Flooding

As more areas of the country are hit with the kind of flooding seen during Harvey, the role of the city will become increasingly important.

• By Emily Moon

Damaged buildings and a flooded street are seen after Hurricane Michael passed through the downtown area of Panama City, Florida, on October 10th, 2018.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Though the storm has passed, flooding and evacuations continue as rivers swell.

• By Jack Herrera

An accounting of the ongoing damages, from failing dams to coal-ash ponds.

• By Emily Moon

People wade through a flooded street in the city of Culiacán, in Sinaloa State, Mexico, on September 20th, 2018.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

State agencies and environmental groups have recorded several breached or overflowing hog-waste pits and coal ash ponds—and the floodwaters are still rising.

• By Emily Moon

People walk through a flooded shopping mall in the Heng Fa Chuen district during Super Typhoon Mangkhut in Hong Kong, China, on September 16th, 2018.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Pacific Standard spoke with an inmate in Lee Correctional Institution as he and other prisoners prepared for the storm.

• By Jack Herrera

People rest at a relief camp in Aluva on August 22nd, 2018, in Kerala, India, where rescue efforts continue this week.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Rescue personnel carry children on their shoulders through flood waters during a rescue operation in Annamanada, a village in India, on August 19th, 2018.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Indian commuters travel in a truck to a safer place as flood waters ravage the National Highway 47 in the Ernakulam district of Kochi, in the Southern Indian state of Kerala, on August 16th, 2018.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

According to a recent study, losing just the top three feet of coral reef could result in $4 billion a year in flood-related damages.

• By Matthew O. Berger

Long before low-lying islands are swallowed by sea level rise, wave-related flooding could contaminate their freshwater resources.

• By Kate Wheeling

The Houston City Council approved a developer's plan to build hundreds of homes in a floodplain. But future flooding is all but inevitable.

• By Rebecca Worby

A Lobbying group in Illinois is weakening regulations from the Army Corps of Engineers that prevents towns from building levees that harm their neighbors.

• By Lisa Song, Patrick Michels & Alex Heeb

A new report shows that FEMA's flood hazard maps may be dangerously outdated.

• By Michael Isaac Stein

Children play in an Asunción neighborhood on January 22nd, 2018, that was flooded when the Paraguay River overflowed its banks due to heavy rains.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

A worker at an emergency cholera treatment center gets her shoes disinfected in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on January 18th, 2018.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Mudslides, waterspouts, and flash flooding are expected in already hard-hit areas.

• By Eric Holthaus

A man walks in the middle of a flooded waterfront on January 5th, 2018, in Auckland, New Zealand.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

After collecting thousands of data points from a crowdsourced initiative, the Virginia Institute for Marine Science created maps that will improve regional flooding predictions.

• By Jessica Leber

Gazipara, Bangladesh: In southern Bangladesh, soil embankments protect rise paddies from the Kapotaksma and Shakbaria rivers during the rainy season, but the heavy storm surges frequently destroy them.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

A man helps evacuate a woman from a flooded street in Mandra, Greece, on November 16th, 2017.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

The infrastructural failure could release a torrent of water into portions of the city that are already submerged—including downtown.

• By Kiah Collier, Neena Satija, Al Shaw & Lisa Song