politics; neighborhoods; flood @ 06 Jul 2007 01:31 pm by Seth
Here’s some excerpts from Anderson Cooper 360 show last week that imagined Sacramento flooded into oblivion:
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”This is the scenario. It’s been raining for days. The normally dry, hard ground is near saturated. But the California sun is out now, peeking through the clouds in Sacramento.
A rain cloud has at last lifted and the streets of the capital are busy again. People enjoying the outdoors.
Then suddenly, a few hours later, the storms return. The wind kicks up and the Sacramento River, already swollen from the earlier rains, now surges. Lashing at the 2,400 miles of aging, crumbling levees that snake around much of northern California.
(on camera): Here the water rises higher and higher. This is the city most vulnerable to flooding in the entire United States. Even more so than New Orleans. But the real danger is beginning to unfold just over there beyond the capital dome and the skyscrapers of downtown.
(voice-over): In sprawling tracks of suburban housing built right up to the edge of the levees, people are anxious. Can the levees hold back a flood?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s really blowing now.
MATTINGLY: And as the water rises, anxiety turns to fear. But the worst is yet to come. A powerful earthquake strikes. And the decrepit water-soaked levees begin to shake and start to dissolve.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the real thing.
MATTINGLY: Homes alongside the levees are instantly under water. Owners who haven’t evacuated, swept away in a rush of muddy torrents.
Thousands drove or were airlifted to shelters scattered across the northern Sacramento region. (on camera): In downtown Sacramento, city streets are swamped, important government buildings are cut off. And as waters continue to surge, the affects of this catastrophe are just beginning.
(voice-over): To the southwest, the earthquake has transformed the levees holding back the sea and the San Francisco bay into jelly. Saltwater rushes in from the coast and up into the San Joaquin river basin. California’s biggest source of drinking water is contaminated.
As aftershocks continue, fragile levees breach in as many as 30 places. Entire cities and 16 islands disappear under water. Farms become lakes. Essential highways and rail lines are wiped out. Train loads of fruits and vegetables destined for refrigerators all across the country are ruined. In the end, economic losses are staggering. More than 300,000 people are left homeless.
GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), CALIFORNIA: We want to make sure we don’t have the same thing as like in a disaster, the Katrina disaster, where you wipe out the whole city just because we didn’t take care of the levees.
MATTINGLY: Though our scenario is fiction, it describes a genuine and terrible risk, punctuated by recent and very real levy failures and floods. Some California officials are trying to stop development near the old levees.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have to stop adding more people to areas where there is no — not enough protection. Don’t build houses unless there is sufficient protection.
MATTINGLY: At the same time, the state is pleading for more federal money to repair the crumbling levees. Many reduced to big piles of dirt, weakened by invading tree roots and animal burrows.
In just the last year, the list of critically damaged levees has grown more than 10 times over.
LESTER SNOW, CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES: There have been a whole sweep of probably 400 additional sites that have been identified. About 100 of those being critical.
MATTINGLY: Now a levee system on the edge of disaster when not so long ago it was a manageable problem that everyone simply ignored.”
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