This city manager wants California to prepare for a megastorm before it's too late

 

According to city manager Ben Gallegos, Firebaugh, California—located directly on the San Joaquin River—is a wonderful area to raise a family. He has spent the majority of his life in this Central Valley hamlet.
However, he is currently preparing the city for a megastorm, a natural disaster that could be far more deadly than the fires and drought that Californians are accustomed to.
They develop at sea as thousands of miles-long plumes of water vapor. As they approach land, they release weeks' worth of rain and snow at once, resulting in catastrophic flooding.
The Great Flood of 1862 was the most recent major storm to affect the West Coast. It briefly transformed a large portion of the 300-mile-long Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys into an enormous inland sea.

Gallegos i certain of the consequences a megastorm would have for Firebaugh.

He told NPR's Leila Fadel that there was "a lot of water. Flooding for many days. [A] possible hazard to really wiping out the city."

According to climate scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, the frequency of these megastorms will increase due to climate change.

As a result of rising temperatures, they will now happen as frequently as every 50 years, compared to the 100–200 years they used to happen every so often.

A megastorm, according to co-authors of the study Xingying Huang and Daniel Swain, could cause major transportation links to be severed, the displacement of millions of people due to flooding, and damage of close to $1 trillion.

Gallegos is concerned that larger cities, rather than his city of around 8,500 residents, will be the focus of flood-prevention spending before a megastorm.

Think about San Francisco and Los Angeles. "Should we give it to someone else or is the state really going to say—or the feds—let me give Firebaugh $50 to $60 million to upgrade the levee?" he said. They ask, "Oh, if we lose that town, what influence would it have to the state?," yet the state will be greatly affected.

Tomatoes are grown in the rural village of Firebaugh and used to make sauces for the restaurant business. It is also grown by farmers. According to Gallegos, the loss of those companies would have a ripple effect on California's economy.

The possibility of a megastorm striking Firebaugh has residents concerned, especially after a previous evacuation due to flooding in 1997 ended poorly.

The community center was directly close to the river, so there was a levee that was washing out, according to Gallegos. "The city wasn't prepared at that time for an evacuation. They evacuated all the citizens to our community center," he added. Then they had to fetch them back, and they were then housed in a warehouse just west of the city because the neighboring cities weren't prepared for our citizens.

Gallegos is aware that state and federal officials must decide between investing in flood control measures now and spending far more money to aid Firebaugh in recovering from a megastorm later.

We need assistance, he added, adding that fixing the problem now would be less expensive than waiting until there is an emergency and then trying to remedy it, which would be far more expensive.

Gallegos stated that if nothing is done, the alternative is unthinkable.

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