What Cities Should Learn From California's Flooding

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Winter storms have flooded parts of California, broken levees and forced thousands to evacuate. Climate change is altering the historic weather patterns that infrastructure like reservoirs and waterways were built to accommodate. Urban planners and engineers are rethinking underlying assumptions baked into buildings and water systems in order to adapt to the changing climate. Today, NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer walks us through three innovations happening around the country to help cities adapt to shifting and intensifying weather patterns.

Heard of other cool engineering innovations? We'd love to hear about it! Email us at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:05.6	California has been hammered by a parade of winter storms.
0:09.6	With now the eighth atmospheric river in just 16 days,
0:14.0	rivers and streets have flooded, levies have broken,
0:17.4	and thousands have been evacuated.
0:19.3	So we'll see a couple of areas approaching flood stage
0:21.8	if not reaching that flood stage.
0:23.9	And it's not just California that's experiencing these disasters.
0:28.6	On a planet that's getting hotter,
0:30.3	these extremes just keep coming.
0:32.7	So we wanted to know,
0:33.9	what can we learn from these storms?
0:35.4	How can we be better prepared for these disasters?
0:38.6	Well, learn summer from NPR's climate desk
0:41.0	is here with me to help answer that.
0:43.7	Yes, and I've got three innovative things
0:46.4	that people are trying that could help make this a bit better.
0:49.5	And they all have something in common.
0:51.5	It has to do with a rethinking and underlying assumption
0:55.3	that's baked into all of our buildings and cities
0:58.2	and water systems.
0:59.7	Because that's where the risk comes from.
	...

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