The inhabitants had forgotten that the floods have always existed in the state. Scientists, them, wonder about the degree of responsibility for the deregulation of the climate in bad weather.
by Corine Lesnes (San Francisco)
The sun has returned, but where is the beach? In Ocean Beach, at the end of the earth, in the Land’s End district in San Francisco, the landscape is transfigured. Tons of sand were carried offshore by storms in early January. Wood debris, whole trunks litter the coast. The walkers made sculptures, pyres, a “cemetery”, laments a local resident. A few kilometers to the south, in Fort Funston, a cliff from which the deltaplanes start on the days of high wind, a bunker of the Second World War hit the slope. Intact, it seems to wait for someone to help him go up …
Between the end of December 2022 and mid-January, San Francisco has experienced an unprecedented volume of precipitation since 1871. The streets have been flooded, the sewers overflowed. According to experts, it is common for the sand to be sucked off the days of high tide. In 2021, the municipality also spent $ 2.8 million (2.61 million euros) to bring it back to the bank. This time, the Pacific swelling moved it beyond the natural barrier that runs along the coast. The disappeared sand will probably not come back.
A month after being struck by a succession of “atmospheric rivers” (corridors of water vapor causing intense precipitation), California repairs, rebouche, rebouche. The deluge left nineteen dead, more than fires of the last two years combined, and more than $ 1 billion in damage. He caused 500 landslides, power cuts, many emergency evacuations.
A story punctuated by climatic extremes
Accustomed to never seeing a drop of water again, the inhabitants were taken short. They had forgotten the other side of the climate in California, a sawtooth climate, made of brutal droughts and torrential precipitation. Steinbeck already evoked this quasi-Amnesia in the first chapter in East of Eden (1952), recalls the mercury news :” it was unmissable: during the dry years, the People forgot the prosperous years and, as soon as the rain returned, they forgot the drought … “
Californian history is punctuated by climatic extremes. In 1862, the year of what remains known as “The Great Flood” (“The Great Flood”), the central valley was covered for months with an inner sea. The governor and the assembly left Sacramento, the capital, to go to San Francisco. In 1938, the floods left a hundred dead. More recently, the years 1982, 1986, 1995 remained in the Annals. “The difference is that at the time, the area only had agricultural operations, notes Matt Robinson, spokesperson for the County of Sacramento for water issues. Since then, we have built homes, Dikes. The circulation of water has been modified. People do not realize that they live in flood plains. “
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