Today’s newsletter is presented by Kaiser Permanente.
Hello, Uptown!
I’ve got changes on my mind.
First up: the climate. Yesterday, the city of San Diego did something I thought was particularly good: they announced plans for the possibly-super-but-definitely-not-mediocre El Niño season that we are on the verge of entering. Meteorologists and climate scientists are warning that this one is going to be a doozy.
My reporting career kind of took off in early 1998, giving you an idea of how long I’ve been at it; I had been an intern and news writer for a couple of years right here in San Diego at KOGO (shout-out to my radio people!) and locals and fellow old-timers might even remember the story. It was late at night and had been on this raining-then-drying-out cycle for weeks.
And then a freeway collapsed.
It was the I-15 at Aero Drive, a portion that had been built over an old, long-forgotten clay sewer pipe that had expanded and shrunk so many times over the past month that it had finally given up the ghost and collapsed, taking the asphalt and at least one hapless car with it. (No one was injured.)
That was the first story I ever reported, as I said. I remember standing out there in the pouring rain staring at the car bobbing in the water below as its driver jumped up and down in frustration beside me and thinking, This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
Be careful what you wish for from the universe, right? I thought (well, hoped) back then that I must be reporting on a one-off freakish weather event. Even I didn’t realize that climate change would come to define my entire career and eventually touch every decision any of us ever made within my lifetime.
This brings me back to Tuesday. The city has put forward a new plan for dealing with the upcoming El Niño season, and they’re being proactive in announcing this. I very strongly approve of their plan and their transparency, because that’s the sort of communication with the public that builds something very important in a time that’s going to be defined by climate related crises: social resilience.
They’re asking residents to do their part, too – to be ready to evacuate and have important papers somewhere safe. More importantly, as San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera pointed out, we have to connect with each other.
“The storms will keep coming,” he said on Tuesday. “The climate won’t stop changing. What we can control is whether we face them prepared, and whether we face them together.”
That’s building social resilience. It’s not just the key to surviving and mitigating climate change; it’s a radical change in approach to disasters, and one that pays dividends. I’m glad to see that San Diego is on that track.
And one more change here, with some personal news: This is one of my very last newsletters. I’ll be moving on after this week to another place and hope to finally finish revising my books, which I have had cooking for a shameful amount of years. I’ll still be around town, though — most likely hanging out at my beloved Oak Park Library.
Thank you, all of you, for reading!
Brooke Binkowski
Uptown News newsletter host
Uptown story spotlight
City leaders urge residents to prep for flooding, evacuations due to El Niño
By Drew Sitton • Times of San Diego
“The storms will keep coming…. What we can control is whether we face them prepared, and whether we face them together.”
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