[Rhodes22-list] Major Ice Damage

Roger Pihlaja cen09402 at centurytel.net
Sat Mar 6 17:48:11 EST 2004


Hi Everybody,

Midland County, MI is under a flood warning due to the warm temperatures & heavy rains the last couple of days.  Sanford Lake rose about 3 feet in 5 hours today!  My neighbor said he saw the the ice floe that caused the damage to our docks & boat lifts in the attached photos.  It was about 100 yards X 50 yards & being pushed along by a 4-5 knot current!  He said this massive ice floe didn't even slow down when it tore thru his pier & boat lift & my wharf & pier.  The sound accompanying this event was also quite impressive!  I designed & built this wharf & pier in the summer of 1983, using ice engineering procedures from the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering.  So, it was nearly 21 years old & has never given a bit of trouble to this point.  The pilings were sunk 4 feet into the mud bottom in 300 lbs of concrete each and the pilings were X-braced with thru-bolted steel U-channel in both the E-W as well as the N-S directions.

As luck would have it, I happened to take some pictures down by the lake about 1 month ago on Feb. 7, 2004 because of the unusually heavy snowfall we had this winter.  I've included these shots as "before" photos & then included the shots taken today from roughly the same location & angle for comparison.  If you look closely at the photos taken on 02/07/2004, you will be able to see some of the X-braced thru-bolted steel reinforcing structure on the pilings on the piers, because the lake level was very low this winter.

If you look closely at the "after" photos, you will see the 4 pilings are still intact on the pier.  These pilings either sheared off at the lake bottom or perhaps the ice floe pushed them, cement & all thru the bottom to their present location.  If so, I may have 4 rather large trenches in the lake bottom!  In any case, when the water warms up, I will have a major project this spring and summer.  Just clearing away the debris will be a nontrivial task.

I haven't been able to contact my homeowner's insurance agent, so I don't know if my homeowner's insurance covers this sort of damage.  We don't have flood insurance, so my expectation is we don't have any coverage.  But, we'll see what our agent says.



Figure 1: Stairs & Pier Looking South On 02/07/2004
 


Figure 2: Stairs & Wrecked Pier Looking South On 03/06/2004



Figure 3: Stairs & Pier Looking NE On 02/07/2004



Figure 4: Stairs & Wrecked Pier Looking NE On 03/06/2004



Figure 5: Wrecked Wharf & Wrecked Harper's Pier & Boat Lift Looking North On 03/06/2004



Figure 6: Wrecked Wharf & Pier Looking South From Harper's Stairs On 03/06/2004
-------------- next part --------------
Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1280211 bytes Desc: not available
Url: http://www.rhodes22.org/pipermail/rhodes22-list/attch/200403/06/attachment.jpg
-------------- next part --------------
Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1219547 bytes Desc: not available
Url: http://www.rhodes22.org/pipermail/rhodes22-list/attch/200403/06/attachment-0001.jpg
-------------- next part --------------
Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1281479 bytes Desc: not available
Url: http://www.rhodes22.org/pipermail/rhodes22-list/attch/200403/06/attachment-0002.jpg
-------------- next part --------------
Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1188281 bytes Desc: not available
Url: http://www.rhodes22.org/pipermail/rhodes22-list/attch/200403/06/attachment-0003.jpg
-------------- next part --------------
Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1195806 bytes Desc: not available
Url: http://www.rhodes22.org/pipermail/rhodes22-list/attch/200403/06/attachment-0004.jpg
-------------- next part --------------
Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1212864 bytes Desc: not available
Url: http://www.rhodes22.org/pipermail/rhodes22-list/attch/200403/06/attachment-0005.jpg


More information about the Rhodes22-list mailing list