California storm: homeless on the island resist climate change

Rafting to Bannon Island does not inspire confidence. But Dairon Woods still climbed onto a piece of crumbling styrofoam attached to the remains of a wooden pallet.

The atmospheric river was heading straight for the capital, setting off dire warnings of potentially deadly floods and damaging high winds. Still, a raft the size of a refrigerator door was his only way back to the tent where he’d lived for five years, to his pit bull Bra Bra and his meager belongings.

“It’s tough right now,” Woods said as the hawk circled overhead, possibly looking at mysterious bubbles on the surface of the water, pointing to the creature below. “It’s cold. The weather has changed. And I think it’s getting old.”

We’ve written many times about the collision of homelessness and extreme weather exacerbated by climate change.

View of downtown Sacramento from the homeless camp on Bannon Island.

View of downtown Sacramento from the homeless camp on Bannon Island.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

In the fall, when temperatures soared inexorably into the triple digits, we looked at like heat waves made life difficult for people living in tents on our sidewalks. And over the summer, we wrote about how natural disasters like wildfires could one day make us have tough conversations about where and how we live.

But few places in California demonstrate this better than Bannon Island, a dreary patch of land between the Sacramento River and an old freeway that is both miles and miles away from the State Capitol.

For decades, while politicians have been talking about tackling homelessness and building affordable housing, Bannon Island has been allowed to become a huge camp full of people, dogs, tents, tarps, bicycles and other rubbish, both necessary and unnecessary for survival. One person even lives in an underground bunker; he dug out his house, big enough for the guests and the drum kit, with a shovel.

Part of what makes Bannon Island remarkable is that he is big and, akin to much smaller mounds of land in the Santa Clara and Ventura riversactually only an island during storms.

Antonio Rico takes a break by moving some of his belongings from the homeless camp on Bannon Island.

Antonio Rico takes a break dragging things from a flooded homeless camp on Bannon Island.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

When it starts to rain, as it did last week, the situation, experts fear, will become more frequent as climate change causes California to extreme drought and extreme floods Government officials release water from a dam upstream.

This protects the levees and prevents flooding in the residential and business districts that fill the Sacramento Plains. But how does it happen in many parts of California where homeless people live along riverbeds, streams and creeks, this can lead to hazardous situations downstream.

One of those water dumps that sent what the government official described. like water on 10,000 basketballs a fall down the Sacramento River occurred a few days before New Year’s Eve when a violent storm hit. This water flooded Bannon Island, leaving behind a wasteland of mud clinging to the sole under barren oaks and poplars, whose trunks were half-submerged in the dark channel.

By Wednesday, when another storm broke out, the camp was already cut off from the mainland. This left about 60 residents weighing whether to accept government offers asylumclimb to higher ground or just wait out the rain, hoping that the rising water will not overtake them and river rescue power such as those that occurred in Southern California.

One of us—Anita, because Erica isn’t so ridiculous after all—decided to join Woods on his treacherous journey back across the 50-foot tributary of the flooded Sacramento River. Rumor has it that the water reaches head level in some places, and improper weight balancing on a makeshift raft is the fastest way to find out if the rumors are true.

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Inhabitants of Bannon Island

Residents of Bannon Island, clockwise from top left, are Tim Keyser, 63, a veteran who lived at the camp for 25 years; Dairon Woods, 50, who spent five years there; Laura Nussbaum, 46, also there for five years; and David Toney, 60, who built a bunker flooded by recent storms.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

Circumstances on Bannon Island are dire, but generally nothing out of the ordinary.

In the US, 2 out of 5 homeless Americans lived on the street in the last year, amid bad weather. by latest date compiled by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. This represents a 3% increase – about 7,752 people – from 2020.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans living in shelters has actually declined over the past two years, although overall the number of homeless people has remained relatively unchanged.

California, of course, is home to more homeless people than any other state, and nearly 70% of them are homeless, living among tangled tree branches on Sacramento’s Bannon Island or under freeways in Los Angeles.

But now Mississippi, Hawaii, Oregon, Arizona, Tennessee, Arkansas and Georgia also have more people in camps than in shelters. This means more Americans than ever are vulnerable to extreme weather and climate change, and it’s starting to show.

Bob Erlenbush, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, is deeply concerned about this. While he acknowledges that exposure to the elements is not the direct cause of death for most homeless people—we can blame drugs and violence—living outdoors certainly contributes to their suffering and shortens their lifespan.

Laura Nussbaum moves her belongings to high ground from a homeless camp on Bannon Island.

Nussbaum moves his belongings to high ground from the homeless encampment on Bannon Island.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

“Until last year, there really were no weather-related deaths that we could identify, neither in winter nor in summer with extreme heat. But that is changing,” Erlenbusch said.

Matt Fowl, a researcher at the University of Washington who tracks the deaths of homeless people across the country, said he is seeing an increase in heat-related deaths in Arizona and Nevada as concerns about climate change have risen in recent years.

“Often governments are only willing to open shelters for a certain period of time when the heat gets really hot,” he said. “But there are many days when, for example, it is 90+ in Arizona and people need cooling centers.”

In addition, there is a growing need for clean air hubs, especially in California, where climate change-driven wildfires are sending pollution plumes into the sky.

Woods checks the water level near the camp.

Woods checks the water level near the camp.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

“No. One of the health problems for homeless people in our community is asthma,” Erlenbusch said. “Can you imagine being outside and breathing in the ashes from burning fires when it’s 105 degrees outside?”

For these reasons and more, Fowl “definitely” expects to see more extreme weather-related deaths among the homeless population.

Already, the men who live on the streets of Sacramento tend to die at age 49 or 50, said Erlenbusch, who holds an annual memorial service for the homeless. Women usually die by the age of 46.

Woods, who is 50, recently lost his wife, Leticia Woods, to pneumonia. They had an apartment building on Bannon Island overlooking downtown. The former high school sweethearts who reunited on Facebook have been married for over eight years. Woods said he was still aware that he was alone.

He wants to leave Bannon Island for good, fearing, like many here, that he is too old for the increasingly harsh weather and conditions.

Another camp resident, David Toney, said that spring and autumn seem to have disappeared in the past 10 years.

David Toney standing next to his flooded bunker

Tony stands next to his flooded bunker. His belongings, damaged in the recent storm, include a US flag and a globe.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

“They have gone from four seasons to basically just summer and winter,” he said.

The soaring temperatures of the hot months prompted him to dig a bunker where he lives underground. It’s an impressive feat of engineering: three earth steps lead to a room deep enough that he doesn’t have to bend his over 6-foot-tall body to walk. He added a fireplace along one wall to keep warm during the winter, which he says is getting colder.

But the Sacramento River is only 10 feet away, and as it rose, it filled Tony’s house in the ground. A few days later, the water receded a little, but the depth was 3 feet, with only the cymbals of his drum kit peeking out from the unwanted tide.

He’s afraid, he said. At 51, Tony has a double hernia and his health is failing. The journey from the raft to his bunker house was painful, and who knows where another storm predicted this week will take him.

It is the “arrogant mentality” of society that makes us most vulnerable to outdoor living, with the greatest risk of extreme weather, he says.

But Tony’s experience should serve as a warning of what’s to come with climate change – proof that the homeless are already experiencing the extreme weather disasters we all fear.

Antonio Rico removes some of his belongings from his camp at the flooded homeless camp on Bannon Island.

Antonio Rico carries some of his belongings out of the flooded camp. He said he decided to leave Bannon Island because of the recent storms.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)