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Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae has caused landslides and flooding in the Philippines, leaving dozens dead

Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae pounded the Philippines on Saturday after unleashing flash floods and landslides that officials said left at least 45 people dead.

Nalgae churned across the archipelago nation’s main island of Luzon with winds of up to 95 kilometres (59 miles) an hour after making landfall on the sparsely populated eastern island of Catanduanes before dawn.

It has sparked heavy rains across the country, with areas far from the path of the storm inundated including the southern island of Mindanao, which has seen flooding and deadly landslides over the past two days.

A sharply revised official toll on Saturday put the number of deaths on Mindanao at 40, with five others killed elsewhere in the country.

At least 17 people were missing, while nearly 20,000 had been evacuated.

In the Mindanao village of Kusiong, home to around 100 people, bulldozers and backhoes attempted to remove a thick layer of limestone rock and mud after parts of a nearby mountain collapsed on Friday.

Fourteen people have so far been pulled from the debris and more are still missing in the community.

“Had she died of illness it would have been less painful,” villager Mercedes Mocadef told AFP as she stood by three bodies, one of which turned out to be the daughter of her cousin.

The dead girl’s mother was also lost in the disaster.

Landslides and flash floods originating from largely deforested mountainsides have been among the deadliest hazards posed by typhoons in the Philippines in recent years.

“It could be more than a hundred,” Lester Sinsuat, mayor in the nearby town of Datu Odin Sinsuat, told AFP when asked how many were feared dead.

Regional civil defence chief Naguib Sinarimbo said “this is already a retrieval operation because the village (Kusiong) has been buried under rock and mud for more than a day”.

– ‘Why did we fail?’ –

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr rebuked local civil defence officials in Mindanao over their preparations for the storm during a televised meeting Saturday.

“It will be important for us to look back and see why this happened. Why did we fail to evacuate them? Why do we have such a high casualty (figure)?” he said.

Mindanao is rarely hit by the 20 or so typhoons that strike the Philippines each year, but storms that do reach the region tend to be deadlier than in Luzon and central parts of the country.

The state weather service said the eye of Nalgae was expected to pass south of the capital Manila, a sprawling metropolis of more than 13 million people, in the early evening Saturday.

Photos released by the Philippine coastguard showed rescuers using an old refrigerator as a boat to pull children from a flooded community on the central island of Leyte.

The storm struck at the beginning of a long weekend in the Philippines when millions return to their hometowns to visit the graves of dead relatives.

“If it’s not necessary or important, we should avoid going out today because it is dangerous,” said national civil defence director Rafaelito Alejandro, adding that 5,000 rescue teams were on standby.

The coastguard has suspended ferry services throughout most of the country due to rough seas, stranding thousands of passengers at ports.

The civil aviation office meanwhile said it has shelved more than 100 flights.

Storms kill hundreds of people in the Philippines yearly and keep vast regions in perpetual poverty, with residents also having to grapple with frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and in some areas armed insurgencies.

Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

An ancient artifact found at the Tayasal site in northern Guatemala

Ceramics, human burial grounds and bullets from Spanish guns are among artifacts that have been uncovered by archaeologists in Guatemala at the site of the last Mayan city to resist European conquest, officials said Friday.

The new excavation project began last June in an effort to understand more about the Tayasal outpost where Mayan inhabitants first settled in 900 BC during their Preclassic period, the archeologist in charge of the dig told AFP.

Tayasal was the last Mayan city to yield to the Spanish conquest in 1697, a century after Europeans entered the western highlands of what is now Guatemala, Suarlin Cordova said.

“More than 100 years passed in which the northern part of Guatemala was totally outside of Spanish rule, and this happened mainly because the jungle functioned as a natural border that made the arrival of the Spaniards to these places very difficult.”

In 1525 Tayasal was also part of the route used by Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes on his journey to present-day Honduras.

Most of the buildings at the Tayasal site are buried under earth and vegetation inside a seven-square-kilometer area near Lake Peten Itza.

Among partially exposed structures at the site is a 30-meter-high acropolis that according to research functioned as the residence of the ruling elite.

Also visible is a water well used since pre-Hispanic times. 

One of the objectives of the project is to enhance the site so tourists can better “appreciate” the vast region’s Mayan archaeological value, said Jenny Barrios from Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture and Sports.

The Maya civilization reached its height between 250 and 900 AD in what is present-day southern Mexico and Guatemala, as well as parts of Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.

Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae has caused landslides and flooding in the Philippines, leaving dozens dead

Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae whipped the Philippines on Saturday after unleashing flash floods and landslides that officials said left at least 45 people dead.

Nalgae pounded the archipelago nation’s main island of Luzon with maximum winds of 95 kilometres (59 miles) an hour after making landfall on the sparsely populated Catanduanes island before dawn.

The destruction began well before, with heavy rain inundating mostly rural areas on the southern island of Mindanao on Thursday, followed by deadly landslides and flooding on Friday.

A sharply revised official toll on Saturday put the number of deaths on Mindanao at 40, with five others killed elsewhere in the country.

At the vanished southern village of Kusiong, home to between 80 and 100 people, bulldozers and backhoes churned up a thick layer of grey limestone rock and brown mud the size of 10 football fields as anxious relatives waited for news.

Parts of a denuded mountain nearby had collapsed on the hamlet early Friday and the bodies of 14 members of the Teduray tribe have been pulled out since — with many still missing.

In recent years, flash floods with mud and debris from largely deforested mountainsides have been among the deadliest hazards posed by typhoons in the Philippines.

“It could be more than a hundred,” Lester Sinsuat, the mayor of Datu Odin Sinsuat town, told AFP when asked how many are feared dead.

Rescuers abruptly ran away from the site during a brief and sudden downpour, fearing another landslide. They later returned to their grim task.

“Today we resumed our work, but this is already a retrieval operation because the village has been buried under rock and mud for more than a day,” regional civil defence chief Naguib Sinarimbo told AFP, declining to say how many were feared dead.

An AFP team saw three other bodies pulled out from the rubble on Saturday.

– ‘Why did we fail to evacuate them?’ –

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr rebuked civil defence and local officials at a televised meeting Saturday over the high number of casualties in Mindanao.

“It will be important for us to look back and see why this happened. Why did we fail to evacuate them? Why do we have such a high casualty (figure)?” the president asked.

Mindanao is rarely hit by the 20 or so typhoons that strike the Philippines each year, but those that do tend to be deadlier than those that hit Luzon or the smaller central islands.

The storm also caused flooding elsewhere in the country.

Photos released by the coastguard showed rescuers using an old refrigerator as an improvised boat to pull children from a flooded community on the central island of Leyte.

The state weather service said the eye of Nalgae passed just off Luzon’s south coast at 2:00 pm (0600 GMT), with the capital Manila, a sprawling metropolis of more than 13 million people, likely to be hit next.

The storm struck at the beginning of a long weekend in the Philippines, when millions return to their hometowns to visit the graves of their dead relatives.

“If it’s not necessary or important, we should avoid going out today because it is dangerous and could bring you harm,” national civil defence director Rafaelito Alejandro said, adding that 5,000 rescue teams were on standby.

More than 7,000 people were evacuated ahead of the storm’s landfall, the civil defence office said.

The coast guard has also suspended ferry services through most of the country due to rough seas, stranding hundreds of vessels and thousands of passengers at ports.

The civil aviation office, meanwhile, said it has shelved more than 100 flights.

Storms kill hundreds of people in the Philippines and keep vast regions in perpetual poverty, where residents also have to reckon with frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and in some areas armed insurgencies.

Scientists have warned that such storms, which also kill livestock and destroy key infrastructure, are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

Two activists glued themselves to Johannes Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' and the adjoining wall, but the artwork was behind glass and undamaged

Art world professionals have slammed recent attacks on famous paintings by climate protesters as “counterproductive” and dangerous acts of vandalism.

While some of the major French and British museums interviewed by AFP, including the Louvre, the National Gallery and the Tate in London, are keeping a low profile on the issue, others are calling for stronger protective measures against such acts.

“Art is defenceless and we strongly condemn trying to damage it for whichever cause,” the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague said in a statement.

It was in the Mauritshuis that Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece “Girl with a Pearl Earring” was targeted by climate activists this week.

Two activists glued themselves to the painting and adjoining wall, while another threw a thick red substance, but the artwork was behind glass and undamaged, and returned to public view on Friday.

Social media images showed the activists wearing “Just Stop Oil” T-shirts.

“How do you feel?” one of them asked. “This painting is protected by glass but… the future of our children is not protected.”

That attack came after environmental activists splashed tomato soup on Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London, and threw mashed potato over a Claude Monet painting at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, Germany. 

Bernard Blistene, honorary president of the modern art Centre Pompidou in Paris, said all museum managers had been taking precautions against vandalism for a very long time.

“Should we take more? No doubt,” he said.

– Ban on bags? –

Ortrud Westheider, director of the Barberini Museum, said the recent attacks showed “international security standards for the protection of artworks in case of activist attacks are not sufficient”.

Eco-militants from the Last Generation group hurled mashed potato onto Monet’s “Les Meules” (Haystacks) at the museum.

The group later published a video on social media, writing: “If it takes a painting –- with #MashedPotatoes or #TomatoSoup thrown at it -– to make society remember that the fossil fuel course is killing us all: Then we’ll give you #MashedPotatoes on a painting!”

The museum said the painting was protected by glass and had not suffered damage.

In a similar stunt on October 14, two environmental protesters hit van Gogh’s world-renowned work with tomato soup in London. The gallery said the protesters caused “minor damage” to the frame but the painting was “unharmed”.

Remigiusz Plath, security expert for the German museums association DMB and the Hasso Plattner Foundation, said the string of art attacks was “clearly a kind of escalation process”.

“There are different ways of reacting and of course all museums have to think about extended security measures — measures that were previously very unusual for museums in Germany and in Europe, that were perhaps only known in the US,” he said.

Such measures could include a complete ban on bags and jackets as well as security searches.

“The environmental catastrophe and the climate crisis are of course also a matter of concern to us… But we have absolutely no tolerance for vandalism,” he added.

The Prado museum in the Spanish capital has said it was “on alert”.

At the Queen Sofia museum in Madrid, conservation expert Jorge Garcia Gomez-Tejedo told Spanish media this week, only the most vulnerable works are displayed behind armoured glass.

– ‘Nihilism’ –

Adam Weinberg, of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, has questioned the activists’ approach.

“It’s people putting themselves on a stage in order to bring attention to something, but you have to ask, does this really change anything?” he said at a discussion on Wednesday in Qatar, according to ARTNews.

Tristram Hunt, of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, voiced concern at the “nihilistic language around the protests that there is no place for art in times of crisis”.

“I don’t agree,” he said at the same event.

France’s Culture minister Rima Abdul Malak has called on “all national museums to redouble their vigilance”.

“How can… defending the climate lead to wanting to destroy a work of art? It’s absolutely absurd,” she told Le Parisien daily. 

In May, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” had a custard pie thrown in her face at the Louvre museum in Paris, but the artwork’s thick bulletproof case ensured she came to no harm.

Her attacker said he was taking aim at artists who are not focusing enough on “the planet”.

For Didier Rykner, founder of online French magazine La Tribune de l’art, these acts of protest are “counterproductive” and “the more visibility they are given, the more they will do it again”. 

But “by becoming commonplace, these acts undoubtedly lose their force,” he argued.

Tropical Storm Nalgae has unleashed flash floods and landslides in parts of the Philippines

Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae slammed into the Philippines on Saturday, after unleashing flash floods and landslides that left at least 45 people dead according to a sharply revised official tally.

Nalgae pounded the archipelago nation’s main island of Luzon with maximum winds of 95 kilometres (59 miles) an hour after making landfall on the sparsely populated Catanduanes island before dawn.

The destruction began well ahead of landfall, with heavy rain inundating mostly rural areas on Mindanao island in the south on Thursday followed by deadly landslides and flooding on Friday.

But the government revised its official death toll downward from 72 to 45 in the afternoon.

Officials said some deaths had been erroneously tallied twice from the Mindanao events, which accounted for 40 deaths. The storm also killed five others elsewhere in the country.

In recent years, flash floods with mud and debris from largely deforested mountainsides have been among the deadliest hazards posed by typhoons in the Philippines.

Rescue workers are focusing on the village of Kusiong, home to between 80 and 100 people, which was buried after part of a denuded mountain nearby collapsed.

“Yesterday we were focused on rescue and recovered 11 bodies,” regional civil defence chief Naguib Sinarimbo told AFP.

“Today we resumed our work, but this is already a retrieval operation because the village has been buried under rock and mud for more than a day,” he added, declining to say how many are feared dead.

The storm also caused flooding elsewhere in the country.

Photos released by the coastguard showed rescuers using an old refrigerator as an improvised boat to pull children from a flooded community on the central island of Leyte.

The state weather service said the eye of Nalgae passed the small island of Marinduque in mid-morning and could hit Manila, a sprawling metropolis of more than 13 million people, later Saturday.

“Widespread flooding and rain-induced landslides are expected,” while there was “minimal to moderate risk of storm surge” or huge waves hitting coastal areas, it added.

“Based on our projections, this one is really strong, so we really prepared for it,” national civil defence director Rafaelito Alejandro said, adding that 5,000 rescue teams were on standby.

He urged residents in the storm’s path to stay at home before the storm exits into the South China Sea early Sunday.

“If it’s not necessary or important, we should avoid going out today because it is dangerous and could bring you harm,” Alejandro said.

More than 7,000 people were evacuated ahead of the storm’s landfall, the civil defence office said.

The coast guard has also suspended ferry services through most of the archipelago nation due to rough seas, stranding hundreds of vessels and thousands of passengers at ports.

The civil aviation office, meanwhile, said it has shelved more than 100 flights so far.

The storm struck at the beginning of a long weekend in the Philippines, when millions return to their hometowns to visit the graves of their dead relatives.

The Philippines is hit by an average of 20 major storms each year that kill hundreds of people and keep vast regions in perpetual poverty.

Scientists have warned that such storms, which also kill livestock and destroy key infrastructure, are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

Tropical Storm Nalgae has unleashed flash floods and landslides in parts of the Philippines

Severe Tropical Storm Nalgae slammed into the Philippines on Saturday, after unleashing flash floods and landslides that left at least 72 people dead, officials said.

Nalgae pounded the archipelago nation’s main island of Luzon with maximum winds of 95 kilometres (59 miles) an hour after making landfall on the sparsely populated Catanduanes island before dawn.

Heavy rains triggered by the approaching storm began Thursday in the southern Philippines, the state weather service said, inundating mostly rural areas on Mindanao island.

That was followed by landslides and flooding, with fast-moving, debris-laden waters sweeping away entire families in some areas.

By Saturday morning, the death toll had risen to 72, said the country’s civil defence director, Rafaelito Alejandro.

At least 14 people were still missing, he added.

Rescuers are focusing on the village of Kusiong, where dozens of bodies were recovered on Friday after the floods hit.

In recent years, flash floods with mud and debris from largely deforested mountainsides have been among the deadliest hazards posed by typhoons in the Philippines.

The state weather service said Nalgae could hit the capital Manila.

“Based on our projections, this one is really strong so we really prepared for it,” Alejandro said, adding that 5,000 rescue teams were on standby.

He urged residents in the storm’s path to stay at home.

More than 7,000 people were evacuated ahead of the landfall, the civil defence office said.

The coast guard has also suspended ferry services through most of the Philippines.

The storm struck at the beginning of a long weekend in the country, when millions return to their hometowns to visit the graves of their relatives.

The Philippines is hit by an average of 20 major storms each year that kill hundreds of people and keep vast regions in perpetual poverty.

Scientists have warned that such storms, which also kill livestock and destroy key infrastructure, are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

US President Joe Biden will attend the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, the White House says

US President Joe Biden will attend next month’s COP27 United Nations climate summit in Egypt, the White House said Friday, vowing he would “highlight the need for the world to act.”

The COP27 conference will once more seek to boost global efforts to slow the climate crisis that is intensifying natural disasters, from wildfires to severe storms.

Biden will “advance the global climate fight and help the most vulnerable build resilience to climate impacts, and he will highlight the need for the world to act in this decisive decade,” the White House said in a statement.

Egypt is to host the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Biden will be at the summit on November 11, before heading to Cambodia for the annual US-ASEAN summit and then on to Indonesia for a G20 summit.

“He will work with G20 partners to address key challenges such as climate change, the global impact of (President Vladimir) Putin’s war on Ukraine, including on energy and food security and affordability, and a range of other priorities,” the White House said.

US officials have said Biden has no intention to meet Putin at the G20 summit, even if Putin attends.

Biden has also no plans to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G20, with US-Saudi relations under new strain over Riyadh’s recent support for oil production cuts.

COP26 last year ended with a pledge to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels — a goal the world is set to miss on current emission trends.

"We confirm our nuclear energy project will use the reliable, safe technology of @WECNuclear," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter

Poland on Friday picked US firm Westinghouse to build its first nuclear power station, as the country bids to shore up its energy security at a time of soaring tensions with Russia over Ukraine.

Westinghouse beat rival bids from France’s EDF and South Korea’s KHNP for the multi-billion dollar (euro) deal, although Poland has held out the possibility of other nuclear tenders in the future.

“We confirm our nuclear energy project will use the reliable, safe technology of @WECNuclear,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter.

Morawiecki said the decision would be formally adopted at a cabinet meeting in Warsaw on Wednesday.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm hailed Poland’s announcement, tweeting: “This is a huge step in strengthening our relationship with Poland for future generations to come.

“I think it sends a clear message to Russia that the Atlantic alliance stands together to diversify our energy supply… and to resist Russian weaponisation of energy,” she said in a video.

Granholm said Poland had picked Westinghouse “for the first part of their $40bn nuclear project”, without specifying the amount of the investment.

A senior US government official speaking on condition of anonymity said only that the deal was valued in the “billions” and would create “thousands of good-paying jobs”.

“This is a huge deal because this is not just about a commercial energy project, it’s about the way we will define what I would call interdependent security for decades to come,” the official said.

– Online by 2033 –

The decision “sends an unmistakable message to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin about the strength and the meshing together of the US-Poland alliance,” the official added.

And US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a tweet he was “very pleased” about the deal to “help produce safe, clean, and reliable nuclear power”.

“The United States is proud to be Poland’s strong partner for energy and security,” Blinken tweeted.

Poland has been planning a civil nuclear energy capacity for years, but the issue of energy security has taken on added urgency because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Denmark, Norway and Poland last month unveiled a new pipeline that will carry Norwegian gas to Poland via Denmark after Russia cut off Warsaw’s supplies.

The Polish government has said it wants its first nuclear power station to go online in 2033.

It has selected the village of Choczewo near the Baltic coast as the site for the plant.

The first plant is planned to have three reactors and the government has said it expects to select a supplier to build three more reactors in the future.

“The second set (of 3 reactors) will be coming down the road at a date to be determined subject to a decision by the government of Poland and we anticipate that to be Westinghouse as well,” the US official said.

Periods of extreme heat cost the global economy about $16 trillion dollars between 1992 and 2013, study from researchers at Dartmouth College calculated

Heat waves, intensified by climate change, have cost the global economy trillions of dollars in the last 30 years, a study published Friday found, with poor countries paying the steepest price.

And those lopsided economic effects contribute to widening inequalities around the world, according to the research. 

“The cost of extreme heat from climate change so far has been disproportionately borne by the countries and regions least culpable for global warming,” Dartmouth College professor Justin Mankin, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Science Advances, told AFP. “And that’s an insane tragedy.”

“Climate change is playing out on a landscape of economic inequality, and it is acting to amplify that inequality,” he said.

Periods of extreme heat cost the global economy about $16 trillion dollars between 1992 and 2013, the study calculated. 

But while the richest countries have lost about 1.5 percent of their annual per capita GDPs dealing with heat waves, poorer countries have lost about 6.7 percent of their annual per capita GDPs. 

The reason for that disparity is simple: poor countries are often situated closer to the tropics, where temperatures are warmer anyway. During heat waves, they become even hotter.

The study comes just days ahead of the start of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, where the question of compensation for countries which are disproportionately vulnerable to but least responsible for climate change is expected to be one of the key topics. 

The costs of heat waves come from several factors: effects on agriculture, strains on health systems, less productive workforces and physical damage to infrastructure, such as melting roads. 

– ‘Cost of inaction’ –

Study researchers examined five days of weather considered extreme for a specific region each year. 

“The general idea is to use variation in extreme heat, which is effectively randomly assigned to all these economic regions, and see the extent to which that accounts for variation in economic growth” in a given region, Mankin explained. 

“Then the second part is to say, ‘ok, how has human-caused warming influenced extreme heat?'” he added.

Despite these calculations, the study results almost certainly underestimate the true cost of extreme heat, according to the paper — only studying five days per year does not reflect the increased frequency of such heat events, and not all potential costs were included. 

Previous studies on the subject had focused on the costs of heat to specific sectors, though scientists say it is important to look at the price tag of climate change wholistically. 

“You want to know what those costs are, so that you have a frame of reference against which to compare the cost of action,” Mankin said, such as establishing cooling centers or installing air conditioners, versus “the cost of inaction.”

“The dividends economically of responding to the five hottest days of the year could be quite great,” he said.

But according to Mankin, the most important response is to reduce carbon emissions to slow down global warming at the source. 

“We need to adapt to the climate we have now, and we also need to deeply invest in mitigation,” he said. 

Atlantic City, where flooding is still a near-daily part of life a decade post-Sandy

A decade after Superstorm Sandy ravaged the US east coast, the seaside town Atlantic City has fortified its famous boardwalk that narrowly divides casinos and the ocean.

But in certain neighborhoods, flooded streets have become routine.

North of the city dubbed the Vegas of the East Coast, a new stretch of boardwalk is protected from crashing waves by a rock barrier and a seawall, a $60 million project completed in 2018.

Further inland stands a wasteland of sorts, where a few buildings still tower, survivors of the deadly storm’s devastation.

Jim Rutala, a private planning consultant for the city, said the tens of millions in investment in the shoreline have “provided tremendous protection” and could accommodate new construction. 

Founded in the 19th century as a spa resort, Atlantic City feted its golden age during the Prohibition era in the 1920s, a haven for revelers and the high-rolling mob before it later became a tourist destination thanks to its nightclubs and casinos.

– ‘Economic generator’ –

The city immortalized in song by Bruce Springsteen has always benefited from its spot on the sea, but the threat of rising waters has made the area increasingly vulnerable.

On October 29, 2012, Sandy — which left more than 100 people in the United States dead — caused serious damage to nine percent of homes in Atlantic City, according to the state of New Jersey.

The city of some 40,000 people is “a tremendous economic generator,” said Rutala, where 35 percent of residents live in poverty.

Further south, where hotels, casinos and restaurants populate the seaside, some of the shoreline was able to weather Sandy thanks to beaches and artificial dunes that the Army Corps of Engineers had constructed, with millions of cubic meters of sand washed offshore.

Without them “water would be lapping up against the boardwalk,” said Kimberly McKenna, the associate director of the Stockton University Coastal Research Center.

But “at some point, we’re either gonna run out of sand, or it’ll be too expensive to keep up,” said the geologist.

– High-tide flooding –

Heading a little deeper toward the back of the bay shows just how quickly the water that’s made Atlantic City a tourist hotspot can become a handicap.

“Every time it rains, any rain other than a light rain will cause a flood on this street,” said lifelong resident Thomas Gitto.

The 62-year-old retiree worked for decades in the casinos, and has always lived on the same street of modest homes.

“We even have a joke — it says that if it just gets cloudy, it will flood. And it’s true. Because anytime we have like a full moon, or some kind of storm coming, the water comes up through the sewer, and the street will flood all the way up to the porch and sometimes it even comes inside the house,” Gitto told AFP.

The high-tide floods are likely to become increasingly common as sea levels rise due to climate change.

Atlantic City should expect to experience such inundations between 17 and 75 days per year by 2030, compared to less than once a year in 1950, according to a 2019 study by Rutgers University.

In the Chelsea Heights neighborhood, Freddie Restrepo and his sister Paula, immigrants from Colombia, lost both of their side-by-side homes to Sandy.

After 10 years and a number of mishaps, they have only been able to rebuild the walls and foundations that are now raised, similar to a number of properties in the area.

Today, according to Restrepo, the street frequently floods.

– ‘A lot worse’ –

Nearby at his tavern Vagabond Kitchen and Tap House, co-owner Elvis Cadavid says “things have just gotten a lot worse.”

“We’re well aware of when the flooding is going to happen,” he said. “So we deal with it, we postpone openings, we sometimes close early. If it’s really bad, we might close for the day, we might lose a day.”

Rutala said the city, cognizant of its weak spots, started renovating its drainage system and has constructed several bulkheads bordering the interior bay.

Since Sandy, more than 300 homeowners in Atlantic City — and more than 7,000 in New Jersey — have received aid on average of more than $120,000 to rebuild, according to state figures.

But according to Rutala, at least 200 homes are still classified as regular flood victims.