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Why is Detroit falling apart so fast?

February 10, 2017

Why is Detroit falling apart so fast?

Detroit homes falling apart goobingUsing Google street view history, www.goobingdetroit.com records the decay of homes in Detroit. Above shows homes September 2009, September 2011, and September 2013

I’ve been fascinated with the decline of Detroit since a guy in my dormitory told me back in 1972 that he’d moved into an abandoned mansion because it was free.  Several weeks later a gang broke in. He barricaded his bedroom door with furniture and jumped out the window, never to return. After the financial crash, the photos of Yves Marchand and Romaine Meffre  and goobingdetroit rekindled my interest in Detroit.

So why do houses fall apart?  The best answer can be found in Alan Weisman’s book “The world without us”, but here’s the short answer.  According to HowStuffWorks:

  • “The amount of time necessary for your home to fall to pieces depends on several factors. The quality of your home’s construction, the type of climate you live in, the shape your house is in and the materials your house is made of all contribute to the amount of time it would take for your home to deteriorate.”
  • Water wreaks the worst destruction. In addition to your roof, the caulk around windows will decay and disintegrate, letting water in within 25 years of last application, rotting the wall around the window. From other sites, here’s how: Roofs get leaks when trees add hundreds of pounds of leaves and seeds that clog the drains after rain or heavy snow that weights 8 lbs/gallon, causing leaks which leach glue and materials from the plywood, tearing off the membrane of roof materials. About 1.5 years later, the roof falls in, letting water and snow inside.  Broken windows also allow moisture, mold, and so on. Mold starts to grow and dry rots walls. Tree seeds take root.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

6 Cities in Michigan Have Even Higher Levels of Lead than Flint

January 29, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) As the nation rightly focuses on Flint’s ongoing water crisis, other cities in the state of Michigan face even higher levels of lead contamination. The alarming pervasiveness of potentially toxic drinking water extends across the United States.

The Detroit News reports that “Elevated blood-lead levels are seen in a higher percentage of children in parts of Grand Rapids, Jackson, Detroit, Saginaw, Muskegon, Holland and several other cities, proof that the scourge of lead has not been eradicated despite decades of public health campaigns and hundreds of millions of dollars spent to find and eliminate it.”

Of over 7,000 children tested in the Highland Park and Hamtramck areas of Detroit in 2014, 13.5 percent tested positive for lead. Among four zip codes in Grand Rapids, one in ten children had lead in their blood. In Adrian and south-central Michigan, more than 12 percent of 640 children tested had positive results.

These overall numbers are higher than Flint’s, where Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha found lead in up to 6.3 percent of children in the highest-risk areas; while The Guardianreported Dr. Hanna-Attisha has also said the rate is as high at 15 percent in certain “hot spots,” the size of those samples was not listed. Even so, the overall figures across Michigan are lower than in previous years. In 2012, children tested across Michigan had lead in their blood at a rate of 4.5 percent, about five times less than the rate ten years prior, which reached an alarming 25 percent. In spite of the decrease in recent years, however, thousands of children in Michigan are still affected.

“In 2013, that level sank to 3.9 percent and fell again to 3.5 percent in 2014. But that is still 5,053 children under age 6 who tested positive in 2014,” the Detroit News explained. “Each had lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Images From A Dark Detroit: “Major Cable Failure” Sparks Widespread Power Outage | Zero Hedge

December 2, 2014

Images From A Dark Detroit: “Major Cable Failure” Sparks Widespread Power Outage | Zero Hedge.

Just 15 months after Detroit’s Black Out 2013 debacle, spokespeople for the city and DTE Energy confirmed at around 11:00 a.m. local time on Tuesday that most of Detroit’s municipal grid is offline:

  • *DETROIT CITES ‘MAJOR CABLE FAILURE’ FOR POWER OUTAGE
  • *DETROIT: OUTAGE IS AFFECTING ALL CUSTOMERS ON THE PLD GRID

The outage is preventing power from being delivered to police stations, schools, traffic lights and other city-run facilities and services.

According to Detroit Press Office shortly before noon:

“The city’s public lighting grid suffered a major cable failure that has caused the entire grid to lose power at approximately 10:30 this morning. The outage is affecting all customers on the PLD grid. We have isolated the issue and are working to restore power as soon as possible.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

UN officials ‘shocked’ by Detroit’s mass water shutoffs | Al Jazeera America

October 22, 2014

UN officials ‘shocked’ by Detroit’s mass water shutoffs | Al Jazeera America.

Surrounded by a frenzy of cameras, Detroit resident Rochelle McCaskill explained her predicament to a team of United Nations officials on Sunday: The numbers simply didn’t add up.

Out of her $672 monthly disability check, McCaskill spends $600 rent, she said, leaving her unable to pay the city’s water bills, which have skyrocketed to more than twice the national average.

“They need a category for those of us who cannot pay,” said McCaskill, whose water was shut off this summer as part of a wave of disconnections that, block by block, have left thousands of city residents without running water.

The city turned off McCaskill’s water despite the fact that she had been paying down her $540.10 water bill in increments and that she suffers from MRSA, a contagious infection that the NIH considers a “serious public health concern” and requires frequent bathing.

…click on the link above to read the rest of the article…

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