Short Wave - These voicemails save lives

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

For residents of Prek Touch, Cambodia — right on the banks of the Mekong River — flooding is a regular part of life. But as those floods worsen due to climate change, it’s getting harder to adapt. Along with other flood-prone regions throughout Southeast Asia, government officials are facing an issue: how to deliver widespread weather warnings in a timely, effective way. One solution that’s working for Prek Touch? Voicemails. Today on the show, NPR climate correspondent Rebecca Hersher explains how a simple phone alert can prompt preparation, increase evacuation, and save lives.Interested in more stories about natural disaster preparedness? Email us your question at [e-mail] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hello, shortwavers. I am NPR correspondent Camila Dominosky, filling in as host, and today we are going on a trip with Rebecca Hersher from NPR's climate desk. Hey, Becky. Hi. So where are we headed? We're going to Cambodia, specifically to the central Cambodian village of Prec-Tuch. It's right next to the Nekong River. And when were you there? So I was there in December. I visited with an NPR team that included producer Ryan Kelman and interpreter Tatt Odom.

And we wanted to visit this particular place because of something kind of surprising that's happening there, something related to its location, which is right next to this massive river. The Mekong River, right? One of the biggest rivers in the world. Yeah, yeah. And this river is everything to the people in this community. It's a fishing village. On the afternoon that we arrived, some women,

were fixing fishing nets. Others were cleaning the day's catch. A lot of the men who had gone out fishing really early in the morning were resting. Kids were messing around on the boats, which are parked all along the edge of the river. That sounds amazing, actually. Yeah, really idyllic. You know, life is good there in many, many ways. But living next to the Mekong also means that floods are a part of life.

And like a lot of places, the floods here are getting more severe, because of climate change, which means they're getting more dangerous for the people who live near the water. And the people in Prak-Touch and in other parts of Cambodia are using really simple technology to protect themselves from these increasingly extreme floods. So today on the show, the profound life-saving power of simple low-tech weather warnings, and the quest to protect everyone on the planet from climate-driven disasters. I'm Camila Domenoski, and you're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Okay, Becky, you said that the flood.

Bloods in Cambodia and in a lot of parts of the world are getting worse because of climate change. Why is that, like, scientifically? Okay, so there are a couple of reasons. One is sea level rise. So as the earth heats up, water that used to be permanently frozen, like glaciers and polar ice caps, are melting. And that's adding water to the oceans. The oceans are also getting hotter. Hotter water expands, so it takes up more space.

And so you add that all up and sea levels are rising. all over the world, which is causing more severe flooding for people who live on the coast. The other big reason, though, is rain. I really feel like this one flies under the radar. Like, everyone's always thinking about sea level rise. But rain is a really big deal. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, so when it rains, it pours, literally. And when a lot of water falls in a short period of time, the ground can't soak it all up,

and that is when you get a flood. Okay, so sea level rise, rain, which of these is happening in Kimmel. Cambodia. Well, they're both happening in Cambodia, but rain is the most relevant one in the village we visited. So Cambodia and Southeast Asia more broadly experienced monsoons, these massive seasonal rainstorms that cause some flooding. That's a normal thing in this part of the world. But climate change is making monsoons more extreme and less predictable. So periods of unseasonable drought followed by this torrential rain. And torrential rain causes bigger floods, I have to imagine.

Yeah, exactly. Bigger than what used to happen. And last year was a particularly bad year for flooding in Prakthush. I talked to two local fish sellers about it, Klee Pali and Sen Sura. Did this neighborhood flood? So can water come to destroy the house?

So the other voice you hear there is Tat Odom, the Cambodian journalist and interpreter who worked with me. The women told us, that the water nearly destroyed their homes three times in the fall of 2025 alone. And that last flood in November was the worst one, which was strange, actually, because usually the strongest monsoon rains come earlier than that. Okay, so that's that unpredictability piece that you were talking about. The floods are getting worse, but they're also happening at, like, weird times.

Yeah, exactly, which makes them more dangerous because people aren't expecting them as much. and the water in November was really powerful, Polly told us. People are gesturing like it was up to their necks? Yeah. The number. Yeah. And the line above it? This year?

Yeah. Wow. So she was pointing across the street at her neighbor's house, which is raised off the ground on like 20-foot pillars to keep the water out. And the water line from the flood was about 15 feet off the ground. That's a lot. Yeah, it's a ton of water, and the water is moving. So no one would stand a chance in that kind of flood.

They're just super, super deadly. And just last year, floods killed hundreds of people in five countries across Southeast Asia. In 2022, floods killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan, displaced millions more. Now, those floods made headlines. The one in Prakhtush didn't really get any attention outside Cambodia, but it was just as dangerous. So this was a really bad year? Yeah, that is a bad one. So what happened in Prectush?

How did the women you met survive all of that water? They survived with voicemails. No. Yeah. Voicemails? Yeah, basically, voicemails and a couple other things. That's what saved their lives. And to understand why we have to talk a little bit about how weather warnings work.

So like when a storm is coming, you mean the warning that comes from your weather forecasters? Yeah. In the United States, the National Weather Service, You know, official warnings that trigger alerts on the radio, on television, on cell phones. Like your phone might buzz or make an alarm sound if there's a flash flood warning in your area. You've probably gotten those in the summer, right? Yeah, big thunderstorms flash floods. Everyone's phones will go off at once if you're all hanging out together.

Totally. And those alerts save lives. The U.S. is a great example of this, actually. This country has some of the lowest per capita fatality rates from weather in the world, even though we have widespread exposure to heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, floods, extreme thunderstorms. And that's according to an annual climate risk analysis sponsored by the German government. But millions of people in poorer countries, they do not get effective warnings the way we do. About half the world's least developed and small island nations don't have early warning systems,

according to a 2025 United Nations report. So people just have no idea when a flood or a hurricane or a heat wave is coming. Yeah, exactly, which leads to deaths. Here's United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez in a speech last year. Disaster-related mortality is at least six times lower in countries with good early warning systems in place. So the UN and other groups are trying to fix this problem. Since 2022, the UN and the World Bank and other contributors, they have spent more than $4 billion on weather warning systems. And the goal is to protect everyone on Earth by 2027, although that's very soon.

the UN acknowledges that it will likely not meet that goal. Still, the money, it is flowing and some places are seeing progress, including Cambodia, which the UN has touted as a success story, which is really one of the reasons that I wanted to visit. Yeah, and what did you find out? What's going on with the weather warnings in Cambodia? Well, they've made progress. So as of like a decade ago, there really wasn't any modern system for warning people about flooding in Cambodia. But that has been changing, with the help of money from nonprofit groups and from the UN itself. Residents who used to get, you know, basically no warning about floods

now get flood forecasts up to five days in advance, which is a huge upgrade. And people in Riverside communities like Pactush, they get warnings now, and they get them via voicemail. Are we talking, like, a regular voicemail, or is it something more high-tech? No, but it's literally like a normal voicemail. But the message is a flood warning,

not like a fun message from your friend. Here's an excerpt of one. This says there will be minor flooding that may affect your area in Tabong Kamum province. And then it gives directions about how to evacuate. Anyone in the country can opt into getting these warnings. You can also sign up to get text warnings on the popular messaging app Telegram. I have to say I feel like most of the voicemails I have right now are spam messages. Does this actually work?

Because I mostly ignore my inbox. I had the same question. I was like, okay, voicemail. Like, great. But people really seem to take these warnings seriously. Like before that terrible November flood hit Pactush, Klee Polly got a voicemail warning on her phone. And she says in the past,

they might have sheltered in their homes when the water was rising and just hoped that the water wouldn't get too high. But now that they get these warnings, no one stays. She and her family immediately packed up their belongings, including their chickens. She explains, when we heard the announcement, we took our children to the safe house. And that's like a government-run evacuation site up the road.

All right, that's a voicemail success story right there. But what about the people who haven't signed up for those warnings or, you know, people who don't even have cell phones? They actually also evacuated, so the village chief hooked his phone up to his car speaker and drove it through town broadcasting the message on repeat. He does that every time there's a warning. And that's actually how 82-year-old Kar Samoa and his wife found out. They announced it via loudspeaker, Samma told me. And then a neighbor gave the elderly couple a ride to the evacuation center. When the floodwaters went down, everyone went home.

Residents said there was one fatality. It was a young child whose family lives on a boat, so they couldn't evacuate. By the time we visited town about a month after the flood, life in Prakush was back to normal. Wow. Yeah. Does every town in Cambodia have this kind of warning system and the community-minded neighbors who make sure that everybody actually gets the warning? No. So Prectush is a leader on this, and that's in part because it is so prone to flooding.

it was a pilot site that got UN funding over the last three years to help local leaders make evacuation plans, you know, come up with that plan to plug your phone into your speaker and drive through town. But UN affiliated agencies are planning to spend an additional $7.8 million to expand the work across the country. You know, it seems like this work has been pretty successful. So are there projects like this in other countries, too? Yeah, for sure. Dozens of countries around the world have similar initiatives. Cambodia is just an example. of a place where the benefits are already tangible, at least on a relatively small scale. Yeah. And definitely not to discount those benefits. It sounds like a lot of lives were saved here. But just listening to you describe the experiences of people in Pactush, I'm also thinking about what wasn't saved, what it's still washed away. Yeah, absolutely. That came up in so many of the conversations I had in Pactush and also in other flood-prone parts of Cambodia.

and particularly with people who live in places that are mostly reliant on farming as opposed to fishing, you know, floods are washing away their seeds, they're destroying crops at an absolutely huge scale. And more than half of the people in Cambodia are directly involved in agriculture. That's according to a UN survey from last year. So even with the warnings in place, flooding is still causing really big problems for Cambodia's economy. Add it to the list, right, of ways that climate change, is really, really expensive. So expensive.

Oh, my gosh. Because the damage plus the investment to, you know, fix the problem to bring these warnings to people. Protecting crops from flooding would actually require even more expensive high-tech work. You'd have to upgrade to long-term weather forecasts for the region. And that would allow farmers to decide where and when and even what to plant, given, you know, what people thought the weather was going to be over the next like three to six. months. So that would take a lot of money.

Yeah. Okay. So right now, short-term weather warnings can save lives, but it would take long-term weather forecasts to save those livelihoods, if you will. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Becky, for this reporting. You're welcome. If you liked this episode, follow us on the NPR app or wherever else you're listening to this from. It really helps the show.

Also, definitely check out Becky's digital story, which includes more context and some gorgeous photos from photojournalist Ryan Kelman. It's on NPR.org. We'll link it in our show notes. This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. It was fact-checked by Tyler Jones. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keely. And I'm Camila Dominooski. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.