I’m just a bit surprised i haven’t seen anyone comment on this. I have been following the rebuild of the CSX/Clinchfield line that was completely destroyed in last years hurricane. And just to be clear, the hurricane destroyed the environment before the rebuild began. Criticism has come from the “lack of environmental caution”, translated as CSX reasoned out to take all the necessary material right from the mountainside not only to hasten the rebuild but save untold amounts of money, which you can’t blame. I believe any alternatives would have taken years versus months to get the railroad up and running. Nature dealt them a bad hand and they responded maybe not the ideal way but certainly, relatively safe and amazingly quick given the scope of destruction. Curious to hear from people closer to the issue.
Wonder if CSX will ever consider making changes to 'hurricane ‘proof’ the line 
I’ll probably follow on too, @Neal. Thanks for the info!
So what changes are the US taking to ‘Hurricane Proof’ all the areas of the USA that can be damaged by Hurricanes - Every place between Maine and Key West and as far West as Central Texas and along the Mississippi River.
Hurricanes are Hurricanes and will go where they go at the whims of the atmosphere at any given point in time - sometimes the most severe of storms move across the land very quickly and do relatively little damage and sometime the Class 1 storms barely move for days and create a high degree of flooding from their continued high rates of rain for extended periods of time.
Every Hurricane is unique as are the damages they cause.
If you look at the topography, you can understand what a fool’s errand that would be.
I remember standing in the cemetery in Forty Fort, looking down at the river far below. There were enormous berms and protective walls guarding against any possible recurrence of the flood of 1936 (which my grandfather said reached the end of their street at its height). The Corps of Engineers went to great pains to ensure that stretch was thoroughly hurricane-proofed, at a cost that extended to the CSX line would be in the tens or hundreds of billions.
A year later, my father and I came back from a fishing trip in Quebec ,with no particularly notable heavy rain) to discover my grandparents’ house flooded halfway up the living-room walls, with water that sat there eight days because the Corps earthworks held it back from draining. I was told that a whirlpool formed almost exactly where I had been standing, and scoured out most of the cemetery on its way to massive flooding.
The problem is not ‘hurricane storm damage’ but the effect of enormous rainfall progressively over a watershed so that much of the runoff reaches a given point on a river at the same time – much the same process as a flash flood, but on a far larger scale.
Where storm surge is a factor, as at Galveston, the situation is more complicated. I don’t know if you have ever been to Gulfport, MS. They had a charming downtown, including no-chin Jefferson Davis’ house Beauvoir. All that is gone. Six or more miles of the CSX line at Bay St. Louis disappeared as if it had never been – and that was not a cheaply constructed line. I can’t imagine any kind of ‘stormproofing’ that could have been effective.
True, now that I think about it, there really isn’t a way to stormproof lines. CSX abandoned the last few miles of the Homestead Subdivision in Tampa 
Actually one of the interesting things they are doing is building a wall of steel pillars drilled into the edge of the river, i suspect to either bolster the roadbed or stabilize it. Its not clear and i can only guess. History does repeat itself. In 1955 a hurricane and damaging flood wiped out the Erie Lackawanna line running through the Poconos, .the railroad never did recover significantly, and though it took over 6 months to restore service, they abandoned a fairly large repair facility.
As yet another example:
-
The Corps of Engineers TRY to stop bank erosion on the Mississippi. Solution: place Big Big Big mats along the bank. In the old days they were woven of small trees. Present day they make concrete mats. One employee witnessed the launch of a concrete mat. While there, they stood and watched “The Mighty Mississip” just slowly drug it into the river. Dissappeared. So much for trying.
-
It has been pointed out that the misery by storms which New Orleans faces is partially due to the foilage South of town out toward the Gulf of America. It has been reduced due to oil exploration. Tough choice. But always there needs to be a try at figuring consequences. There is ALWAYS the possibility of a Black Swan incident. Recently a RR accident seemed to fall in that category. Black Swan. Calls to mind…the INNT (I never notice that) things right before us go un-noticed. Oh for common sense.
Please excuse this note a noted brain surgeon (Dr. Carson) said: choice to DO or NOT. List four columns. IF I DO list good, then list bad Next two IF I DON’T good, next bad. Study those 4 columns, your answers and the best choice is obvious.
When in the CIA , plans are to do something covert… No one knows: IF ALL GOES well. At the onset they also have a plan should it NOT go well. It’s called a plan for BLOW BACK.
Kinda like legislators everywhere, who pass laws , but don’t fund the implementation. Unfunded Mandates. And the world goes on. endmrw0509251256
Making any piece of infrastructure natural disaster proof is a costly endeavor, and often not economically feasible, especially along long linear corridors. There are too many locations where a slide, washout, or overland flooding can occur that the owner is forced to prioritize and harden the highest risk locations. Risk is the product of likelihood of the hazard impacting the asset and the consequence of impact. Making an entire asset bullet proof would break the bank, but aiming for resiliency - focusing your money and effort on those highest risk locations and having an appropriate design intent (sometimes a less robust design that allows for outages is more economical that the Cadillac design, even in the long term).
All this being said, climate change and the impact of past human activities are making it more and more difficult to figure out what frequency and magnitude of event the owner should design for…the 500 year storm is becoming much more frequent in areas as are wildfires (and the following debris flows and floods) influenced by both climate change and heavy-handed fire suppression. So this is actually a fairly complicated topic…one the railways, DoTs and pipeline operators are all sorting through right now.
Good Ol’ Mom’s Nature can overcome anything man builds - when she wants to. She normally doesn’t give man much advance notice of when the destruction will happen. Just because something hasn’t been destroyed by natural disaster yet - means just that YET!
[quote=“Neal, post:6, topic:413158”]
In 1955 a hurricane and damaging flood wiped out the Erie Lackawanna line running through the Poconos…[/quote]
Diane, wasn’t it? That was the storm that severed the BelDel north of Rt. 46 to East Stroudsburg.
Old saying in the military: No plan survives contact with the enemy. This is what informed old-time computer systems testing: you tried all possible combinations of factors to have all your contingency plans on contingency plans ready. That was replaced by the agile/“Internet protocol” model: have your tools and resources ready, and when something unanticipated happens, dance your way around it ‘to get the message through’.
The plan for blowback is something different: it is part of managing spin. Remember that infuriating way the ‘plumbers’ would use the word ‘inoperative’, that everyone assumed was a euphemism for ‘no’? What it actually meant was ‘we tried to lie, and it didn’t work, so the fabrication was inoperative’. Fascinating.
Nothing man has built or designed will survive against mother nature. She’s a vengeful witch that eventually will win regardless of what you do.
CSX has a web page dedicated to the Blue Ridge subdivision rebuilding project that includes maps, videos, and photos.
https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/about-us/projects-and-partnerships/blue-ridge-subdivision-recovery/
One factor that made this disaster even worse is the height of the Blue Ridge mountains in this part of North Carolina. Many of the mountains and ridges are 4,000 - 6,000 feet above sea level. This resulted in a significant amount of orographic lift that wrung even more precipitation out of Hurricane Helene than would have occurred over lower terrain. Once all that water descended into the canyons cut thru the Blue Ridge, it was game over for any roads and railroads built along those stream courses. There’s little to no flood plain to take the overflow.
Very much like Yellowstone in 2022. My wife, daughter and I traveled through the park about a week after the flooding.