Many people in South Florida sat in long lines at the gas pumps this month as roads surrounding a major port bringing in gas flooded during historic rainfall.
Experts in climate change and sea level rise warn people in South Florida should get used to that experience in the years ahead.
Rising sea levels and more intense rainstorms will make it more difficult and more expensive to live in the area, experts said.
More water won’t just increase the cost to maintain low level property and flood insurance, but it will also threaten the region’s infrastructure moving people and supplies around.
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Goods and services come to South Florida several ways: by ground on the interstates and train lines, by sea through Port Everglades and the Port of Miami, and through the airports of Miami International Airport, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, and smaller regional airports.
Earlier this month, 26 inches of rain put more than a day’s worth of flights on hold from the airport and seriously delayed supplies coming in from Port Everglades, most notable gasoline.
Officials with the Port noted there wasn’t a gas shortage at the facility, crews just couldn’t move the gas out of the port. They said the flooding blocked roads in and out of the fuel farms which prevented trucks from getting to gas stations.
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“The infrastructure that we built for draining water 50, 60, 30, 40 years ago was designed for a climate that was stable. Our current climate is not stable,” said Mario Alejandro Ariza, a local investigative reporter and author of “Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe,” a book exploring how South Florida may or may not cope with rising sea levels.
He told NBC6 public officials have already pumped millions of dollars into adaptation but millions more will be needed as infrastructure costs increase with the rising seas.
He noted garbage collection and bussing students to local schools will become more difficult with more flooding. April's flooding shut down all Broward County schools for two days.
“Climate change is going to first present itself to you as an inconvenience, right? It’s going to be a long line at the gas pump. It’s going to be the inability to get a certain type of product at the grocery store,” said Ariza.
Then, University of Miami Professor of Geography and Sustainable Development Harold Wanless says it will get worse.
“Everybody should use this as a wakeup call,” said Wanless, “There’s no reason anymore to be blindsided by this.”
A few years ago, Wanless and his colleague Peter Harlem at Florida International University collected a series of images and maps showing what South Florida would look like with two, three, and four feet of sea level rise. Wanless told NBC6 after 26 inches of rain, the flooding matches many places the researchers highlighted as vulnerable areas.
“It’s just a lovely place where we all live down here. We love it. But we are in for increasing problems like this,” said Wanless.
