From Cosmos (26/2/24)…
Time to go? The costly impact of climate change on the housing hip pocket
In the Cosmos Synergy column, our staff writers explore how we’re dealing with the urgent issues of climate change.
“It’s terrifying, you live with the absolute fear of it happening again.”
Jennifer Woods had lived in Wagga Wagga her whole life, a single parent of four children, a social worker and no stranger to what life on a floodplain might throw the way of anyone living there: the town has learnt to cope with floods – 60 have been registered since Federation.
But in March 2012, authorities started issuing evacuation warnings, the Murrumbidgee River was overflowing and poised to breach the 10.7m-high levee surrounding the city.
Mercifully, that breach never came, ending 14cm short of spillover, but it was enough to prompt government funding to add 63cm to the town centre’s main levee and another 40cm to the secondary barrier protecting residents of North Wagga, where Woods lived.
It was at the time that Woods was partway through her PhD looking at community resilience and connectedness during the 2012 flood that she found herself back in the thick of it.
