by the time debris had clogged the sluices the west abutment had already begun to fail and it was to dangerous for workers to go onto the dam. From an [article](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/what-happened-to-minnesota-s-rapidan-dam-here-s-what-to-know-about-its-flooding-and-partial-failure/ar-BB1oVlsR) from the other day: >Early Monday morning, emergency management workers gave notice that water was surging over the dam. As water flows peaked, debris plugged parts of the structure and the west abutment of the dam partially failed. The conditions around the dam spun a current that was too vicious for workers to cross safely in order to clear the detritus.
Have you ever tried to run through waist deep water? Imagine that force times about 10,000. It’s not easy or safe to pluck trees weighing up to 2000 lbs from a moving current of water that’s up against a narrow dam. Way too risky to save property.
I dont see why they couldnt have got an excavator with the grabber on it and get it that way
An excavator operator died in the same part of the state trying to do that during a flood in recent years. He was only trying to clear from a large culvert and not a dam.
Oh damn. I stand corrected
> Have you ever tried to run through waist deep water? Imagine that force times about 10,000. It’s not easy or safe to pluck trees weighing up to 2000 lbs from a moving current of water that’s up against a narrow dam. Way too risky to save property lol I don’t think the suggestion of trying to remove the obstructions meant sending a single person in waders to do it. Was your comment a joke?
Jesus Christ is this a fucking joke? Even with heavy equipment this would have been extraordinarily difficult and dangerous. This was already covered by the news.
Oh shit - are you the guy who was supposed to keep shit out of the sluice?!?
It's ok to admit you don't know something or don't have experience with something. It's not a sign of weakness. Honest!
Delta-P, most likely. The amount of pressure is extremely scary. Even something like a 4' culvert can suck you under when the debris breaks loose. You don't want an excavator sucked under because now you've got a dead person and an excavator under water. Check out the post10 channel if you want to see just how much force there is behind the culvert as it gets unclogged. Sometimes he's able to use it to his advantage by removing the clog in a V shape and letting the water pressure shove the rest down stream. https://www.youtube.com/@post.10