Local Rafting Business Develops Diversion Tubes to Help Flooding

AIRE Industrial in Meridian is a local company that is nationally knowing for making whitewater rafts and kayaks.

They’ve also developed diversion tubes, which are filled with water and work as a flood barrier. It’s typically used on a smaller residential scale, but engineers their engineers got on the phone with Ada County and figured out the measurements and sizes of what they would need to help area flooding.

One diversion tube, when filled with water is two-feet high and 20-feet long. The ones put in place along the Boise River by the Sunroc gravel pit are three-feet tall and 40-feet long.  Just to put that in perspective, a 40-foot tube, is equivalent to about 60,000 sandbags! The amount of sand and labor it takes to put out that many sandbags takes so much more time and effort. These tubes are a lifesaver!

AIRE Industrial is in the process of sending tubes to Ketchum, Sun Valley and Bellevue, where flooding is a big concern right now.

I love this! Taking something that was primarily used on a smaller scale and making it work for our community...amazing!