Current:Home > ScamsAmerican Climate Video: The Family Home Had Gone Untouched by Floodwaters for Over 80 Years, Until the Levee Breached -FundPrime
American Climate Video: The Family Home Had Gone Untouched by Floodwaters for Over 80 Years, Until the Levee Breached
View
Date:2025-04-16 07:25:02
The 13th of 21 stories from the American Climate Project, an InsideClimate News documentary series by videographer Anna Belle Peevey and reporter Neela Banerjee.
HAMBURG, Iowa—As the Missouri River reached flood stage, John Davis took some solace in knowing that his home, built in 1938, had never been touched by floodwaters.
He had just evacuated his 90-year-old mother from her retirement home and brought her to the house—when a levee on the river burst in March 2019. Davis remembers “tons and tons of water coming through within seconds.”
He watched the water quickly inch closer and closer to his home. Before long, his basement was flooded for the first time in eight decades. He gathered up some belongings and got his mother ready before they evacuated again.
A fifth-generation resident of Hamburg, Davis spent his life living all over the country until he retired and moved back into the family home in the town where he would visit with family during the summer in his childhood.
After serving 20 years in the military, Davis earned a degree in political science and history, then worked for the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, recommending policy changes for the Department of Defense during the Clinton administration.
He kept the artifacts of his career in a storage unit, which was also destroyed by the flood.
“My presidential papers were in there, 18th century furniture, crystal, china, portraits, all kinds of things. And they were all destroyed,” he said. “Basically my entire life was destroyed.”
February 2019 was exceptionally cold and snowy in western Iowa. Early March brought heavy rains, and with the earth still frozen, ice and snow melted quickly and flowed to the river to create dangerous conditions for precarious levees. On March 17, the levee in Hamburg broke.
Heavy precipitation is a symptom of a changing climate. Warmer air temperatures hold greater volumes of moisture, leading to severe rain and snow storms.
“What happened in Hamburg is a sign of what is going to happen in the future in the United States,” Davis said.
Davis considers himself a climate analyst and has been tracking weather patterns for several years.
“Weather patterns are very erratic,” he said. “Last year in November it had four days it was in the 80s. And then right after that, it went down in the 30s. Then a week later went up to the 70s then down to the 20s.”
“That’s not normal weather anyway you want to try to explain it,” he added. “Disasters like this are man made now. They’re not natural disasters. This is caused by climate change.”
veryGood! (5)
Related
- All That You Wanted to Know About She’s All That
- Activists Are Suing Texas Over Its Plan to Expand Interstate 35, Saying the Project Is Bad for Environmental Justice and the Climate
- A Big Federal Grant Aims to Make Baltimore a Laboratory for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience
- Amazon Prime Day 2023 Beauty Deals: Shop Bestsellers From Laneige, Grande Cosmetics, Olaplex & More
- Senate begins final push to expand Social Security benefits for millions of people
- Feeling Overwhelmed About Going All-Electric at Home? Here’s How to Get Started
- One Tree Hill’s Bethany Joy Lenz Reveals She Was in a Cult for 10 Years
- What recession? Why stocks are surging despite warnings of doom and gloom
- Are Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp down? Meta says most issues resolved after outages
- More renters facing eviction have a right to a lawyer. Finding one can be hard
Ranking
- Former Danish minister for Greenland discusses Trump's push to acquire island
- A Timber Mill Below Mount Shasta Gave Rise to a Historic Black Community, and Likely Sparked the Wildfire That Destroyed It
- Sidestepping a New Climate Commitment, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Greenlights a Mammoth LNG Project in Louisiana
- Barbie's Simu Liu Reveals What the Kens Did While the Barbies Had Their Epic Sleepover
- Friday the 13th luck? 13 past Mega Millions jackpot wins in December. See top 10 lottery prizes
- Climate Change Makes Things Harder for Unhoused Veterans
- The FTC is targeting fake customer reviews in a bid to help real-world shoppers
- The federal deficit nearly tripled, raising concern about the country's finances
Recommendation
Hackers hit Rhode Island benefits system in major cyberattack. Personal data could be released soon
Ariana Madix Is Making Her Love Island USA Debut Alongside These Season 5 Singles
A beginner's guide to getting into gaming
So your tween wants a smartphone? Read this first
Meet first time Grammy nominee Charley Crockett
The best games of 2023 so far, picked by the NPR staff
Ditch Sugary Sodas for a 30% Discount on Poppi: An Amazon Prime Day Top-Seller With 15.1K+ 5-Star Reviews
KitchenAid Mixer Flash Deal: Take $180 off During the Amazon Prime Day 2023 Sale