![]() ![]() “I had no clue at all about climate change,” ‘Uhilamoelangi said. “Anytime there's a tsunami at home, on any island, all of us connect and emotions rise.”īut it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that she understood the link between those storms and a warming world. “All of us islanders … never have a casual conversation talk about the rain, the flood,” she said. ‘Uhilamoelangi and her husband, Senita, known as Papa Senter, emigrated from Samoa to the United States in the mid-1970s because of the increasing frequency of hurricanes and tsunamis. That could be us in the next couple of years.” “I’m thinking back to the places that weren't ready,” she said. Her mom, Leia, is worried the water will come purling through her back door. Many endured blockbusting and other discriminatory housing practices, decades of bad policy rooted in deliberate racial segregation. Grewe’s maternal grandparents emigrated from Tonga, and her dad’s family arrived in a wave of Black Americans who moved to East Palo Alto in the middle of the last century. “I just want a plan for the future, because if this happens and there's going to be flooding everywhere, people should know how to respond,” said Heleine Grewe, a 17-year-old senior at Menlo-Atherton High School. The interconnected nature of both the Bay Area’s ecosystem and infrastructure means that without a regional plan to protect all communities along the bay, East Palo Alto’s best efforts can be undermined, a fact not lost on city leadership and young activists, some of whom are teenagers frustrated they will inherit a city soon to be transformed by the fury of rising oceans and melting ice sheets. Heleine Grewe, 17, and Leia Grewe, her mother. While East Palo Alto’s budget, at $41.8 million, is 325 times smaller than San Francisco’s, the city is punching well above its weight in terms of planning for a higher tide. Many are collaborating with scientists, the city and the joint powers authority to save homes by restoring and creating a new wetland at the bay’s edge. Climate refugees here from the Pacific Islands have already fled rising seas, only to face similar threats in a new country thousands of miles away. (Teodros Hailye/KQED)įor some in East Palo Alto, flooding and climate change are threatening their homes a second time. The city, working with its neighbors through the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority, reengineered parts of its shoreline to mitigate the risk.įloodwaters swamped East Palo Alto in 1998. In 2012, the creek overtopped its banks, forcing evacuations. could be that tipping point,” Ouyang said.įloodwaters swamped more than 1,000 homes here in 1998. “If you were to get to know 100 families in East Palo Alto, maybe 50 out of 100 already are right at that point at which savings are so low that. Heavy rains regularly swell the creek and flood the city’s eastern sections, and an elevated sea level will severely exacerbate the problem, undermining the viability of East Palo Alto’s working-class community, says Derek Ouyang, a program manager and lecturer at the Stanford Future Bay Initiative who works with community leaders in the city. Many Pacific Islanders like 'Uhilamoelangi also live here. Gentrification and an influx of tech behemoths like Facebook, Google and Amazon has changed the makeup of the city, but it’s still largely non-white, with a population of 66% Latino. The effects of climate change are disproportionately impacting communities of color like those in East Palo Alto. By mid-century, those areas could be frequently underwater during high tides. According to projections, in 10 years or so up to two-thirds of the land within city limits may regularly experience flooding. Roughly 2.5 square miles of ranch-style homes and citrus trees, the city is bound by water on three sides, the San Francisquito Creek, meandering along the southern edge, the bay lying to the north and east.Īlready, half of East Palo Alto sits within a federally designated flood zone. Click on the down arrow top right of the legend to remove it. Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom to search for a specific address. Use the + and - signs to zoom in and out. Use your mouse to move different directions on the map. Of all Bay Area counties, San Mateo is the most at risk from sea level rise, and of all places in the county, East Palo Alto is one of the most vulnerable to climate-driven inundation. East Palo Alto is located between San Francisco and San Jose at the western end of the Dumbarton Bridge. Now, the bay waters being pushed higher by the effects of climate change pose an existential threat to this small community of mostly people of color. “The last two floods over here, the question is, where was God?’ she said. But East Palo Alto, with a population of 30,000, is prone to flooding, and three times over the next 30 years, torrential rains devastated the city.
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