Millions Of U.S. Homes Face An Expensive Flooding Threat

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

More than 4 million U.S. homes face substantial risk of expensive flood damage, according to new research. On top of that, NPR climate reporter Rebecca Hersher found that communities where flood insurance is already unaffordable face potentially catastrophic damage — including to mental and physical health.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:05.9	Pastor Aaron Trigg has a lot of good things to say about Reynel West Virginia, where he
0:11.2	used to live.
0:12.3	People were just happy and joyous and had a lot of expectation for the future.
0:17.5	Reynel is small, about 1,500 people live there.
0:20.9	It's got a school and a grocery store and a couple stoplights.
0:24.8	Pastor Aaron lived close to Main Street.
0:27.2	I lived right down the street from the baseball field.
0:30.0	In a one story house that backed up to a creek.
0:33.3	And before the flood happened, you can hear the baseball field just going crazy.
0:37.6	And the football field, especially in football time, it was just wild.
0:41.5	And I would take my dog and walk down there and watch the kids play and watch the cheer
0:45.8	leaders in the football field.
0:46.8	The flood is like the dividing line in Reynel.
0:50.1	How things were before June 2016 and how they were after.
0:55.0	There was everything changed.
0:58.6	There was a really big rainstorm, really heavy.
1:01.4	A lot of water fell in just a few hours.
1:04.5	And just so you can imagine, this part of the country is the Appalachian Mountains.
1:08.0	There's a lot of fog, big gorges and rivers.
1:11.8	And a lot of towns are built on the low ground, in the valleys, on the rivers.
1:16.8	That's how Reynel is.
	...

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