Deepening Resilience: Preparation.


Preparedness looks different from community to community. In some places, it’s ensuring that there will be enough clean food and water. In others, it’s getting ready to battle things like worsening allergy seasons and severe weather phenomena.

In mine, it means pulling up stakes.

To look at my neighborhood, you wouldn’t really think of it as something that’d be that threatened by climate change — the hardest part might be getting supplies in and out of the city, right? When you look at projections of swelling rivers and reshaped coastlines a few years to a few decades from now, though, it’s not that easy. One estimate places the new waterfront at ten feet from my front door. In addition to rather complicated traffic patterns, there are many reasons why this would be really, really bad. Even with time to prepare, how can an entire, already-existing city keep sewage, garbage, vermin, and other vectors of illness out of the rising water? Keeping our potable water from contamination is important, but also not something a small community using city infrastructure can really manage on its own. Even if we set up our own, smaller-scale  means of keeping our drinking and bathing water clean, the mold, rats, and insects will still be there.

Sometimes, preparedness looks a lot like leaving.

Unfortunately, that means it may not be possible to take care of everyone. There are a lot of people here who can’t move on their own, whether due to physical or monetary limitations. Even if we take it for granted that my community would be willing and able to pitch in to uproot every member and move us all to somewhere safer, it still isn’t possible. Some are too old, others are too ill. Even with able-bodied people to help, even if money isn’t an issue, you can’t move everyone.

That doesn’t even take into account the strong ties people feel to their homes. There are still people living in Centralia and outside of Pripyat, and not all of them are there because circumstances force them to be. The ties to home are strong. For some, a life in a strange place — no matter how safe — would be no life at all.

So, how do we prepare our community for climate change here? Is it right for the able-bodied to put themselves and their families at risk for those who either can’t or won’t move to safer ground? Could my community even still function, as our houses flood and crumble and our streets vanish under the water? I don’t have an answer. I wish I did.

Sometimes, preparing means packing up and doing the best you can.


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