Flooding In Black Hills

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Of all the hazards, flooding is one that I am less familiar with. So I choose the flooding of the Black Hills during June 9th and 10th, 1972. The flooding occurred more in the eastern portion of the Black Hills of South Dakota. As a consequence of the flooding and other hazards that happened during the disaster, a total of 238 people died and 3.057 people were injured. As far as damage, damage was estimated to be at roughly 160 million dollars. There were 1,335 homes destroyed and roughly 5,000 vehicles destroyed. During the week before the disaster occurred, there had been scattered showers. These showers had saturated the ground over the Black Hills area. A large and slow moving thunderstorm formed over the Black Hills on the afternoon …show more content…
The overloaded dam broke about 10:45, roughly 1 hour after the influx of flood waters and debris. The flow of this dam water was estimated at 50,000 cubic feet per second. The water flowed through Rapid City, SD, at about midnight on June 9th. It was measured that Rapid Creek rose 13 feet in 5 hours. Battle Creek also experienced extreme flooding and caused some of its tributaries to experience some flooding. The flooding was contained to the creeks and the Black Hills area took most of the flooding and basically all the damage and casualties. Once water had left the steepness of the Black Hills, it spread out in the flood plains of the Cheyenne River. The flood of June 9-10 is the worst that the Black Hills has ever experienced. There are some areas that have experienced higher stream flows at times after but most of the stream flows are higher during the 1972 …show more content…
With the high level of casualties, injuries, economic damage, structural damage, and other effects of the disaster, various leaders and the community were very anxious to get safety measures in place. They saw that residences and businesses needed to be moved out of flood plains and that structures, new and old, would have to be constructed to withstand possible future flooding.
The second cited resource goes over some stories from people who went through this disaster and the things they saw. It also tells stories of many things that regular citizens did to pull together and help in ways that they normally wouldn`t. Expansion of the citizen role is what I`m referencing with this paragraph. When disasters hit, most people will go out of their way to help others and perform jobs that they would not normally be a part of. I find this to be even truer in the Mid-West