5 years ago today, we were cleaning up after Florida's Katrina, and glad to be alive.
An alleged minor (Category 1-2) hurricane, Katrina, first made landfall a mile from our home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on August 25th, at 5:00 pm. For 6 or more hours, 8 metal posts, still attached to the roof, acted as battering rams. These poles pounded 6 sliding glass doors ever two minutes at 90 miles an hour or more at the entire back of our home, like disciplined warriors pounding on the ramparts of a castle under siege. It seemed like they were living creatures, enraged by wind and rain, trying to get at us, with a ceaseless assault on the glass. My partner and I were inside the house, and to this day, I do not understand why or how the sliding glass doors did not breech, allowing a hurricane to come inside. Had that happened, the consequences of 90 MPH hurricane winds in the living room are pretty unthinkable. At least 15 people died in Florida by the time Katrina was done with the sunshine state.
As we cleaned up the mess on August 26th, after a sleepless night, we were aware that Katrina was working it's way across the state, and heading into the Gulf. Soon, we and the nation watched in horror as our unwanted visitor blew up over warm Gulf waters and surged into to devastate an unprepared and unprotected New Orleans.
Our Katrina, Katrina The Younger, I call it, was part of the 50 named storms of the 2004 and 2005 storm season. In Broward county, the 2005 season culminated with another direct hit by hurricane Wilma, a Category 3. That huge storm pressurized our attic, and we were hunkered down in the dark house for many terrifying hours. We lived for weeks after Wilma with no power, no gasoline at the pumps, and a worthless FEMA. We got by with our friends, one generator that a father of friend shipped down from a Wisconsin dairy farm for us. There weren't any generators left in the south by the time Wilma blew into town. Neighbors came by in the morning in to warm up their breakfasts. Friends scoured local grocery stores, also without power, for edible main courses for candle lit dinners. Meanwhile, hapless officials were still pulling body bags out of New Orleans. That could have been us, we thought. We lived in one room, with a fan, and were delighted to have this luxury.
Fast forward to today in San Diego. My family and I are part of self-selected, unorganized climate diaspora. I know there are millions of folks around the earth, relocating and uprooting to get out of the way of hurricanes and other climate-related extreme weather. We are out here, somewhere in the world, and don't have an organization or Washington lobbyists, yet. Our only voice is the United Nations, and no one seems to be listening in Washington, as another year-the hottest on record- passes without significant climate legislation.
50 storms and 2 hurricanes were enough for us, and we could not figure how to afford escaping a storm surge, should one ever appear with the next hurricane. The housing bubble had put two story, storm-worthy homes out of reach. We put our cherished waterfront home on the market and made plans to return to California, leaving our beloved "Fort La De Da" and Wilton Manors behind, with a great deal of regret.
By this point, between storms, I had read enough climate change literature to know what the new storm risks were, risks that far exceeded the historical norm. In 2005 science debates, scientists were alarmed by Katrina and the dramatic upswing in storms. Yet the old guard was dismissing the notion that climate change was impacting hurricane behavior. My intuitive conclusion after so much accidental field work living in a a strike zone was that the answer was "yes, global warming is a factor." Today there is no debate among the vast majority of legitimate scientists that increased sea surface temperatures, atmospheric moisture and other dynamics are creating more and stronger mega-storms. Personally, I had hit my 2 hurricane limit.
I guess things are better today. 5 years ago, global warming was not a generally acknowledged fact in 2005, and certainly not by the Bush Administration. From that perspective, we have come a long way as a globe as and a nation under Obama, and we are indebted to Al Gore for naming and claiming global warming. Sustainability is now a household word, and has become embedded in some policy (not nearly enough), business plans and personal choices. Jim Hansen's 350PPM is a number with life or death meaning for a civilization in peril, but lots of us are aware of it, 5 years hence. Personally, encouraged by a NASA mentor, I came out of it all determined to devote the rest of my career to mitigation of this unprecedented challenge to humanity and our companion biosphere.
The truth is, while our lives are not as tough as the many of the current former residents of New Orleans, we are still rebuilding our lives on every level as well, in this unspoken Depression, post- Katrina, and post-Bush world. We watch every documentary on Katrina, and for me it is like cinematic therapy, allowing us to witness and overcome our own traumas and post-storm loss. We relate. We relive and release our storms. Katrina is not over for us, New Orleans, the US, or the nation. 5 years later, I realize it never will be. It was a Before and After experience. In a very real sense, the menace of a Katrina has only just begun for everyone. Acidic oceans. 20 million homeless in Pakistan. Melting ice sheets. And in San Diego, a cool summer that other cities suffering temperature highs would love to have. A lot has happened in just 5 years.
In 2005, we were just canaries in the climate coal mine. And yet, lucky indeed.
