It's all about that four-letter term...........FEMA
Have been trying to get a LOMA application approved for four months.?ÿ They notified me today that my site elevations must be wrong as they are 'much lower' than the surrounding area.?ÿ They want me to verify that my numbers are correct.
The elevation numbers are correct.?ÿ But, my question in return is how much is "much lower".
The tract involved is virtually identical to adjacent lots, with no big changes in elevation.
In my respone I suggested they compare the numbers to the BFE numbers provided on the FIRM.?ÿ I also suggested they might want to correct a typographical error for a cross-section value a short distance from the site.?ÿ The BFE shown is 896, with similar numbers up and down the drainage area being similar.?ÿ The cross-section value reads 986, or 90 feet higher than reality.
The problem with FEDERAL is that they are FEDERAL. They are trying to manage: The contiguous United States occupies an area of 3,119,884.69 square miles (8,080,464.3 km2). Of this area, 2,959,064.44 square miles (7,663,941.7 km2) is actual land
Therein lies the rub...
Dealing with FEMA reminds me all too much of the early days of computers and the use of stacks of keypunch cards. You would assemble your packet to be run on the computer that occupied a space of about 30 feet by 60 feet, on a raised floor to accomodate environmental issues. Your stack was placed in a queue of other stacks to be run sometime in the middle of the night. You return the following day, only to discover the computer found an error on the third card of the 200 cards in the stack, so your run was not completed. So, you fix that bad card and ask to run it again. You return the next day to learn something seemed amiss with card number 18, so once again the run was aborted. So, you fix that bad card.................................................. Eventually, it gets all the way to card 198 of 200 before aborting. Every iteration adds one or more days to successfully completing the run.
@holy-cow I cut me teeth working on computers during the days of the 5" dual floppies and typing in DOS commands. I remember when my then wife and I were the talk of the town because we had one of the first 10 meg external hard drives and either a 24.4 or a 28.8 dial up modem, all at home. Later we were one of the first ones in the area to have an IBM 8088 PC with an internal hard drive and a smoking 4 megs of memory in the days when memory was $1K/megabyte. I never had exposure to punch cards but know people who related the stories of time shared punch card computing.
In my licensed 30 years I've never had any issues with FEMA, though I've never done a LOMA either but have had more of my share of nightmares dealing with insurance people who had no clue on how to read an elevation cert.
@chris-bouffard I'm still waiting to earn enough money to upgrade my memory to 640k!
Someday...
Dealing with FEMA reminds me all too much of the early days of computers and the use of stacks of keypunch cards. You would assemble your packet to be run on the computer that occupied a space of about 30 feet by 60 feet, on a raised floor to accomodate environmental issues. Your stack was placed in a queue of other stacks to be run sometime in the middle of the night. You return the following day, only to discover the computer found an error on the third card of the 200 cards in the stack, so your run was not completed. So, you fix that bad card and ask to run it again. You return the next day to learn something seemed amiss with card number 18, so once again the run was aborted. So, you fix that bad card.................................................. Eventually, it gets all the way to card 198 of 200 before aborting. Every iteration adds one or more days to successfully completing the run.
gotta love that ABEND message from the mainframe wizard....
@jitterboogie When a mainframe job I submitted ABENDed it would often print out a core dump. I was in awe of the handful of programmers who could actually make sense out of the dump. And I was working at IBM. I wonder how hard it was to find someone who could read a core dump outside of IBM.
@jitterboogie When a mainframe job I submitted ABENDed it would often print out a core dump. I was in awe of the handful of programmers who could actually make sense out of the dump. And I was working at IBM. I wonder how hard it was to find someone who could read a core dump outside of IBM.
probably more difficult than finding someone at any radio shack that could have a conversation in Klingon.
I will always appreciate what I learned in the bowels of the Mainframe. Oh boy we need to increase the DASD, hmmm how many cylinders?
I never learned IBM code, having only used it by submitting Fortran card decks, but at one time could program DEC PDP-11 in octal machine language and could write assembly code for several microprocessors.
I never learned IBM code, having only used it by submitting Fortran card decks, but at one time could program DEC PDP-11 in octal machine language and could write assembly code for several microprocessors.
You do know there is a job vacancy on the Access Team here at Trimble - sounds like you'd be a perfect fit 🙂
@bill93 The DEC PDP-11 computers truly were fun machines to program in machine language or assembly language. I still remember, from nearly 47 years ago, the octal codes for the four-word program that I would key in via the front-panel switch register as a quick test of system operation:
012737 ;MOV (PC)+, @(PC)+
000007
177566
000774 ;BR -4
That would loop forever, ringing the bell (ASCII character code 7) on the console terminal (output data register at address 177566).
Another fun one was the single-instruction program that would replicate itself throughout all of memory, going backwards:
014747 ;MOV -(PC), -(PC)
The PDP-11 architecture had such nice, rich addressing modes. But, modern compiler technology made that superfluous.
The first PDP-11 I used didn't have any built-in boot. I had the boot program memorized at that time to key in on the toggles. Later I had a project where we installed a boot ROM. It was weird how the address and data lines were numbered in the socket, and took a little head scratching to do it.
I got to use a keypunch machine once to create the cards for a program that someone wrote for my mom's research at ohio state. Because I think I knew how to type, this was probably early high school, so very early '80s. I'm sure the programmer was quite happy to let the eager kid do some of his work. Then I would go into the lab and pick up the print-outs. There was some initials or numbers that would be printed large in ascii art on the first page so you could easily identify your print-outs.
Then there was the OSU geodetic science professor when I was there in grad school (1991 or so) who had a Ph.D student--a computer scientist (at least a master's) redo a program for a lab to add goto statements. Um, it was in C. I'd also used C for this lab but the prof didn't ask me to add gotos. Definitely one time that I thought my gender worked out for the better for me. Everyone else in the class used FORTRAN.
to add goto statements. Um, it was in C.
Someone once said you can write 'Fortran' in any language. Not sure it's true, but goto was often a crutch that good structure could avoid.
Well, things got very dis-threaded. When dealing with FEMA, just redo your data and resubmit it. It'll sail right through. There's no one in FEMA that has any clue what punch card input is.
I swear FEMA is like an assembly line. Each person is assigned to look only at one piece of "fill in the blank". Inspector #8 who is responsible for the eighth potential data item notes a concern. Inspector #8 has it returned. You resubmit. Then Inspector #19 finds a concern with nineteenth potential data item and notifies you. You resubmit. Then Inspector .................................................
Let ONE inspector look at the entire form and note any and all concerns so that you only receive, potentially, one notice with any/all issues of concern. Oh, NO! That would make too much sense and the Government is not allowed to make sense. I am on my fourth submittal on a clear situation, right now. The most recent comment was that I needed to verify that my elevations are correct because they seem to be "much lower" than adjacent tracts. How much is much lower? O.2 feet or 20 feet? The elevations are correct and match up well with the BFE value. BTW, the tract is nearly identical to the entire block.
I swear FEMA is like an assembly line. Each person is assigned to look only at one piece of "fill in the blank". Inspector #8 who is responsible for the eighth potential data item notes a concern. Inspector #8 has it returned. You resubmit. Then Inspector #19 finds a concern with nineteenth potential data item and notifies you. You resubmit. Then Inspector .................................................
Let ONE inspector look at the entire form and note any and all concerns so that you only receive, potentially, one notice with any/all issues of concern. Oh, NO! That would make too much sense and the Government is not allowed to make sense. I am on my fourth submittal on a clear situation, right now. The most recent comment was that I needed to verify that my elevations are correct because they seem to be "much lower" than adjacent tracts. How much is much lower? O.2 feet or 20 feet? The elevations are correct and match up well with the BFE value. BTW, the tract is nearly identical to the entire block.
If you were younger you could get a job with FEMA advance to the top and fix those problems.