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In Deep: One City's Year of Climate Chaos

Monday, October 18, 2021 at 9 PM

Climate change has long been a threat that loomed in the future, the stuff of computer modeling and expert forecasts, an issue many policymakers treated as a theoretical calamity we wouldn’t confront for years to come. But no longer. Communities across the United States are experiencing the effects of climate change in the here and now. Floods, fires, mudslides and storms — fueled by a warming climate — are devastating homes, towns and lives.  

Perhaps no place has endured more than Lake Charles, Louisiana. The city of 85,000 people tucked about halfway between New Orleans and Houston was hit by four federally declared disasters in just nine months. Between August 2020 and May 2021, Lake Charles saw back-to-back hurricanes, a week-long ice storm and a historic flood. 

In Deep and the Water Main chronicle the effects of multiple disasters on the city in southwest Louisiana over the course of a year.