THE NEW FACE OF FLOODING
John Corideo drove the solitary two-lane highways of southern Alabama, eyeing the roadside ditches. It had been raining off and on for days and Corideo, chief of the Fowl River Fire District, knew that if it continued, his department could be outmatched by floodwaters.
It kept raining. Water filled the ditches and climbed over roads, swallowing parts of a main highway. About 10 residents who needed to be rescued were brought back to the station in firetrucks. More remained stranded in floodwaters, out of the department’s reach. “That week … we just caught hell,” Corideo said.
What the residents and rescuers of the Fowl River region faced on that day was part of a dangerous phenomenon reshaping the southern United States: Rapidly rising seas are combining with storms to generate epic floods, threatening lives, property and livelihoods.
In the Fowl River’s case, unusually high tides slowed floodwaters as they went downstream to drain. This increased the water’s depth and flooded a wide expanse — even several miles upstream. The result was deluged roads, washed out cars and damaged houses from a flood that was larger, deeper and longer-lasting due to rising seas.
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