Danny Rivero was one of the first reporters on the scene of the Champlain Towers South condo collapse in the town of Surfside, Florida, not too far from Miami Beach. He’s been there almost every day since, chronicling what is still, technically, a search and rescue mission. The death toll now stands at 12, but 149 people are still unaccounted-for. And Rivero says the initial shock of the event is “starting to wear off,” turning to grief—and anger. “This didn’t happen for no reason,” he says. “Even though it came out of nowhere, in a sense, it did not come out of nowhere. There were reasons behind why this happened.”
On Wednesday’s episode of What Next, I talked to Rivero, a reporter for the local public radio station WLRN, about the decisions that led up to the disaster, the role of climate change, and what it all means for […]
Having lived in Florida for 17 years, I know first hand that it will revert to a marshland which is what it was before we started to drain the water from most of it by putting in streams every quarter mile to divert the water so people could live on some of it. I surveyed the entire everglades when I was a surveyor down there in palm beach county and I know it will turn back into a marshland. There is no question in my mind about this transformation. It will happen within the next two decades or sooner if they are unlucky. There is no stopping it!
Why otherwise intelligent people are still buying oceanfront real estate is beyond my understanding. Without question during an average 20 year mortgage many of these places will not be habitable.