SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Active duty soldiers have been deployed to North Carolina to deliver aid and help the state deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The storm devastated parts of western North Carolina, parts that, notably, are mountainous and hundreds of miles from the coast, and that fact depicts a new reality. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and more intense, and the risks do not just loom over coastal areas. So how should Inland areas prepare? Antonia Sebastian is a professor of earth, marine and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Welcome.
ANTONIA SEBASTIAN: T hanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
DETROW: You know, I think a lot of people around the country were really caught off guard by the severity of this flooding and how much damage it caused. And I'm wondering what, to you, sticks out the most about what is happening right now in western North Carolina.
SEBASTIAN: Yeah, when thinking about what is going on out there, I think the amount of rain that fell but also all of the consequences of that rain - ranging from landslides to washouts to entire communities being absolutely cut off from all kinds of critical resources - is just shocking and really eye-opening about what the potential impacts of climate change could be and what our futures might look like.
DETROW: And I feel like so much of the focus has been on coastal communities, whether it's seawalls or different types of road construction or dunes or things like that. Like, we've heard those conversations. What are you thinking about that communities all over the country, no matter where they are, no matter how far inland they are, should be thinking about right now?
SEBASTIAN: When we start to think about inland communities, and especially thinking about river types of flooding, you know, the primary things that we can think about are designing our infrastructure in places that are safer, so trying to avoid putting people into harm's way and also designing our infrastructure to be more resilient. And that doesn't necessarily mean that it won't flood in those most extreme storms of the future, but it does mean that they're more likely to withstand less damage, whether that's because they're elevated or they're built with materials that can deal with being wet. And then the other side, the flip side of this coin, is thinking about all of the ways in which we need to provide better information about those hazardous places...
DETROW: Yeah.
SEBASTIAN: ...Through better mapping of our flood hazards, through hazard disclosure, so beginning to disclose places that have flooded in the past and what that flooding looked like so that homebuyers are knowledgeable about what they might be getting into in a given place.
DETROW: But communities on rivers, especially - they are these historic communities that were built right up on the river because that was where the industry was, that was where the community was. And it's just, you know, like, key parts of the town are just along riverbanks. How do you adapt when your community was built in this certain way?
SEBASTIAN: Yeah, that's just a really hard question. I think when we look at North Carolina and what the recovery process is going to look like, that's just a really, really daunting question because in a lot of ways, our infrastructure is already in harm's way. And so it raises the question of, do you wait for the next flood, or do you begin to move it now? And that is a question that is really something that has to be grappled with, I think, community by community because that looks different in every single place.
DETROW: Do you have any thought on the best way to proceed when it comes to just kind of taking a step back and thinking of the big questions about how can communities be better ready and how communities keep themselves safe?
SEBASTIAN: Yeah. I would say the first thing is really around acknowledging that communities are places of connection. People have connections to each other. People have connections to the place. And I think it's important for us all to have empathy when we think about what it's going to take to make these places resilient or adapt to climate change. And then the other piece of this is it's going to require a lot of communication with the public about hazards, and it's going to require a lot of resources and a lot of time to do it well.
And I think there's just sort of this underlying - and this comes back to empathy. There's just - these places aren't going to look the same in the future. And that's perhaps the saddest part of looking at western North Carolina. It's a place that I personally really, really love and, like, thinking about that - building back or building differently into the future means that these places are going to change, and that's - people struggle with change.
DETROW: Yeah.
SEBASTIAN: And it's going to be hard.
DETROW: Yeah. That's Antonia Sebastian, professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Thank you so much.
SEBASTIAN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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