How Louisiana Is Coping With Flooding In Cemeteries
Science Friday
Science Friday and WNYC Studios
4.4 • 6.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Climate change doesn't just affect the living. It disturbs the dead, too. |
| 0:08.2 | When you bury your family, you think they're there forever. |
| 0:11.9 | It's Tuesday, May 7th, and just like every day, today is Science Friday. |
| 0:19.8 | I'm SciFRIProducer Kathleen Davis. |
| 0:21.6 | Flooded cemeteries have been a problem in Louisiana for decades. |
| 0:26.6 | With climate change eroding coastlines and making storms more powerful, the problem is just getting worse. |
| 0:33.6 | There's a need for expertise on how to protect burial grounds across the country from not just flooding, but other natural disasters too. |
| 0:42.1 | So all eyes are on the few experts there are in this field for guidance. |
| 0:47.2 | Joining me now to talk about this is my guest. |
| 0:50.0 | Eva Tassai, coastal reporter at WNO in New Orleans, who reported this story in collaboration |
| 0:55.9 | with Science Friday. |
| 0:57.7 | Eva, welcome back to Science Friday. |
| 0:59.6 | Thanks for having me. |
| 1:01.0 | So to start, give me a sense of the scale of this issue in Louisiana. |
| 1:05.1 | I mean, how common is it that a cemetery gets flooded? |
| 1:08.3 | Yeah, so it happens pretty much with every major storm. |
| 1:11.7 | The company I spoke to that recovers cemeteries, they've been working since Katrina. |
| 1:16.7 | They've done it during Rita, Ike, Harvey, Laura, Delta, Ida. |
| 1:21.5 | It's also just known to happen when there's really bad flooding. |
| 1:25.0 | There doesn't even have to be a storm. |
| 1:26.4 | So there were floods in 2016 that |
| 1:28.5 | we can get into a little bit later. Okay. So cemeteries are set up differently across the U.S. |
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