10/15/2024
WT Staff
 Have you had a flood? Tell us how you managed, 877-52-WATER (877-529-2837), or email info@wtny.us
October 18, 2024 154 pm EDT updated 437 pm EDT
How fast can you set up an effective emergency flood wall?
Part Two: Water-Gate: Built for urban overland flooding
Preparing for increasingly frequent and severe weather events in the concrete jungle requires a systems approach with all municipal departments engaged. Vulnerable sites within the urban landscape have been plotted with their elevations, response plans set for the protection of critical infrastructure. In Part One we discussed the hard-shell, person portable barrier designed to contain river flooding with heavy debris, extending the natural channel depth to handle flood flow. In Part Two, we look at another type of flood barrier, designed for diverting runoff from the urban street to the stormwater outfall.
Under a flash flood warning, deployment of emergency flood barriers has to be much faster and more robust than can be accomplished with sandbags. The design must be compact, lightweight and strong. When the storm water system is overwhelmed, the flood water comes from everywhere at once, racing to level the lowest elevations, trapping people in their vehicles, overtaking underpasses and parking garages, closing the subway stations. With a comprehensive municipal flood defense plan carefully prepared and rehearsed ahead of time, equipped with the right tool for each part of the job, it is certainly possible for the city to mitigate flood risk without damage to critical infrastructure, maintaining key traffic routes and essential operations.
The original Water-Gate is manufactured by MegaSecur in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada. The innovation started with a need for a better option than sandbags. Inventor Daniel Déry knew that sandbags were not the answer for flash flooding. Sand is a limited non-renewable resource, requires heavy truck traffic for delivery, tremendous labour hours to fill and stack the bags. With the 100 year floods coming every few years, volunteers are harder to enlist and back injuries are slow to recover, if ever. As Déry set his inventor's mind to replace sandbags, he came up with a model that met all needs and expectations, relatively lightweight, rapidly deployed barrier that could be stored near where it would be needed, set up on short notice and re-used again and again. The Water-Gate was developed over a series of iterations to perfect the design, arriving at its current configuration, a soft-shell barrier of many profiles, easily connected to form a continuous secure wall that will rise up with the flood water, held securely in place by the flood itself.
Water-Gate barrier can be positioned, rolled out with sections joined by a small crew in jig time, ahead of anticipated flash flood. The barrier set to divert surface runoff past the entrance to the parking garage allows vehicles to come and go right up to the point of active flooding. The barrier can likewise be positioned around the subway station entrance, allowing patrons to enter and exit right up to the point of active flooding. The sections come apart and roll up again for compact storage, right back in the station or parking garage.
The water diversion barrier is ideal for smooth, hard surfaces, bends handily around curbs and other street fixtures. The barrier is weighted to prevent water flowing underneath, the weight belt also serves to anchor the barrier in place until it fills up and becomes fixed in place by the weight of the flood flow.
Uneven ground, turf, sand, gravel are also well handled by the Water-Gate in its various forms, the product has been specialized for a number of alternate tasks including redirect a flowing stream, containment of hazardous materials and filtration of contaminant from a stream.
According to MegaSecur, the Water-Gate has been sold in over 60 countries around the world, considered one of the fastest flood protection systems to deploy. The innovation has been awarded Quebec Invention Grand Prize (2000), Institute of Design of Montréal, has been exhibited and received commendations at International Technology Trade Show International Invention Tradeshow of Geneva (Switzerland).
See the Water-Gate, here.
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