The toll from floods and landslides in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has risen to 203 people dead as more bodies are recovered, an administrative official said Saturday.
The provisional death toll, announced late on Friday by the provincial governor, was at least 176 dead.
“Here in Bushushu, 203 bodies have already been removed from the rubble,” said Thomas Bakenga, administrator of Kalehe territory, where the affected villages are located.
Relatives gather to identify bodies in the village of Nyamukubi, South Kivu province, Congo, Saturday, May 6, 2023.
Moses Sawasawa via AP
It was not possible to evaluate the full extent of the human losses and material damage, he told local media.
Heavy rainfall in the Kalehe region of South Kivu province on Thursday caused rivers to overflow, causing landslides that engulfed the villages of Bushushu and Nyamukubi.
The hillside also gave way at Nyamukubi, where the weekly market was held on Thursday, Bakenga added.
In all, several villages were submerged, many houses washed away and fields devastated when rivers in the region burst their banks due to the heavy rains.
Congolese doctor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege, whose clinic is located in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, said Saturday he had sent a team of surgeons, anesthetists and technicians to the area to “provide the population with emergency medical aid.”
People walk next to a house destroyed by the floods in the village of Nyamukubi, South Kivu province, in Congo.
Moses Sawasawa via AP
The disaster came two days after floods killed at least 131 people and destroyed thousands of homes in neighboring Rwanda.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday offered his condolences to the victims of the “catastrophic floods” in Rwanda and DR Congo.
“This is yet another illustration of accelerating climate change and its disastrous impact on countries that have done nothing to contribute to global warming,” he said during a visit to Burundi.
Experts say extreme weather events are happening with increased frequency and intensity due to climate change.
White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia, has hosted 28 U.S. presidents and British royalty, thanks in part to its famous Greenbrier resort. But a 1,000-year flood in 2016 killed 13 people and nearly wiped the town off the map. Scott MacFarlane takes a look at how the town is recovering seven years later.
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Thousands of customers were without power across California on Wednesday after the state was hit by its 11th atmospheric river of the winter season, causing major flooding and storm damage statewide. More rain is also in the forecast. Carter Evans has more.
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President Biden has approved a disaster declaration for California as more storms are battering the state and threatening severe flooding. CBS News correspondent Carter Evans joins Catherine Herridge from the Folsom Dam with the latest on the conditions.
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Rain-weary Californians grappled with flooding and mudslides Monday as the latest in a series of powerful storms walloped the state, prompting widespread evacuations, toppling trees and frustrating motorists who hit roadblocks caused by fallen debris.
Tens of thousands of people remained without power, and some schools closed for the day.
An evacuation order for the entire community of Montecito and surrounding canyons scarred by recent wildfires came on the fifth anniversary of a mudslide that killed 23 people and destroyed more than 100 homes in the coastal enclave.
The National Weather Service reported that at least 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain fell over 12 hours, with several more inches predicted before the latest storm system moves through the area with roads winding through wooded hillsides with large homes. Upscale Montecito is squeezed between mountains and the Pacific and is home to celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe and Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said the decision to evacuate nearly 10,000 people was “based on the continuing high rate of rainfall with no indication that that is going to change before nightfall.” Creeks were overflowing, and many roads were flooded, he said.
Northbound lanes of U.S. 101, a key coastal route, were closed, along with several other highways and local roads.
Up the coast, evacuation orders were issued in coastal, woodsy Santa Cruz County for about 32,000 residents living near rain-swollen rivers and creeks, said Melodye Serino, the deputy county administrative officer. The San Lorenzo River was declared at flood stage, and video on social media showed a neighborhood flooded with muddy water surging up to a stop sign.
A large, muddy slide blocked both lanes of southbound Highway 17, a key but windy route into Santa Cruz from the San Francisco Bay Area. Vehicles were turned back at the summit as crews arrived to clean up.
Despite the deadly nature of storms, which have killed at least a dozen people, residents of tiny, flooded Felton remained calm and upbeat.
Christine Patracuola, the owner of Rocky’s Cafe for 25 years, handed out free coffee to customers whose homes lacked power Monday. Her staff couldn’t come in because of closed roads, including a bridge over the San Lorenzo.
“A little coffee can’t hurt anybody,” she said. “You can’t really change Mother Nature; you just have to roll with the punches and hope you don’t get swept up into it.”
Nicole Martin, third-generation owner of the Fern River Resort in Felton, said Monday that her clients sipped coffee, sat on cabin porches amid towering redwood trees, and were “enjoying the show” as picnic tables and other debris floated down the swollen San Lorenzo.
The river is usually about 60 feet (18 meters) below the cabins, Martin said, but it crept up to 12 feet (4 meters) from the cabins. Still, Martin said she wasn’t worried — her family has owned the property for about 60 years, and her grandfather checked out conditions Monday and shrugged it off.
This aerial view shows a damaged pier is split in Capitola, California, on January 9, 2023. – A massive storm called a “bomb cyclone” by meteorologists has arrived and is expected to cause widespread flooding throughout the state.
JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
The resort prepared by getting about 8,000 pounds of sandbags, readying generators, and handing out lanterns to guests who opted to weather the storm in their cabins.
In Northern California, several districts closed schools. More than 35,000 customers remained without power in Sacramento, down from more than 350,000 a day earlier after gusts of 60 mph (97 kph) knocked majestic trees into power lines, according to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
The National Weather Service warned of a “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers” — long plumes of moisture stretching out into the Pacific that can drop staggering amounts of rain and snow. The precipitation expected over the next couple of days comes after storms last week knocked out power to thousands, flooded streets, and battered the coastline.
President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration Monday to support storm response and relief efforts in more than a dozen counties, including Sacramento, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said 12 people died as a result of violent weather during the past 10 days, and he warned that this week’s storms could be even more dangerous and urged people to stay home.
The first of the newest, heavier storms prompted the weather service to issue a flood watch for a large portion of Northern and Central California, with 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 centimeters) of rain expected through Wednesday in the already saturated Sacramento-area foothills.
In the Los Angeles area, there was potential for as much as 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain in foothill areas late Monday and Tuesday. High surf was also expected on west-facing beaches.
Since Dec. 26, San Francisco received more than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain, while Mammoth Mountain, a popular ski area in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, got nearly 10 feet (3 meters) of snow, the National Weather Service said.
The storms won’t be enough to officially end California’s drought, but they have helped.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, expects a break in the rain after Jan. 18.
“That is my best guess right now, which is good because it will give the rivers in Northern California, and now in Central California, a chance to come down,” he said.
Exteme weather is raising rivers and pushing levees to their breaking point in California, as a new storm system moved across the battered state. Elise Preston has more
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A powerful storm brought drenching rain or heavy snowfall to much of California on Saturday, snarling traffic and closing highways as the state prepared to usher in a new year. In the high Sierra Nevada, as much as 2 feet of snow could accumulate into early Sunday.
The National Weather Service in Sacramento warned about hazardous driving conditions and posted photos on Twitter showing traffic on snow-covered mountain passes, where vehicles were required to have chains or four-wheel drive.
The so-called atmospheric river storm was pulling in a long and wide plume of moisture from the Pacific Ocean. Flooding and rock slides closed portions of roads across Northern California.
This photo provided by Micah Crockett of the California Department of Transportation shows heavy machinery removing a rock slide on State Route 299 in Trinity County, Calif., Dec. 31, 2022.
Micah Crockett/Caltrans District 2 via AP
“Too many road closures to count at this point,” the weather agency in Sacramento said in an afternoon tweet. Sacramento County urged residents in the unincorporated community of Wilton to evacuate, warning that flooded roadways could “cut off access to leave the area.”
Officials in Santa Cruz County posted a photo of a large sinkhole that opened along a road.
Rainfall in downtown San Francisco on Saturday topped 5 inches at midafternoon, making it the second-wettest day on record, behind a November 1994 deluge. With rain continuing to fall, it could threaten the nearly three-decade old record.
The California Highway Patrol said a section of U.S. 101 — one of the state’s main traffic arteries — was closed indefinitely south of San Francisco because of flooding. Videos on Twitter showed mud-colored water streaming along San Francisco streets, and a staircase in Oakland turned into a veritable waterfall by heavy rains.
Weather service meteorologist Courtney Carpenter said the storm could drop over an inch of rain in the Sacramento area before moving south. One ski resort south of Lake Tahoe closed chair lifts because of flooding and operational problems, and posted a photo on Twitter showing one lift tower and its empty chairs surrounded by water.
“We’re seeing a lot of flooding,” Carpenter said.
A rainstorm caused a flash flood in San Carlos, California, December 31, 2022.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The Sacramento agency released a map of 24-hour precipitation through Saturday morning, showing a wide range of totals in the region, from less than an inch in some areas to more than 5 inches in the Sierra foothills.
The Mammoth Mountain Ski Area reported numerous lift closings, citing high winds, low visibility and ice.
The Stockton Police Department posted photos of a flooded railroad underpass and a car that appeared stalled in more than a foot of water.
The rain was welcomed in drought-parched California, but much more precipitation is needed to make a significant difference. The past three years have been California’s driest on record.
A winter storm warning was in effect into Sunday for the upper elevations of the Sierra from south of Yosemite National Park to north of Lake Tahoe, where as much as 5 feet of snow is possible atop the mountains, the National Weather Service said in Reno, Nevada.
A flood watch was in effect across much of Northern California through New Year’s Eve. Officials warned that rivers and streams could overflow and urged residents to get sandbags ready.
Some rainfall totals in the San Francisco Bay Area topped 4 inches.
The state transportation agency reported numerous road closures, including Highway 70 east of Chico, which was partially closed by a slide, and the northbound side of Highway 49, east of Sacramento, which was closed because of flooding. In El Dorado County, east of Sacramento, a stretch of Highway 50 was closed because of flooding.
Humboldt County, where a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck on Dec. 20, also saw roadways begin to flood, according to the National Weather Service’s Eureka office. A bridge that was temporarily closed last week due to earthquake damage may be closed again if the Eel River, which it crosses, gets too high, officials said.
It was the first of several storms expected to roll across California over the next week. The current system is expected to be warmer and wetter, while next week’s storms will be colder, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
The Sacramento region could receive a total of 4 to 5 inches of rain over the span of the week, Chandler-Cooley said.
“Strong winds could cause tree damage and lead to power outages and high waves on Lake Tahoe may capsize small vessels,” the weather service in Reno said.
Avalanche warnings were issued in the backcountry around Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes south of Yosemite.
On the Sierra’s eastern front, flood watches and warnings were issued into the weekend north and south of Reno, Nevada, where minor to moderate flooding was forecast along some rivers and streams.
In Southern California, moderate-to-heavy rain was falling Saturday. The region will begin drying out on New Year’s Day, with no rainfall expected during Monday’s Rose Parade in Pasadena.
Another round of heavy showers was forecast for Tuesday or Wednesday, the National Weather Service in Oxnard said.
Travelers across much of the eastern United States were bracing Thursday for one of the most treacherous Christmas weekends in decades, with forecasters warning of a “bomb cyclone” that will pack heavy snow and wind while sending temperatures plummeting 50 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of hours.
The frigid air was moving through the central United States to the east, with wind chill advisories affecting about 135 million people over the coming days, weather service meteorologist Ashton Robinson Cook said Thursday. Places like Des Moines, Iowa, will feel like minus 37 degrees, making it possible to suffer frostbite in less than five minutes.
There were already widespread disruptions in flights and train travel. As of Thursday afternoon, 2,225 flights had been cancelled in the U.S., and about 6,800 were delayed. The numbers were predicted to continue to climb as freezing weather hits the Midwest. Airports in Chicago and Denver were reporting the most cancelations.
“Today’s a very challenging day for Delta teams, exacerbated by a freeing rain event in the Pacific Northwest,” Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant told CBS News Thursday. “Tomorrow, the challenges will be at our Detroit hub with a change in the forecast overnight of rain to snow.”
Unexpected light snow in the Dallas area forced de-icing operations at Dallas Fort Worth International and Dallas Love Field airports, resulting in additional delays.
High winds whip around 7.5 inches of new snow at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as workers prepare a Sun Country Airlines plane for takeoff on Dec. 22, 2022.
David Joles/Star Tribune via Getty Images
“This is not like a snow day when you were a kid,” President Biden warned Thursday in the Oval Office after a briefing from federal officials. “This is serious stuff.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a statewide state of emergency Thursday evening, saying in a statement that “heavy rain and snow, strong winds, coastal and lakeshore flooding, flash freezing, extremely low wind chills and power outages” were “all possible.”
Forecasters are expecting a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — to develop near the Great Lakes, which will increase winds and create blizzard conditions, Cook said.
A man shovels the sidewalk while another one clears the snow with a power sweeper Dec. 22, 2022 in downtown Minneapolis.
Alex Kormann/Star Tribune via Getty Images
In South Dakota, Rosebud Sioux Tribe emergency manager Robert Oliver said tribal authorities have been working to clear roads to deliver propane and fire wood to homes, but face a relentless wind that has created drifts over 10 feet in some places.
“This weather and the amount of equipment we have — we don’t have enough,” Oliver said, noting that rescues of people stranded in their homes had to be halted early Thursday when the hydraulic fluid in heavy equipment froze amid a 41 below zero windchill.
He said five have died in recent storms, including a blizzard from last week.
“It’s just kind of scary for us here, we just kind of feel isolated and left out,” said Shawn Bordeaux, a Democratic state lawmaker, who said he was running out of propane heat at his home near Mission on the tribe’s reservation.
In Texas, temperatures were expected to quickly plummet Thursday, but state leaders promised there wouldn’t be a repeat of the February 2021 storm that overwhelmed the state’s power grid and was blamed for hundreds of deaths.
The cold weather extended to El Paso and across the border into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where migrants have been camping outside or filling shelters as they await a decision on whether the U.S. will lift restrictions that have prevented many from seeking asylum.
Transmission towers at a power plant near the Energy Research Park facility on Dec. 22, 2022 in Houston, Texas.
BRANDON BELL / Getty Images
Elsewhere in the U.S., authorities worried about the potential for power failures and warned people to take precautions to protect older and homeless people and livestock — and, if possible, to postpone travel. Some utilities were urging customers to turn down theirs thermostats to conserve energy.
“This event could be life-threatening if you are stranded,” according to an online post by the National Weather Service in Minnesota, where transportation and patrol officials reported dozens of crashes and vehicles off the road.
Michigan State Police prepared to deploy additional troopers to help motorists. And along Interstate 90 in northern Indiana, crews were braced to clear as much as a foot of snow as meteorologists warned of blizzard conditions there starting Thursday evening.
Among those with canceled flights was Ashley Sherrod, who planned to fly from Nashville to Flint, Michigan, on Thursday afternoon. Sherrod is now debating whether to drive or risk booking a Saturday flight she worries will be canceled.
“My family is calling, they want me home for Christmas, but they want me to be safe too,” said Sherrod, whose bag — including the Grinch pajamas she was planning to wear to a family party — is packed and ready by the door. “Christmas is starting to, for lack of a better word, suck.”
Amtrak, meanwhile, canceled service on more than 20 routes, primarily in the Midwest.
Some shelters in the Detroit area already were at capacity but still making room.
And in Portland, Oregon, officials opened four emergency shelters. In the city’s downtown, Steven Venus tried to get on a light-rail train to get out of the cold after huddling on the sidewalk overnight in temperatures that dipped to zero degrees with wind gusts of 40 mph.
“My toes were freezing off,” he said, a sleeping bag wrapped around his head, as he paused near a flimsy tent where another homeless person was taking shelter.
Courtney Dodds, a spokeswoman for the Union Gospel Mission, said teams from her organization had been going out to try to convince people to seek shelter.
“It can be really easy for people to doze off and fall asleep and wind up losing their lives because of the cold weather.”
In Montana, temperatures fell as low as 50 below zero at Elk Park, a mountain pass on the Continental Divide. Schools and several ski areas announced closures, and several thousand people lost power.
Near Big Sandy, Montana, rancher Rich Roth said he wasn’t too concerned about his 3,500 pregnant cows weathering the cold snap, saying “they’re pretty dang resilient animals” and are acclimated to the weather.
In famously snowy Buffalo, New York, forecasters predicted a “once-in-a-generation storm” because of heavy lake-effect snow, wind gusts as high as 65 mph (105 kph), whiteouts and the potential for extensive power outages. Mayor Byron Brown urged people to stay home, and the NHL postponed the Buffalo Sabres’ home game against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Denver, also no stranger to winter storms, was the coldest it has been in 32 years on Thursday, when the temperature dropped to minus 24 in the morning at the airport.
In Charleston, South Carolina, a coastal flood warning was in effect Thursday. The area, a popular tourist destination for its mild winters, braced for strong winds and freezing temperatures.
The wintry weather extended into Canada, causing delays and cancellations earlier in the week at Vancouver International Airport. A major winter storm was expected Friday into Saturday in Toronto, where wind gusts as high as 60 mph were predicted to cause blowing snow and limited visibility, Environment Canada said.
Hurricane Roslyn was expected to deliver a treacherous storm surge to parts of Mexico Sunday after plowing over the Pacific as a powerful Category 4 storm just offshore from the resort of Puerto Vallarta.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said early Sunday that Roslyn had become “extremely dangerous” with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph.
The storm was forecast “to bring damaging winds, a life-threatening storm surge and flooding rains to portions of west-central Mexico today,” the hurricane center said at 12 a.m. Sunday.
The center placed Roslyn’s core about 45 miles west of Cabo Corrientes — the point of land jutting into the Pacific south of Puerto Vallarta — and moving north at 12 mph.
Forecasters said Roslyn likely would pass close to Cabo Corrientes and the Puerto Vallarta region during the night, but warned that those areas would still see high winds, heavy rains and rough surf.
A hurricane warning was in effect for Las Islas Marias and Playa Perula to Escuinapa. A hurricane watch was in effect for the area north of north of Escuinapa to Mazatlan, the center said.
This satellite image taken at 15:30 UTC and provided by NOAA shows Hurricane Roslyn approaching the Pacific coast of Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022.
NOAA via AP
The storm was expected to come ashore in Nayarit state Sunday morning. Hurricane Orlene made landfall Oct. 3 a little farther north in roughly the same region, about 45 miles southeast of the resort of Mazatlan.
Hurricane-force winds extended out 30 miles from Roslyn’s center, while tropical storm-force winds extended out to 80 miles, the U.S. hurricane center said.
A hurricane warning was posted on a stretch of coast from Playa Perula south of Cabo Corrientes north to El Roblito and for the Islas Marias.
Seemingly oblivious to the approaching storm, tourists ate at beachside eateries Saturday around Puerto Vallarta and smaller resorts farther north on the Nayarit coast where the storm likely was headed.
“We’re fine. Everything is calm, it’s all normal,” said Jaime Cantón, a receptionist at the Casa Maria hotel in Puerto Vallarta. He said that if winds picked up, the hotel would gather up outside furniture “so nothing will go flying.”
While skies began to cloud up, waves remained normal, and few people appeared to be rushing to take precautions. Swimmers were still in the sea at Puerto Vallarta.
“The place is full of tourists,” said Patricia Morales, a receptionist at the Punta Guayabitas hotel in the laid-back beach town of the same name, farther up the coast.
Asked what precautions were being taken, Morales said, “They (authorities) haven’t told us anything.”
The Nayarit state government said the hurricane was expected to make landfall around the fishing village of San Blas, about 90 miles north of Puerto Vallarta.
The head of the state civil defense office, Pedro Núñez, said, “Right now we are carrying out patrols through the towns, to alert people so that they can keep their possession safe and keep themselves safe in safer areas.”
In the neighboring state of Jalisco, Gov. Enrique Alfaro wrote that 270 people had been evacuated in a town near the hurricane’s expected path and that five emergency shelters had been set up in Puerto Vallarta.
The National Water Commission said rains from Roslyn could cause mudslides and flooding. and the U.S. hurricane center warned of dangerous storm surge along the coast, as well as 4 to 6 inches of rain.
Many Florida homeowners starting the arduous recovery from Hurricane Ian will do so without the benefit of flood insurance, forcing them to either rebuild with scant resources or make hard choices about relocating.
Ian was among the most destructive storms to hit the U.S. Early estimates of residential and commercial losses range from $28 billion to $47 billion, according to property-data company CoreLogic, while other projections have put the toll at more than $60 billio. The storm’s powerful eye wall was unusually large, measuring 40 miles across, while its storm surge peaked at 12 feet.
“Since Andrew, Ian is looking most likely to be the largest loss Florida has experienced,” David Smith, senior leader of science and analytics at CoreLogic, said in a recent presentation.
Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992 and was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history until Katrina, in 2005, which demolished the Louisiana coast and the city of New Orleans.
Since 1992, Florida’s population has grown more than 60%, exposing more residents to risk. Yet less than 1 in 5 of the state’s 10 million homes has flood insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Without insurance, people in flooded areas must appeal to the Federal Emergency Management Administration for direct grants, which often top out at $30,000 or $35,000 — a fraction of what they may need to rebuild or move.
The median home in Florida sells for $395,000, according to Redfin. Meanwhile, just one inch of flooding can cause $25,000 in damage, according to the National Flood Insurance Program.
Although flooding is the most common natural disaster in America, most homeowners lack flood coverage, with poorer people less likely to have insurance. The typical flood insurance policy runs around $700 a year, while the average claims payout tops $50,000, according to the most recent data from FEMA.
“Flood insurance is not equally distributed in risky areas — homeowners who are more wealthy and in Whiter areas are more likely to have coverage,” said Max Besbris, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and coauthor of a recent book on the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.
“Communication failure”
Nationwide, surveys show that between a quarter and a third of Americans carry flood insurance. Those without a policy usually do so because they can’t afford it or are unaware they need it. When Besbris and fellow sociologist Anna Rhodes interviewed victims of flooding from Harvey, they found that “most people did not know their level of vulnerability,” Besbris told CBS MoneyWatch.
“They did not think that floodwaters could rise as high as they had. The last storm they had was Imelda in 1979 — that was the benchmark that people were working with,” Besbris told CBS MoneyWatch.
“This is a communication failure on the part of FEMA, local municipalities and governments, to actually tell their residents that there is an increasing risk of flooding, especially as climate change makes flooding more severe.”
Unlike car insurance, which is required by law, flood insurance is optional for most homeowners, unless they live in a FEMA-designated flood zone. But with climate change making flooding more frequent and more severe, those zones are outdated in many parts of the country.
Today, about 180,000 homes on Florida’s storm-battered Gulf Coast face a significant flood risk but sit outside FEMA’s 100-year flood zone, according to the nonprofit First Street Foundation. Statewide, that figure rises to 350,000.
Prices creeping up
Not only are few homeowners covered by flood insurance, but the numbers are headed in the wrong direction. Since the National Flood Insurance Program began raising some of its premiums last year to account for growing flood risk, hundreds of thousands of people have dropped their federally backed insurance policies.
In Florida, about 48,000 fewer households have federal flood insurance this year than in 2021, according to FEMA figures. The trend suggests that affordability remains a concern, particularly for homeowners who are poorer or live on fixed incomes, as many Floridians do.
“Making flood insurance cost more means that less advantaged people are going to stop buying coverage,” Besbris said. “When these things happen like Ian — and they will happen more and more often — whole communities, in addition to individual households, are not going to have clear pathways to recovery.”
Florida’s Sanibel Island bore the brunt of Hurricane Ian, as homes were destroyed and the only bridge connecting the island to the mainland was knocked out. Those who survived the storm now face the daunting task of repairing what remains. Manuel Bojorquez has more.
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If you’ve lived in Austin for more than a year, you might be wondering how we are doing over here at the Town Lake Animal Center with all this rain. Historically, our little 70 year old facility floods when we get these crazy Texas torrential downpours. This happens because the land around our buildings is higher than the kennel buildings that have sunk just a little every decade into the ground. Over the past decade of our inhabiting this facility, we have flooded many times in both minor and major ways. We have worked hard to prevent this issue year after year, and in the past 12 months we have made even more improvements to correct the problem. That is why you haven’t heard from us these past weeks — our drains are actually working better than ever! This has only been possible because of the generosity of donors and the City of Austin Water and Watershed Protection Departments.
But even with these improvements, our drains are still 70 years old, and there is only so much they can take.
What is happening right now with the weather is very much like what we experienced in 2015 right before the Memorial Day Flood. It rained for many days straight and the land was completely saturated. By the time the big downpour happened on Memorial Day, the only thing water could do was travel as runoff. While we were nowhere near the hardest hit, our kennels and buildings flooded and we had to do an emergency evacuation of our pets.
We are hopeful that the rain predicted over the next week stays light, but because it would be foolish to bet against Mother Nature, we are preparing for the worst.
Right now, we need your help to move our dogs to fosters and adopters as fast as possible in an effort to decrease the number of kennels being used. That way any dogs still left at the shelter can be moved to dry kennels, as some kennels may flood before others.
If you are interested in fostering a dog and giving them a dry place to stay out of the rain, please email [email protected] to be connected to the Austin Pets Alive! Dog Foster Team.
If you cannot foster or adopt a pet in need at this time, consider making a donation to support APA!’s future life saving efforts. You can also spread the word to your networks by sharing this blog or this Facebook post.
