Photo by Chris Hadfield
I am lucky enough to live in a four-bedroom house in a charming neighborhood in Victoria, BC. I live there with my two kids, our two dogs, and a university student who rents one room.
On November 14, 2021, it started raining heavily around noon and continued to do so throughout the night. Heavy rain is common in Victoria so I didn’t think too much about it. That changed on the morning of November 15, when I woke up to a new lake on the east side of my house. I rushed to the basement where my son and our student renter have their rooms. Sure enough, there was water everywhere – the carpet was soaked, the drywall was swelling, and water squelched when you stepped on the engineered hardwood.
I called our insurance company right away, who told us that we were in the emergency phase of the flooding and that the next 72 hours were critical. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of other British Columbians woke up to the same scene in their basement, which meant that the insurance companies received thousands of claims, and the restoration companies were overwhelmed.
In addition, Victoria ran out of gasoline because several highway routes between Alberta and southwestern BC were damaged in the storm. The lack of gasoline further delayed emergency restoration because many work vehicles simply ran out of fuel.
After waiting four days for a company to start the emergency restoration, I made the difficult decision to move us into a hotel because the effects of the flooding made our house unsafe to stay in. Our dogs went to a dog sitter.
The emergency restoration won’t begin for another week. In the midst of all of this I have had lots of time to contemplate our new situation. As a scientist who studies ocean climate, I have long known that climate change is real and happening quickly. But until now, I didn’t realize how a single storm that was strengthened by climate change could so quickly impact our lives.
I have heard stories in the past week that I never would have imagined possible in Canada— people killed by landslides while driving, tens of thousands of domestic animals killed from floods. Entire cities evacuated due to contaminated waters. Friends without insurance who have lost everything and have nowhere to live. Major cities cut off from the rest of the country. Canada is a rich nation, and speaking personally I have insurance so my family will be OK.
But I can now begin to understand how one storm could utterly change the lives of thousands of people—people who don’t live in such a rich country as the one I am fortunate to live in, for example, and those who don’t have access to insurance. Even in Canada, climate change will make vulnerable people more vulnerable. I can’t imagine how extreme these storms will be in even 10 years if we continue to emit carbon at today’s pace. The world needs to rapidly move to net-zero emissions, preferably by 2030, to protect people and our environment from even worse tragedy.
WRITTEN BY: Dr Jennifer Jackson (Co-Founder of British Columbia Environmental Film Festival)