--:-- Sean Rameswaram: California, perfect place to live, except for the earthquakes, the mega drought, the wildfires, and now the atmospheric rivers? The list of things to worry about just got a little longer.
--:-- Dan Brekke: California, much like Arizona. My eyes don't shed tears, but boy, they pour when I'm thinking about you. Oh, no, no, no. I've been thinking about you. You know, no, no. I've been thinking about you. Do you think about me still? Do you, do you? Or do you not think so far ahead?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: [laughs] Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform. Didn't know that. While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most. I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
--:-- Dan Brekke: Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab. At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus, get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today explained, Sean Rameswaram from KQED in San Francisco isn't a weatherman but he like many of his colleagues has been reporting on the rain, the atmospheric rivers, and all the fallout in California. California is in the grips of a really historic surge of Pacific storms. And what makes it doubly newsworthy, I think, is that maybe three to four weeks ago, nobody saw this coming.
--:-- Dan Brekke: Pretty much the whole state right now is seeing unceasing rain. Really, if you looked at the midline of California on a map and north is where most of the rain has fallen. But really, this series of storms, which started the day after Christmas, has touched every part of the state in some way or another. President Biden has approved California's emergency declaration as the state braces for more severe weather. A new storm is hitting Northern California as southern parts of the state begin cleaning up and hopefully moving on from days of rough weather, which have also been deadly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Iconic coastal destinations across Santa Cruz County devastated in this week's storm. In Aptos, Seacliff State Beach Friday still littered with tree logs and debris, with plenty of work and worry ahead. What we're seeing here in the Bay Area where I am, I'm actually located in Berkeley and talking from home. You know, the rain is falling again today. My little backyard rain gauge is slowly filling up, and water is just running out of everywhere. You know, more rain, more flood, more mud, more cleanup. It's frustrating.
--:-- Dan Brekke: I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You see it seeping out of people's yards. You see the creeks coming out of the hills here are just roaring with water. And then in other parts of the state, rivers are filling up, our reservoirs are slowly rising. Luckily, really, that they're slowly rising at this point. And then there have been numerous places where the flooding has really impacted people's lives, forced them from their homes, and in some cases, people have died. At least 17 people have died across California as a result of the storms. Tens of thousands remain under evacuation orders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, the past 15 days or so, we've gotten so much rain that the soil is probably super saturated. That creates all this runoff, but it also makes it much easier for trees to fall if there's a lot of wind. And these storms have often been accompanied by very high winds that have been pushing trees over. So in some cases, people have been killed by falling trees. There was a case here in the Bay Area where a young child was killed when a tree fell onto his home, and that's happened in other parts of the state too.
--:-- Dan Brekke: Also, we have rivers in California that most of the time look very tame. Their tributaries, their tributary creeks look very tame. All of a sudden, they've become very wild and dangerous in some cases. And there is an incident down in central California, just outside a town called Paso Robles, where a car was swept away with a mother and child inside of it. Rescuers were able to get the mother to safety, but the child was lost.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In addition to around 20 people dying in these storms, which gives us a sense of how grave this is, how much damage has been caused? Do we have any idea what the dollar amount is? I don't think we're even close to being able to assess that yet. I think it's too early to say what the cost is going to be, but the state has declared a state of emergency here.
--:-- Dan Brekke: And that means the state government cuts all the red tape and makes it possible for all the cash the state has dedicated to a disaster like this, makes it flow faster and gets any kind of physical help out there, like flood fighting supplies, as the state likes to call them out to communities Angelo Martino and his nearly two son Miles are here at the Higgins Fire Protection District Station 21 one of the sites where Nevada County is offering free sandbags to residents
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think it's going to take weeks or months, really, before we have a dollar amount on what this means for the state. And even when the rain stops, which it hasn't yet, there's still going to be an emergency. There's going to be landslides and mudslides and trees falling down. What's happening to all the people who need to be evacuated, who are on the ground still experiencing this?
--:-- Dan Brekke: Unfortunately, you know, California is used to the kind of disaster where people are hurried out of their homes because of an imminent threat. People in these areas that have been under mandatory evacuation orders are simply, you know, doing what people have learned to do in these situations. There are evacuation centers that are set up that will continue to be open while the emergency continues. Most people find some kind of workaround, which may mean crashing with family or friends or sometimes even leaving for some other part of the state or country while this is going on until they can go back home.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In some areas, evacuation orders have actually already been lifted, even though the threat of a flood is still very real up there. When the rain stops, the impact does not. We're being warned that because of the supersaturation we're seeing in the soils around here, that trees will be falling for some days or even weeks. Mudslides are going to be possible for days or weeks. And so the storm has really turned the state's highway network upside down. There is almost no way of getting between northern and Southern California by road yesterday without encountering some major storm-caused delay or complete road closure.
--:-- Dan Brekke: All right, take a look at this. This is a flooding on 101 in Gilroy. It is closed right now southbound at Mesa Road. Whoa, that is something you do not want to drive through.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you think the state has learned something for the next time something like this happens? I think it has. But just stepping back a little, I mean, I know that there's a lot of interest in this phenomenon of atmospheric rivers. And there's been a lot of serious research into what the potential worst-case scenario is for a series of atmospheric rivers, similar to what we're seeing now.
--:-- Dan Brekke: But what's happening now is far from the worst case that's projected. And part of what the researchers are trying to do there is get the state's attention about what could happen if serious measures, and measures that will cost tens of billions of dollars, to take on this threat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I do have to say that while there is some serious flood planning going on in parts of the Central Valley, there has yet to be anybody at the state level who has said, you know what, we have to make this a major or primary state priority because of the economic threat and also because the communities that are most vulnerable to this are also largely disadvantaged communities, right? So there's a big equity question surrounding this as well.
--:-- Dan Brekke: Because if you don't spend those, say, $30 billion for flood fixes and developing new ways of managing floodwater, right? You don't have to dam it all up or put up levees. You can create areas where the floodwater can spread out. If you don't do that, then you may be facing a trillion-dollar disaster. It could be the most costly disaster in human history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dan Brekke, KQED. Momentarily, we'll hear from a researcher on how to avoid the most costly disaster in human history. We'll be right back.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome back to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram. We're joined now by Peter Glick, who's a co-director and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. He's a hydrologist and climatologist by training. Peter, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Peter Glick: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're much like Dan Brekke, who we just spoke with. You're in Berkeley, and you're talking to us from home. How are things at your home in Berkeley at the moment?
--:-- Peter Glick: They're pretty good. My backyard is flooded and my basement's a little bit wet, but I'm much better off than many people around the state at the moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, we started the show with a guy named Dan Brekke, who works for KQED in California. I believe he also lives in Berkeley. And the first thing he said was a lot of people in California didn't see this coming. Did you see it coming, Peter?
--:-- Peter Glick: I saw it coming, but I'm paying attention to these things. Climate and water is my thing. The good news is that our weather forecasting systems today are remarkably good. There was warning that these storms were forming in the Pacific and on their way really weeks ago. And the forecasts have been very accurate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it was possible to see these things coming. But of course, extreme events are sometimes a surprise to people and we're not always prepared. I don't want to blame the people, but if you saw this coming weeks ago and there was forecasting and all the like, did 18 people need to die? Did billions of dollars in damage need to occur in the state of California?
--:-- Peter Glick: You know, California, like most of the world, is vulnerable to extreme events. We have wet years, we have dry years. We've had very long periods of drought. We've had extreme rainfall and flooding events. It's impossible to prevent all floods, all extreme events. It's impossible to prevent all death and destruction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: California, like, again, many parts of the world, has spent a lot of time and money trying to prepare for these kinds of extreme events. But some of these things are unpreventable. You can't prevent the worst things from happening all the time. And the hope is that we learn lessons from what we experience and we figure out how to prevent damages and deaths from occurring in the future.
--:-- Peter Glick: Tell me more about that. Is this a once-in-a-lifetime storm or is this going to be happening with more regularity in the future?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, we're in the middle of it, so we don't yet know whether it's a once-in-a-lifetime event. If it keeps raining, you know, the forecast again is for several more weeks of wet. The rainy season in California runs from October until April, and then we have a dry season. So in theory, we could get storms in the rest of January, in February, in March. If that continues to happen, this could be a once in a lifetime event. Conversely, it could dry up and the storms could disappear.
--:-- Peter Glick: We just don't know yet. But we do know that extreme events happen. And we also know, unfortunately, that extreme events are more likely now because of human-caused climate change. We're already seeing the influence of climate change on these kinds of extreme events. And that's going to continue to happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how will the state of California be more prepared in the future or how could it be more prepared? For floods in general, we have already built a lot of infrastructure. We've built big reservoirs to store water during wet periods, to control floods. We built levees alongside rivers to try and protect developments very close to big rivers that have the risk of flooding. Those kinds of infrastructure bring great benefits to us. They capture storm floods. They prevent certain kinds of flooding events in floodplains, but they can't prevent all damages.
--:-- Peter Glick: And so in the future, we have to both understand what's going to be delivered by nature. We have to understand the nature of how climate change is influencing these extreme events. We have to look at infrastructure that we have. We have to think about maybe managing that infrastructure differently or building different kinds of infrastructure. And we have to think about how to move people out of areas that are at risk.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It seems like there are a lot of areas at risk, though. Yeah, well, that's true. Again, it depends on the kind of extreme events we're talking about. In terms of droughts, which we've had for the last many years, the whole state is at risk of water shortages. In terms of floods, the areas most at risk are floodplains, the areas that would flood when rivers overtop their banks, when they spread out.
--:-- Peter Glick: So lots of areas are at risk and we have to understand what's at risk, what's going to be at greater risk in the future and how to protect the populations that are in those vulnerable areas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does California have some experience with this, with like massive relocation and huge infrastructure spending to prepare for this kind of weather event?
--:-- Peter Glick: Well, there are extreme events in the past that give us some hints of what we're vulnerable to. And maybe the best example is in 1861, in December of 1861, more than 160 years ago, it started to rain. And then it continued to rain in January with massive storms coming off the Pacific. And in what some describe as really a megastorm, the entire Central Valley of California flooded. Rivers rose to 20 or 30 feet over their banks. Millions of acres were flooded. Thousands of people were killed. Hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep were killed. Telegraph lines that have just been installed that connected the West Coast with the East Coast were destroyed. A quarter of the state's economy was wiped out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is sort of the classic megastorm that we know can occur and that we think may occur again and that we're really not prepared for. The estimate is that if a similar storm occurred today, it would be the worst disaster in California's history. It would cause a trillion dollars worth of damages, not billions of dollars of damages, but a trillion dollars worth of damages. Thousands of people would probably die.
--:-- Peter Glick: You know, in 1860s, the population of California was about 500,000. It's 80 times larger now. It's 40 million people. And the population at risk, the developed infrastructure that's at risk is much greater today than it was then.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what do you do? I mean, how do you avoid that kind of cataclysmic damage? How do you move thousands of people and avoid trillions of dollars in damage?
--:-- Peter Glick: The bad news is we don't. The bad news is if that kind of event were to happen, a lot of the damages that we see here would be unavoidable. The reservoirs that we've built for flood control wouldn't be enough. The levees that we have built for flood protection in floodplains wouldn't be enough. And there would be extensive damage today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The question really might be what do we need to do to at least reduce the damages that would occur. And there are things that we could do but we not doing them at the moment.
--:-- Peter Glick: So the first thing we need to do is we need to reoperate the reservoirs that we've already built. The backbones of California's water supply are the six mega reservoirs, Shasta, Oroville, Trinity, New Malonis, Don Pedro, and San Luis. You know, we have these reservoirs. We want to keep them empty in the winter so that for flood storage, we want them as full as possible at the end of the wet season for water supply, for the dry parts of the year and for droughts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Back on November the 8th, the state's six biggest mega reservoirs were 33% full. In normal years, they would have been 54% full, but the drought kept them low.
--:-- Peter Glick: We have to learn to operate those reservoirs a little bit differently. We have to pay more attention to the models that tell us that we're going to get these storms off the Pacific.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's going to take more than this to get us out of the hole we've dug ourselves.
--:-- Peter Glick: Probably the most important thing we could do is move development and populations, to the extent possible, out of floodplains. And across this area, hundreds of people requiring rescue. Houses engulfed. They had to be plucked out of their cars as well. One person dying in his vehicle.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're called floodplains for a reason. They're called floodplains because they flood when we get incredibly severe events. But we built levees that channel these rivers, and then we built developments right up against the edge of these levees without accepting that levees fail.
--:-- Peter Glick: Over time, we need to move populations out of these floodplains to the extent possible and let the rivers flood to some degree. The good news there is that if rivers flood more, we can actually recharge groundwater. We can store more floodwaters in groundwater that's already overtapped. That's good for water supply. It's good for preventing some of these floods from occurring.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's a difficult policy decision. It's a difficult economic decision. It's going to require changes in the way we manage development in California. And people certainly don't like giving up their real estate in other parts of the country. California real estate, even more expensive, even more precious. Some of the most expensive real estate in the country.
--:-- Peter Glick: We can assume people aren't going to want to relocate, right? Absolutely. That's a political challenge and it's an economic challenge. But think about it this way. If you live in a floodplain and you have flood insurance and a big flood occurs, you get a payment for the damages that have occurred, and you often rebuild in the exact same spot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's change our flood insurance policies, first of all, to prevent new development in floodplains. But second of all, if you're damaged during a flood, let's pay for those damages, but let's prohibit people from rebuilding in the same place. Let them rebuild, but somewhere else.
--:-- Peter Glick: If flood insurance policies permitted that, then over time, we would see what's called managed retreat from those vulnerable areas. Instead of rebuilding and reflooding over and over and over again, we could rebuild in other places and over time, restore those floodplains to more natural conditions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this is kind of a wish list you're furnishing right now. This isn't what's happening. This is what ought to happen to be better prepared so fewer people die so we have less damage.
--:-- Peter Glick: I would say it's smart flood planning rather than dumb flood planning. It's time to change from a philosophy that we can manage and prevent these floods to one where we have to learn how to live with them. We have to learn how to accept the kinds of extreme events we're getting and reduce the consequences of them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it sounds like you're not just talking about California anymore. No, what's true in California is true everywhere. You know, we get extreme events in California. We have floods, we have droughts, we have to deal with them. But look at the horrible flooding that occurred this year in Pakistan. 30 million people were dislocated from their homes. And even today, months afterwards, many of those places are still flooded.
--:-- Peter Glick: Look at the heat, extreme heat events that have swept over Europe over the last few years. The floods and droughts that are sweeping over Australia one after another. These kinds of extreme events were seen globally. California may be a place where we can explore some smart policies, and maybe we can learn lessons from other parts of the world as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My preference would be that we don't wait for the mega flood. We don't wait for the mega disasters to take the lessons of these lesser disasters. That we learn from existing droughts and existing floods, and we implement these policies now. If we wait for the mega flood like 1861 and 1862, thousands of people are going to be killed. The economy is going to be crushed.
--:-- Peter Glick: But if we learn from the kinds of events we're experiencing now and start to implement these policies to move people out of risky areas, to manage the reservoirs differently, to deal with droughts differently, then the consequences of the really, really bad events will be less than they otherwise would be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's Peter Glick. He lives in Berkeley, but he works in Oakland, the Pacific Institute in Oakland, to be specific.
--:-- [Closing music plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This installment of Today Explained was produced by Siona Petros and Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
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