What Happens When a Superstorm Hits D. C. Illustration by John Blackford for Rolling Stone. Photograph used in illustration by Ryan D. Budhu. On August 2. Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Texas coast, Don Resio, a 7. University of North Florida meteorologist and a leading expert in hurricane modeling, sat on his living room couch with his wife, Kathryn, and their cat Marley, switching between the Weather Channel, MSNBC and CNN. JPG_500/MI0001/859/MI0001859001.jpg?partner=allrovi.com' alt='The Gap Band Greatest Hits Torrent' title='The Gap Band Greatest Hits Torrent' />I knew it was going to be devastating, says Resio, but even he was surprised by the astounding 5. Houston. Eleven days later, Hurricane Irma notched nearly unprecedented 1. Florida, ripping apart homes in the Keys and flooding downtown sections of Miami and Jacksonville, which is not far from Resios home in the seaside community of Ponte Vedra. Its not a good time, Resio says, to be living near the coast. Disappearing 9 Patch Layout 2. By the time Hurricane Jose moved within striking distance of half the Eastern Seaboard, American cities were seeming more and more like cursed metropolises on the banks of a warming, rising, increasingly wrathful ocean. The inevitable question becomes, where next Resio and many other prominent experts believe one of the most vulnerable targets is a city rarely associated with hurricanes Washington, D. C. When the big storm hits D. C., the resulting disaster may not kill as many as Katrina, or flood as much physical real estate as Harvey, but the toll it takes on American institutions will be unfathomable. The storm will paralyze many of the agencies that operate and defend the nation, raising the specter of national security threats. Imagine, says Gerald Galloway, a disaster and national security expert at the University of Maryland who served 3. Washington, D. C., with everything from the Lincoln Memorial to the grounds of the Capitol under water that certainly does not speak well for the United States preparedness. The problem D. C. Americas capital lies on the Potomac, an extremely powerful river that drops from 3,0. Atlantic Ocean. And like all big rivers, the Potomac produces major floods. In September 1. 99. Jeff Kelble, the president of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, watched a set of rapids known as Great Falls, located 1. D. C., rise in the wake of Hurricane Fran. The river took houses off their foundations and rammed them into other houses, he says. Steep hills further downstream funnel the Potomac through Little Falls according to Dean Naujoks, who works for Kelble, kayaking this stretch at flood stage is like driving a car you just start accelerating. From the falls, a flooded Potomac could sprint, in a muddy torrent of engorged fury, into D. C. Heavy rains over the headwaters of the Potomac released a deluge into the city 1. In whats either the best art project, the best business move, or both, someone has made what I presume is a bot thats churning out thousands of unique iPhone. Music/v4/23/c7/5d/23c75dee-6bf2-ab4f-2e49-96c4dbdacb1a/source/1280x1280bb.jpg' alt='The Gap Band Greatest Hits Torrent' title='The Gap Band Greatest Hits Torrent' />You have not yet voted on this site If you have already visited the site, please help us classify the good from the bad by voting on this site. Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Heroes Were these people Heroes Or were they just normal people, in some cases just doing their jobs Suggest A Hero For This List. Hero Name. Watch the Latest News. Videos including Featured News Videos and Sports Videos and News Highlights. View more News. com. Videos and Breaking News and Featured. The most notable floods were 1. Potomac destroyed every single bridge but one along a 1. National Mall. For scientists like Resio, a big concern is if a storm system in the mountains unfolds just before a major hurricane hits near the Outer Banks of North Carolina, then tracks inland, pulling a small mountain of water up the Chesapeake, then up the Potomac. This happened in the Chesapeake Potomac Hurricane of 1. Hurricane Hazel in 1. Hurricane Connie in 1. Hurricane Isabel, a Category 2 storm that hit in 2. Marylands largest sewage treatment plants, sending 9. D. C. Isabel is a reminder, wrote David L. Johnson, then assistant administrator for Weather Services, in a government assessment of the storm, that if the impact of a Category 2 hurricane can be so extensive, then the impact of a major hurricane Category 3 or higher could be devastating. Resio estimates that there are better than even odds that a one two punch will descend on D. C. within the next 5. Though, like with many situations, he says, when it hits, people will say it was the perfect storm. Floodwater coming down the Potomac from the mountains would crash into water moving up the river with the storm surge from the ocean. This would set the stage for a dramatic physics experiment that even the worlds most advanced meteorological computer models have had trouble simulating. You end up with an interaction, says Ed Link, a former chief scientific adviser with the U. The Gap Band Greatest Hits Torrent' title='The Gap Band Greatest Hits Torrent' />S. Army Corps of Engineers. It is one plus one equals three. Part of the problem is the city could already be flooded Persistent rainfall over downtown D. C. could send sheets of water into the Federal Triangle, a wedge between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues containing seven crucial federal buildings, overwhelming the citys century old sewer system and causing additional water to erupt out of storm drains. This happened in 2. Internal Revenue Service headquarters with more than 2. Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, the National Archives and the National Gallery of Art. Constitution Avenue, a vital D. C. artery built on the path of an old creek, flooded nearly nine feet deep with enough hydrostatic pressure to blast a hole through the foundation of EPA headquarters. People watching the rising Potomac River from the observation area on May 1st, 2. Great Falls, Virginia. Ricky CariotiThe Washington PostGetty Images. And if the river blasted through D. C. s levee system, which has a slate of weak points, the entire area would essentially become part of the Potomac. According to a September 2. Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan policy institute composed of security and military experts, The continued strength of the U. S. depends, in large part, on having a clear eyed assessment of risks and threats to the nation, and addressing them well before they manifest themselves. Washington, D. C., the capital of what is, for the time being, the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, is patently unprepared for its pending disaster. Washingtons defense begins with a little known levee system. There probably arent 1. Washington, says Galloway, who even know this levee exists. The Potomac Park Levee System is operated by the National Park Service and consists of an earthen berm that begins near the Lincoln Memorial and runs along the National Mall, passing just below the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Constitution Gardens to the Washington Monument. At 1. 7th Street, a busy thoroughfare that cuts right through the berm, a 1. For the city to be protected, this must be manually patched. In past floods, the hole in the system was filled with sandbags, a task that took 1,0. In 2. 00. 7, the Army Corps inspected the levee and gave the entire system a failing grade. This led FEMA to de accredit it, meaning much of downtown D. C. was forced to pay into the National Flood Insurance Program. Three years ago, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers unveiled a potential solution a removable flood wall comprising eight steel posts and 2. Street. Deploying the wall falls to the National Park Services Division of Facility Management, whose workers have practiced setting up the barrier on just three occasions, though never at night, in the rain, or in the face of an actual hurricane or flood. The wall is stored in a National Park Service maintenance yard in northeast D. C., amid picnic tables and garbage bins. The steel posts and aluminum panels, along with several other items related to the walls installation, lie strapped to the beds of two tractor trailers, which National Park Service workers would steer down New York Avenue, around the Capitol and in toward 1.