i grew up and lived in “inland” FL for 25+ years. i left after a particularly bad hurricane season. my area took a hit early on that year, but was otherwise calm and rainy with power outages rarely lasting more than 48 hours for each of the multiple hurricanes that year. i worked for a statewide utility company though, and it was a nightmare. everything was fucked all summer. it took weeks and even months in some places to restore communication. the amount of frenetic scurrying that goes on behind the scenes to keep things rolling smoothly for utility consumers is underestimated by everyone who hasn’t seen it.

over the last few decades of being several hundred miles north and actually inland behind mountains, some of my friends who stayed use this logic… “oh, well we’re 30 miles inland and at 50’ above sea level. sea level rise isn’t a big deal.” as though being adjacent to catastrophe is some kind of protection from catastrophe.

the failure of civic infrastructure in a massive metropolitan & densely populated area has knock on effects that cascade outward. displaced people overwhelm social services while they wait for transportation to whatever community is offering relocation assistance. utilities share infrastructure and resources. opportunists move in to feed on desperation. florida is entirely a malarial zone and the big events will be in the warm/rainy season. denge, west nile, zika will all explode when people are sheltering in tent colonies waiting on government assistance that will be late to arrive, if ever, while the truthers throw bricks at the malathion trucks because they think it’s giving everyone nanobots. my point is the disruption of sea level rise will not be contained to low lying areas. if the habitability of everything from Miami up to West Palm becomes dubious, that’s over 6 million people looking for a place to stay, fresh water, and something to eat.

this is a map of persons filing for FEMA aid as being displaced by Katrina, estimated at 400,000-1.3 million people:

there are of course other differences between NOLA and Florida, but one of the ones floridians should keep in mind is that all mention of climate change and sea level rise have been vanished by executive order from state agencies that would theoretically be in a position to buffer some of the worst impacts. having worked in public service for over a decade, i can tell you that working inside a state that has a government openly hostile to the established science of your services has an attrition effect on the people who work to provide those services. they burn out faster than normal and they leave to go somewhere they are not shit upon. they go somewhere where trying to help people with honesty won’t cost them their future.