Funding issues, mystery levee, delay flood map revision

“We have completed our review of the submitted data and determined that the Flood Insurance Rate Map and Flood Insurance Study report should be revised as Physical Map Revision,” Syed Qayum of the National Flood Insurance Program wrote in the letter. “As a result of this PMR, the flood hazard information will be revised along Pine Nut Creek from the confluence with Martin Slough to just downstream of Allerman Canal; along Cottonwood Slough from approximately 620 feet downstream of State Route 756/Centerville Lane to its divergence from East Fork Carson River; and along Martin Slough from approximately 600 feet upstream of Zerolene Road to its divergence from Cottonwood Slough.” “Due to funding constraints, FEMA is not able to initiate the Physical Map Revision at this time,” Qayum wrote. “As soon as FEMA Region IX has programmed funds to process the PMR as part of the revised FIRM and FIS report for Douglas County, Nevada, and incorporated areas, preliminary copies of the FIRM panels and FIS report will be distributed for review to determine if any additional changes are warranted.” “This revision request involves a levee that will not be accredited,” Qayum wrote. “On March 10, 2011, FEMA Administrator Fugate committed to assess the approaches currently used to analyze areas behind non-accredited levees and develop alternative analysis approaches to modeling the flood hazard risks in these areas on FIRMs.

Littourati - Main Page - Blue Highways: Frenchman, Nevada

I once saw a "Demotivators" poster that had a picture of an isolated tree on an icy landscape.  The caption read "Just when you think you are not alone, you are alone.  So very alone."  In the middle of the vast desolation of the Nevada desert, one can be forgiven for feeling that way if they have to stop.  It just depends on our relationship with solitude and loneliness.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) stops in Frenchman, Nevada and we consider what being alone in such a place might mean.  Click on the thumbnail of the map at right to virtually share this space with us.

Book Quote

"Frenchman, Nevada, population four, sat on the edge of a U.S. Navy bombing range.  A if that weren't enough, it was also on a fault zone that still wobbled the seismographic instruments around.

"Frenchman appeared on my map as a town, and, in the desert, it probably was a town, consisting as it did of a cafe-bar-filling station, four-unit motel, trailer, and water tower all huddled on an expanse of dry lakebed mudflats cracked into a crazed jigsaw puzzle of alkali hardpan.  In a state abounding with uninhabitable places, Frenchman excelled.  Without vegetation, suffering from unrelenting wind and extremes of temperature, no source of food or supplies closer than thirty-six miles, no medical care other than Band-Aids and Mercurochrome, frequently rattled by bombs and earthquakes, Frenchman somehow survived on a single source of income: highway travelers."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 9

I can't imagine living in the middle of the Nevada desert, in a town the population of four.  I'm a small-town boy, from a town of around 5,000 when I was growing up there, and over my lifetime I've had to come to grips with living in cities.  Even now, there are things that I will never get accustomed to living in populated areas.  Like ground light blocking out the stars.  When I grew up, the stars were prominent and brilliant when there was no cloud cover.  I should have paid more attention when I was a kid, but I didn't know that one day, I would live in a places where, because of ground light, the number of visible stars would be severely reduced.

I'll also never become quite accustomed to the ever-present sounds of human activity in a city.  At night, things get more quiet but never silent.  There is always traffic on the main arterial street a couple of blocks away.  There is always the distant hum of the freeway.  In the early morning, the airport wakes up and military and civilian plane, helicopter and jet engines rev up.  Of course, during the day, the activity ratchets up to a background hum that is constantly present.