Sacramento vulnerable to massive disaster

When Hurricane Katrina barreled into US states along the Gulf Coast in 2005 it caused chaos and devastation in a part of the world considered among the most developed and stable.

It brought an entire city to its knees. For several days the social structure and façade of civil society collapse in New Orleans the local government lost all control of the city while millions of people were displaced and thousands of square kilometers of the Gulf were flooded and damaged.

It was the worst Hurricane-related disaster in modern US history and has become a seminal event, on-par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as a time when the country was confronted with its own vulnerability.

The great concern among many residents and local government officials in Sacramento is that the same fate could await this city if greater effort is not put into upgrading and reinforcing the network of levees that protect low-lying areas of the city and indeed the greater regions of California.

Sacramento is a large city of almost 500,000 people and is the political center of California and the transportation, commercial and political heart of the Greater Sacramento Metropolitan Area in which over 2 million people live and work.

Yet for all its significance the city has been left vulnerable. Founded in Central Valley at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers, the city is vulnerable not only to floods but to something else that Californians have been dreading for decades; a major earthquake.

In many ways the experience of New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of Port Au Prince in Haiti after the January 12^th earthquake should have been a wakeup call for the state and its capital city. California is due for a major earthquake and because the state’s levees are old and, in some places, dilapidated, Sacramento could become the next New Orleans and Port Au Prince combined if something is not done.

As early as 2006, just after Katrina, Governor Schwarzenegger sounded the alarm, declaring what he called a levee emergency. He told state and Sacramento news media that $500 million would be spent on upgrading the centuries old levee systems of the state. Then 2008 hit and the economic rug was pulled out from underneath the feet of the US.

California has been among the worst hit and faces a massive deficit that has put a freeze on major infrastructure projects.

Many residents and government officials remain extremely worried. University of California, Davis geologist Jeffrey Mount is one of them, he recently told Sacramento news media that in the event of an earthquake and levee failure the effects would be as bad for Sacramento as Katrina was for the Gulf.

“The worst case scenario is a major earthquake in the Delta during the summer months,” Mount told News 10. “What happens is you bring salt water in from the San Francisco Bay to fill the subsided islands. You shut off the state water project. You shut off the Central Valley project.”

Sacramento, including wider regions populated by over 25 million people would be without fresh water. The risks of disease due to the consumption of untreated water would be very real and devastating in terms of loss of life. More people than the 17 million effected by the floods in Pakistan would need assistance for clean water, several million more would need shelter and long-term government assistance after losing all their possessions.

The effect of such an event would change the economic landscape of Sacramento and California forever and the federal government and its disaster arm FEMA would be overwhelmed as they were in the Gulf during Katrina.

Apart from the staggering cost of the upgrades to the levees and the lack of finance in a post-2008 America, the levees also fall under the jurisdiction of a number of agencies and departments. The US Corp of Engineers, for example, is responsible for most of the levees in the US, including in Sacramento, but they are currently tied up in Afghanistan and local government officials have told Sacramento news media that the levees cannot be upgraded without the US Corp of Engineers.

“You don't touch these waterways without the Corps,” said Congressman John Garamendi. This, however, has been disputed by some who point out that the US Corps of Engineers is not entirely tied up in Afghanistan and that major federal agencies such as FEMA and USACE have refused to support state-level levee upgrades because California did not heed their warnings and cease development on floodplains.

For all the doom-and-gloom scenarios, some work has been undertaken and around 100 critical sites around California have been improved and reinforced, such as Folsom Dam. Sacramento, however, remains vulnerable and the several hundred million needed to protect the city from disaster remains unavailable.