When Hurricane Rita plowed through the city of Beaumont, Texas, in September 2005, it had grown to become the fourth most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Despite causing $11.3 billion in damage, it failed to raze several precast concrete buildings at the city's waste-water treatment plant. It was the result of a lesson learned by regional coastal cities several years earlier after a vicious hurricane season in Houston, 90 miles to the west. That city's public works department is no stranger to the devastating effects of high winds and unrelenting, damaging floodwaters: Following Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, control centers that control the pumps and equipment at Houston's Simms Bayou wastewater treatment plant and various water purification plants across Houston were under four to six feet of water. The six-day deluge created 38.6 inches of rainfall, and two-thirds of the bayous and creeks in Harris County experienced 500-year flood events. The stations were repaired at the time until funds were available to build new elevated equipment buildings to prevent future shut downs from flooding. In light of the extensive flooding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the city of Houston, and the Harris County Flood Control District began requiring buildings to be elevated to protect expensive generators and switchgear. Some buildings only needed to be raised a foot or two, while others had to be elevated as much as 12 feet abovegrade.
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