Tag Archives: Flood

In late February, Sonoma County California experienced intense flooding causing several hundred millions of dollars in damage. Fortunately loss of life was very low relative to the fires that ravaged the same region the year before.

In this week's podcast, we talk with Adam Parks, whom we've interviewed previously about sourcing and preparing sustainably-raised meat (he operates a meat CSA in Sonoma County). Adam's business in Sebastopol, CA was hit hard by the flooding, and he graciously paused his recovery efforts to give us a play-by-play account of what happened during the disaster and how Sonoma County is recovering from the floods.

This is a little different from our usual fare, but is an instructive reminder that disasters strike without warning, and that when they do, most people and businesses are caught completely unawares.

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To make sense of the fast-developing situation at California's Oroville Dam, Chris spoke today with Scott Cahill, an expert with 40 years of experience on large construction and development projects on hundreds of dams, many of them earthen embankment ones like the dam at Oroville. Scott has authored numerous white papers on dam management, he's a FEMA trainer for dam safety, and is the current owner of Watershed Services of Ohio which specializes in dam projects across the eastern US. Suffice it to say, he knows his "dam" stuff.

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This is a running commentary on the rapidly developing Oroville dam situation. Because the story developed so rapidly, there wasn’t time to write a complete report.

I’ll have a tidy summary at some point, but first we have to scour and assemble the information.

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• How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets
• N.S.A. Leaks Make Plan for Cyberdefense Unlikely
• War-torn Syria Split into Three Regions
• In One Bundle of Mortgages, the Subprime Crisis Reverberates
• A Texan tragedy: ample oil, no water
• Lightning Bolt Sparks Fire at Venezuelan Oil Refinery
• New York Today: Flood Watch

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• Housewives' gold rush keeps price from falling
• China arrests after rat, mink and fox sold as mutton
• Video game league apologizes for Bitcoin scandal
• Business Investment Rebounds Even as Recovery Drags
• Adding Evacuation Zones in Response to Hurricane
• Early Wildfire Drives Thousands From Homes in Southern California
• Canada wrestles with bee-killing crop pesticides

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Flood myths are common to human culture. Swollen rivers, tidal storms, and tsunamis make their appearance frequently in literature. But Hurricane Sandy, which has drawn newly etched high-water marks on the buildings of lower Manhattan (and Brooklyn), has shifted the discussion from storytelling to reality.

Volatility in climate has drawn the attention of policy makers for a decade. But as so often is the case, a dramatic event like superstorm Sandy – the largest storm to hit New York since the colonial era – has punctured the psyche of the densely populated East Coast, including the New York-Washington, DC axis where U.S. policy is made.

Not surprisingly, in the weeks since the historical hurricane made landfall, new attention is being paid to the mounting costs that coastal world megacities may face.

Intriguingly, however, this new conversation about climate, energy policy, and America’s reliance on fossil fuels comes after a five-year period in which the U.S. has dramatically lowered its consumption of oil and seen an equally dramatic upturn in the growth of renewable energy.

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• Toward Sensible Monetary Policy
• The Invention of Money
• Monday Market Movement – 10 Days of ’11
• Food Prices Set To Spike In Wake Of Floods
• Virginia Creates Subcommittee To Study Monetary Alternatives In Case Of Terminal Fed “Breakdown”
• EMU Debt Crisis Edges Ever Closer To The Core
• 300 Year Old Food Forest in Vietnam

Own the Crash Course Special Edition Set with Presenter’s Pack (NTSC or PAL)

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