|Submerged houses in flooded Missouri 2015-2016. Photo by Japan Times.|
Climate refugees and displacement caused by freak storms is nothing new. You just have to read into history to see circular floods, climatic and human destruction that has transformed societies the world over. The United States is not invincible to climate change or environmental destruction. Every year, the floods and storms in the Midwest and across the country seem to get worst and more deadly. Mother Nature is more of a threat to Americans than even terrorism. The United States' own ecosystem has reached its limits each time it has to repair itself following a natural diaster. While El Nino takes a slow but gradual route to make landfall in California, Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico states, much needed rain continues to pour over the Western and Midwestern United States. While Californians were grateful for the divine rain for drought starved state, the New Year's rain has been causing grief for other regions in the United States. Los Angeles is preparing along with other towns in Southern California for possible flooding. Stores and houses have been sandbagged and local news media has warned city and suburb residents to be cautious as the rainstorm continues for the following and possible next weeks. The Bay Area is also expected to see floods and mudslides as El Nino approaches to land. The last great flood to strike Los Angeles was in 1938.
In the Midwestern states along the Mississippi River (the United States' version of the Nile River) December and New Year floods has literally swamped small towns and submerged whole blocks, forests and houses. The states of Missouri and Illinois have taken the hardest hit from the Mississippi's biblical floods that destroyed many levees along its banks and has killed 25 people. Missouri governor Jay Nixon has said he's never seen floods of this magnitude before. Neither have Missourians and Illinois residents. The floods have exhausted ordinary Americans and made politicians and local emergency response teams nervous on how to handle a possible onslaught of rain and floods. St. Louis saw the floods reach the outskirts of the city while Memphis, Tennessee is expected to see floods soon.
The Great flood of 1927 and how it changed America
The Mississippi has constantly flooded in the past. The most famous flooding of the Mississippi occurred in 1927. The Great Mississippi flood led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people along the Mississippi Delta and three states Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. It caused a demographic shift. The great flood parallel the infamous Hurricane Katrina destruction of small and poorer neighbourhoods in New Orleans. As usual, local and ordinary Americans bore the brunt of the climatic destruction. Just as now, emergency response was chocked and politicians were unable to decipher what they had experienced. The rain is still coming.