“Unwatering” New York subway tunnels within days: US Army Core of Engineers

Imagine the New York subways with
300-400 million gallons of water after Hurricane Sandy. Well, the US Army Core of Engineers
"Unwatering" team  are at  New York
and expect
to get all this water out in a matter of days pumping through about a mile
of  subway at a time. 

The Unwatering team gets its
rather unusual name from its function and purpose i.e. remove water from where
it is not supposed to be, like inside a subway tunnel. Apparently the more
traditional "dewatering" is about removing water from a place where
the water could be like a swimming pool that you might want to dewater before
winter. The Unwatering team of the US Army Core of Engineers developed the
unwatering expertise from the 2005 Katrina flooding in New Orleans. 

There has been speculation in 2011 about events
like Hurricane Sandy becoming more common perhaps due to climate change. In any
case, many more cities in the world have to contend with subways that might get
flooded for one reason or another.

In 2010 -11 here are some
world cities that got flooded:

Given that many city authorities
across the world struggle with the dewatering problem and go out of action for
weeks here may be an opportunity for the Unwatering team of the US
Army Core of Engineers to help flood relief personnel in other countries with
the expertise they have developed in this kind of work.While unwatering  does not seem like an innovation in the global knowledge economy,  the knowledge and expertise that the  unwatering team is developing is extremely valuable to civic authorities across the world.

For most cities of the world would
take significantly more time than New York to clear water from subway tunnels. Contact StratoServe.

%d bloggers like this: