
Flooding is the most common and most expensive natural disaster in the U.S., according to FEMA. And the risk of catastrophic floods in the U.S. is only rising as climate change intensifies downpours in areas like the Northeast and Midwest. In the West, flooding risks rise following major wildfires that denude hills of trees and undergrowth.
In addition to threatening personal safety, floods can cause significant structural damage to residences. According to the National Flood Insurance Program, just one inch of water can cause up to $25,000 worth of damage to an average home.
But homeowners can mitigate the damages of flooding in a few key ways, from advance preparation to damage control after the fact.
Read on for some actions useful for defending your home from floods.
DO: Take Steps Now to Protect Your Home From Future Flooding.
- Assess your level of risk. Search for your address in FEMA's map to see how high the risk for flooding is in your area. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security simply because you live in an area with low or moderate risk. Even in these lower-risk areas, your home is still five times more likely to experience a flood than a fire during the next 30 years.
- Seriously consider getting flood insurance. Most homeowner insurance does not cover damages from floods. Waiting until the last minute to get flood insurance doesn't work: It typically takes about 30 days to take effect. (There are some exceptions to this waiting period.)
- Document and store important files and keepsakes in a safe location. Keep photographs of especially valuable property. Keep a digital copy of important documents and photos in a safe off-site location.
- Compile an emergency kit, using the Red Cross Flood Safety Checklist as reference.
- Coordinate with all family members and residents on your property on an evacuation route and emergency contacts plan.
- If you live in a floodplain, work with a professional to take further actions to safeguard your home like:
– Elevating or anchoring critical appliances like your furnace and water heater.
– Building barriers like a levee or flood wall.
– Waterproofing the basement, installing a flood alarm, maintaining a battery-operated sump pump, and installing flap or check valves to temporarily block drain pipes.
DO: Take Swift Action When a Flood Watch or Warning Is Announced.
- Listen to NOAA Weather Radio for important updates.
- Confirm that your emergency kit and evacuation plan are up to date and accessible.
- Clear gutters and use sandbags if needed to divert water away from the foundation of your home.
- Move valuables to a higher or otherwise safer room.
- Prioritize personal safety, and don't walk, swim, or drive through floodwater.
DO: Address Flood Damage After the Fact.
- Avoid contact with floodwater, which may contain sewage or other contaminants or materials such as timber or solid wastes.
- Call your insurance provider as soon as possible. If you're renting, call your landlord instead.
- When the weather dries, open windows to improve ventilation and help your home air out.
- Immediately discard anything that may pose a health risk, including food, clothes, rugs, and other belongings. (For insurance purposes, you'll need to take pictures of some items first, including serial numbers on major appliances.)
- Check in and around the home for structural damage. Look for loose power lines and foundation cracks. Sniff for gas. Use extreme caution if you notice sagging ceilings or floors, and/or damaged stairs.
- Make whatever temporary repairs you can before insurance repairs can kick in. For example, you may need patch holes or brace walls.
- Address mold safely by cleaning up with personal protective equipment, including an appropriate face mask, rubber gloves, and rubber boots. EPA has more details on how and why these precautions are so important.
* For more resources, visit FEMA's "How to Prepare for a Flood."
Reposted with permission from Yale Climate Connections.
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The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
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<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
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