Excerpt from Port Bering Bugle: “Early Thaw Hits Lowlands Hard With Flooding, Peninsula Responds and Prepares”
Hope Park, LWD, RoA. 25 February 2019
An unseasonably warm February has led to melting ice and snow all across Arktic, forcing the peninsula to scramble to prepare for the kind of massive flooding that has already slammed the flat Lowlands in the southeast of the Republic as the thaw inevitably spreads north.
The early, sudden melt drew from the near record snowfall in the mountains and across the country, dumping tens of millions of gallons into still half-frozen waterways that were unprepared. Most of the rivers in southern Arktic have been reported as “moderately to severely flooding.” The southern city of Hope Park was hit particularly hard, with five feet of water covering more than half the city, forcing all their schools to close shutting down their oil refinery and solar energy plant, although the wind farm is still operational. Fortunately, most of the city was able to evacuate, although rescue operations conducted by the Rangers, GDF, and local authorities continue. Damage to infrastructure is estimated to be in the tens of billions, not counting lost crops or productivity.
“The whole Park was flooded,” related Hiro Ryers, a thirty-seven year old refinery worker who lives and works in Hope Park. “There was water from the town hall all the way to the woods out east. They had us working at the refinery until we could literally see white caps in the parking lot. I’m lucky to have made it back to my family so quickly.”
As the February “heat wave” is expected to travel up the Arktic peninsula, cities from Evergreen to North Point have made preparations for a thaw and potentially a refreeze. Rivers that have yet to flood their banks have been lined with small scale earthworks and sandbanks, tests are being conducted of local drainage systems and building codes, and Rangers are preemptively closing off some areas of national forest that are vulnerable to flooding. Refugee settlement zones have been noted to be particularly vulnerable to flooding, and so a rush of civilian and government organizations are now attempting to fortify the settlements against rising water and to make plans for potential relocation.
“This flood has entirely upended our lives,” said Nebez Behwan, an 20 year old Azen refugee and community organizer living in Easter Settlement, north of Hope Park. “The support so far has been great, but we are still worried. The refugees here could lose everything, and if we don’t have any shelter all the young and old people here won’t be safe. We could all freeze out here once this heat wave goes away.”
In response to the growing flood crisis, President Keme Jones has declared the greater Hope Park metropolitan area to be in a state of emergency. The administration has also ordered the Army to be mobilized to assist the GDF in operations and logistics as rescues and emergency engineering projects get underway, and has had the Peninsular Meteorological Network issue a nationwide warning about the flooding. The liberal opposition has also taken this opportunity to criticize Jones’ conservative government, claiming that lagging infrastructure funding and a hesitancy to adopt new environmental policies have contributed to the disaster. In response to criticism, the Jones administration has offered to open up a climate conference in Arktic to hammer out both national and international agreements to help “guarantee the future of the solid foundations of nature on which this nation, and all peoples, stand.”
We will continue to give updates as this story continues.
Written by Erick Zhao
