To paraphrase the often-used text from the Book of Numbers* ( you know, from the 'Holy Bible'), we have gotten ourselves into a predicament and I hope people can see it for what it is.
We have screwed up our planet in a lot of ways. Little by little we are paying the price. Let me explain.
We have had a little bit of rain here in Sonoma County. Actually a lot. One wonders if the rain will ever stop. We have an atmospheric river running through us.
Today is Sunday and I took a drive down the Russian River to spend some money in the hard-hit communities along that beautiful river course. I was not prepared for what I saw. Everywhere I looked for miles and miles I saw homes ruined, businesses destroyed. I saw tons and tons and tons of human possessions, ruined and soggy and melting in the rain. Piled up for the debris removal teams that are scheduled to come through the area shortly.
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| RIP VW |
A month ago these items were family possessions. Memorabilia. Functional tools for use and creating good lives for their owners. Now ruined. Moldy. Soggy. Of no material value.
Hundreds of buildings with high water marks above my head, seemingly disintegrating into the mud. All in various stages of response, ranging from no action taken to reconstruction begun. In all cases the disintegration process is well underway thanks to the natural systems that wish so much to recover these material things and return them to the soil from whence they came.
As I slowly drove my Volkswagen van through these neighborhoods, I couldn't help but tear up, especially when I came across a ruined classic VW transporter truck, on it's back, covered as if in death. My stomach ached. I saw scores of people like me slowly, quietly, moving around, taking this thing up, setting that thing down. I'm sure they are wondering how they will ever get through this. This is not what they planned to do with their lives in their fifties and sixties and beyond.
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| Resort hotels in Guerneville |
I asked one recovering homeowner how long had it been since they had a flood like this. He said it's been 30 years or more. That makes sense. What I was seeing in the piles in front of people's homes and businesses looked to be about 30 years worth of life's possessions.
So why? Who is to blame? I have a couple of thoughts:
First, when people locate in a flood plain or a flood prone area, they need to expect these sorts of cyclical events.The trade-off is that when it's not flooded this is a beautiful area, with a beautiful river coursing through it. Towering redwood trees. Green ferns and moss. The smell of wood fires emanating from the chimneys. Life is good. But it comes with a price. That price is being exacted now.
Second, I'm no scientist, nor am I an engineer. But I can tell you that we have screwed our environment up pretty badly, and what we're seeing with these rain events and flood events is a direct consequence of that. The mere fact that we have so much rain in such odd cycles has to do with the 'climate weirdness' that we are enduring, the result of a hundred years or more of fossil fuel consumption, beef consumption, cows farting methane gas, etc. We have built communities upstream from the lower Russian River willy nilly, without regard to the natural hydrologic systems. We have hardscaped the ground. We have created parking lots, paved our roads, built our structures with roofs and downspouts that funnel the rain water to the creeks. Water is no longer allowed to percolate into the soil as it was intended. What we are seeing has a lot to do with 'sheet runoff' of rainwater during these atmospheric events. We have ourselves to blame as a society for ignoring the natural systems that have governed our ecosystems for eons.
So it with a pit in my stomach and some moist eyes, I will order my lunch and coffee at some flood-damaged businesses in Guerneville. I will express my sympathy to those affected. But a part of me withholds sympathy, because we have fucked ourselves.
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* "What hath God wrought" is a phrase from the Book of Numbers(Numbers 23:23), and may refer to:
"What hath God wrought", the official first Morse code message transmitted in the U.S. on May 24, 1844 to officially open the Baltimore-Washington telegraph line. (Wikipedia)
Really good blog
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