Short Wave - Undisclosed: Fire And Flood Risk In The United States

Episode Date: November 10, 2020

There have been many climate-related disasters this year, and along with those events come a heavy emotional and financial toll for residents. But what NPR climate reporters Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Sommer have found is that most people don't realize their wildfire or flood risk — and that's putting millions in harm's way.Additional Resources:- Read Lauren and Rebecca's series, Climate Risk Hits Home. - Reach out to us if you've tried to get information about the risk of floods or wildfires when moving to a new home.Lauren and Rebecca are both on Twitter. You can follow them @lesommer and @rhersher to keep up with the latest climate news. We're always all ears for your climate inquiries and musings — email us at [e-mail] 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. Maddie Safaya here with climate reporters Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Summer. Hey, y'all. Hi. Hey, Maddie. So I feel like we are totally out of words to describe the climate-related disasters this year. It's been hurricane after wildfire, after hurricane after wildfire. Yeah, it's a lot.

We write about this for a living, you know, and I can definitely say that we are just out of words. It's been too much. We've seen so many hurricanes. We've seen record-breaking wildfires. Tens of thousands of people have had homes damaged or destroyed this year. And the costs, I mean, they're undeniable. I mean, both emotionally for people and financially. Yeah. And it's really happening every year now that Rebecca and I are standing with people in the wreckage of their homes. And no one is prepared for how fast their lives can change. Like the Montano family, their house was destroyed in the LNU Lightning Complex Fire. Northern California. They only had 10 minutes to evacuate. That's how fast the fire was moving. And I went out with them when they were taking their two kids to see it for the first time.

There would have been a wall here. And that would have been their half. Was there like anything left to see? Not much. Yeah. So that would have been our fridge over there, right there in our stove. And that's the microwave. I didn't even realize it was a fridge. I mean, she was pointing to this warped metal box. There's just nothing left. of a house that's burned. I mean, there's these metal pieces, and then there's these piles of white rubble, which is the fire-resistant drywall, which is kind of crumbles. But here's the weird thing. There's almost always a mug. The mug! That's Jennifer's 10-year-old daughter, Alia. She found this piece of red and green ceramic.

Daddy Port of Christmas survive. That's heartbreaking. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is just stuff, right? Everyone I talked to, you know, what they cared about was that they were safe and they had made out safe. But this really marks the moment of them putting their lives back together. And it can take a really long time. And in all these conversations that Rebecca and I have had, we've found that most people have no idea about these risks when they moved in. Like they live somewhere where wildfires or natural disasters are likely to happen, but no one's told them that. Exactly. You know, like Lauren said, most people get little or no information about wildfire or flood

risk when they move to a new apartment or to a new house. Right. And the information that people do get, it can be confusing or it can come too late. So today in the show, why most people don't understand their wildfire or flood risk in a warming climate and how that's putting millions of people in harm's way. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Okay, so today we're joined by two of our climate reporters. Lauren, Summer, you're on the firebeat.

Yes. And Rebecca Herscher, you're our flood expert. Right. So what is going on here? How is it possible to move to a place that's at serious risk for burning or flooding and have, like, no idea? Yeah. I mean, I think when most people think of wildfires or flooding, they think of obvious danger, right? Like you live in a log cabin on a dry mountain side in the west or your house is on the beach or next to a river.

But most people who are living in flood or fire prone areas, they're living in. totally normal neighborhoods. Right. This is suburbia. This is dense urban America. It's average houses and apartment buildings, places where you might never even imagine that a wildfire or a flood could happen. And why is that? Like, why isn't the flood or fire risk obvious? Well, for fires, it's that wildfires can start really far away, you know, in more remote areas that move into populated places. And most homes that burn down in wildfires are actually ignited by embers. And they're blown far ahead of the fire. They can travel miles. And for flooding, especially in suburban and urban areas, the water, it might not be visible at all in normal circumstances.

Like streams are in pipes under roadways, right? Like you've seen the culverts, storm drains, hind runoff from rain. And so you can't see the water. You can't see that it's part of the landscape until there's a ton of rain. And then boom, the water isn't under the road anymore in the pipe. It's in your house. Okay, okay, got it. But what parts of the country are we talking about here? Like, for fires, this is mostly in the western U.S., right? Yeah, that's where the fire risk is highest. But, you know, it's not just in these high forests in the mountains. It's grasslands, it's brushy areas. And it's worth pointing out that wildfires are also getting worse in the southeastern U.S. Right. And for flood, we're really talking about a giant swath of the country, including the West. You know, California's flood risk is growing really fast because of climate-driven extreme rain and rides. seas. We're obviously talking about coastal areas all around the country. And we're also talking about places in the middle of the country, which, Maddie, I know you love the middle of this country. Midwestern-born baby, you know, soda should be called pop, and every good bye should take at least

half an hour. Don't fight me on it. Yes, no, I've witnessed your Midwestern credentials. So here's an example, though, of how this can affect people. I talk to this woman who lives in Chicago. Her name is Amanda Daniels. She moved to her. Chicago in 2014. I wasn't making much money. It was renting. And she moved into a first floor apartment. As you know, they're like a little more affordable. So a year after she moves in, there's a rainstorm. The place floods. She moves. A year later in another Chicago apartment, another part of town, another flood. I'm like all stressed up and like very upset. And I'm like, how am I going to clean all this? So she moves again. And then this summer, 2020 in May, it happens again. Oh, geez.

Three floods. Yeah, three floods in five years, in three different apartments. Wow. And she says she's lost more than $10,000 worth of stuff. Wow. Here's the thing. There was never any obvious body of water anywhere near where she lived. And she says no landlord or property manager ever mentioned flood risk to her.

You're never thinking, like you go into these places, they look beautiful, right? Like, you're not thinking, oh, I'm at risk for flooding. And if she had known, she says she would have chosen to rent somewhere. or else maybe or maybe purchased insurance that covers flood damage, but she didn't know. And the same is true for people renting in fire prone areas. There's no requirement that they'd be warned. I mean, this is like traumatizing, right? Like obviously financially terrible. Is the situation better if you own the place where you live? Yeah, it depends. For wildfires, when you buy a new home, there are only two Western states that require any disclosure of fire risk. And that's California

and Oregon. And even there, it's really not much. You know, in California, there's this one-page form that mentions potential wildfire risk and it has a yes-no checkbox next to it. Which is really different from floods, actually. So if you're buying a house in 29 states, you do get some information about flooding, which might sound pretty good, but two things to say about this. First, you know, 29 states, you get some information that leaves 21 states where the seller or the real estate agent isn't required to tell you anything at all. about flooding. And that includes states where there is a lot of flooding. So Massachusetts, Florida, Virginia, all on that list. Second, the laws in those 29 states that do have requirements, they vary

a lot. And most of them don't give people very much information. And the information people do receive often comes too late or it's confusing. And that can also be true for fire information. So what do you, I mean by confusing? It seems like you could just tell somebody like, hey, this house is in a place that's likely to catch fire or be underwater, and then they would know? It's just not that simple. Okay. Like, when you tell somebody, it makes a big difference. In most states, you find out that a house is in a fire or flood-prone area after you've

made an offer. You know, maybe you've even put down a deposit, which means you're kind of in it. You're committed, right? And the bar is really high for walking away. And there's a really good chance that you will miss that information and tell you. entirely, which is what Alice Hill told us. She worked on disaster policy in the Obama administration. Imagine that you're sitting and buying your first home. You're so excited about it. You're thinking about measuring the curtains. And someone puts a huge stack of papers in front of you. And in that stack is some very small print.

You're just not going to register it at that point. You're too far along. I mean, that makes total sense to me. But is there a right way to tell people about this risk? Like risk is something, that we humans are not super good at understanding like full stop. Yeah, not good at all. I mean, because we want to know will something happen or won't something happen. Will this house flood? Will it burn down? But that's not how fire works.

And it's not how flooding works. Like, if you hear a house has a 22% chance of having two inches of water in it in the next 30 years, that's more representative. But what does that even mean to you? And the way we show that is with maps. and that really doesn't capture the nuance. Why not? Why don't they capture it, Lauren? Well, for one, I mean, there aren't many states that actually have good maps, for wildfires at least, you know, that shows where the fire risk exists in detail, down to an individual property level where you could figure out what might happen to your house.

And they definitely don't show how the risk is going to get worse with climate change. And then on the flood side, you know, most laws about flooding, they point people to these official flood maps. And there are official flood maps for most of the country. They're published by the federal government. But the maps can be misleading. You like to look for animals everywhere. So, for example, I went to Louisiana and I met this one family. We hate litter.

You hate litter? Yes. It hurts animals. We do hate litter. The Baralus, they live outside Baton Rouge, and they have two kids, Lachlan and Lillian, who are both very into hunting for bugs in the backyard. It climbs on the tree once it gets out of its shell and makes it rattles sound.

Oh. To mate and then it has a baby then. That's all their life. So that's Lillian. Lauren, her mom, is from Baton Rouge, as is their dad. And Louisiana is very flood prone. So Lauren and her husband, they knew that flooding was a thing to be careful about when they were buying a house. Louisiana actually has some of the strongest flood disclosure laws in the country. So they got information really early in the home buying process, and they checked that flood map.

I never wanted to live in a flood zone, and that was like we didn't buy in a flood zone because we don't want to be flooded. The map they saw, like all other official flood maps, it had this hard line between floodplain and no floodplain. And it showed that the area around their property around the house was a floodplain, but the property itself was not. So we bought it knowing, okay, if we ever do flood, we'll just be the island. I feel like I know where this is going. Yeah. Water doesn't really care if your house is just outside the flood zone on a map. So their house flooded in 2016, like 18 inches of water.

They were displaced for over a year. They didn't have flood insurance because they thought they didn't need it. It was terrible. So how are they, I mean, how are they doing now? And what does she think would have helped avoid the situation for their family? So they're doing well. They've poured time and money into repairing the house. The kids are doing great.

She said, though, that there are a lot of mixed feelings at this moment. I resent this house as much as I have an attachment to it. It's out of obscene. I mean, this all sounds like the stuff that people should be asking about when they are moving. Or even about the place that they already live. So, I mean, do the two of you have advice for, like, how to get information about flood and wildfire? risk? Well, we're very glad you asked that. We wrote up six questions to ask, six about fire risk and six about flood risk, depending on the flavor that you want. And these are questions like, you know, what about this house

might make it vulnerable to a wildfire? But as you said, you know, even if you live somewhere already, it's not too late to ask these questions because knowing your risk can really help you determine what insurance you might need. And there are actually things you can do to a home to make it safer. You can waterproof your basement or for wildfires, you can clear out the flammable brush around it, or just do some basic retrofits to your house to make it more fire resistant. I mean, it doesn't guarantee that your home will make it, but it definitely improves the chances. Got it. Okay. But I mean, I do have to say, though, this feels like something that can't really be solved by people doing their research before they move. And not everybody can just move out of these

disaster-prone areas. Yeah, exactly. You know, on one hand, it is really important to know about this information, but homeowners and renters, they're not going to solve it on their own. There has to be transparency about wildfire and flood risk at all levels, like with local governments who make zoning decisions about where houses go. Or, you know, like the agencies that make building codes or inspect buildings for damage, those are the big-ticket items that need to happen.

if the goal is to prevent people from losing their homes, their belongings, or even their lives in floods and wildfires. Becky and Lauren's reporting, you heard today, is part of a bigger series called Climate Risk Hits Home. It's really interesting and super informative, so make sure to check out that whole series linked in our episode notes. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez, edited by Viet Le, and fact-checked by Burley McCoy.

I'm Maddie Safaya. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR. The news moves fast. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast to keep up. We update stories as they evolve every hour. So no matter when you listen, you get the news as close to live as possible on your schedule. Subscribe to or follow the NPR News Now podcast.