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Opinion: A California mom asks, what will remain for our kids after the storm?

Amy Ettinger

Editor’s Note: Amy Ettinger is a journalist and the author of “Sweet Spot: An Ice Cream Binge Across America.” Her work can be found at www.amyettinger.com. Read more opinion at CNN.



CNN
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My 13-year-old daughter and I walked along the flooded banks of the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz, surveying the damage of the latest storm. There were large pieces of driftwood and other detritus swirling in the brown, rushing current.

“What do you think is worse: the floods or the fires?” I asked her.

She didn’t need to pause for long before answering. “Definitely the fires because of the smell,” she said.

It was, to be fair, an impossible choice – especially for a child barely into her teens. The apocalyptic weather in California is upending all of our lives, but that’s true for no one more so than for our kids.

Julianna has lived in California for all of her life and has learned to live with the temperamental, destructive nature of its environment. In August 2020, the CZU Lightning Complex Fire ignited the mountain areas near our house.

Crews have been busy in recent days clearing neighborhoods and roadways destroyed by heavy downpours and strong winds, forcing thousands of evacuations. Forecasters say another round of unprecedented rain could soon be on its way, and new devastation emerges almost before the debris has been cleared away.

The storms that have buffeted my home state in recent weeks have left at least 17 people dead as much of the state received rainfall totals 400% to 600% above average.

In 2020, relentless wildfires saw more than 80,000 acres burn and more than 900 homes destroyed leaving blackened scars that are still visible when we drive along the sweeping cliffs of the Pacific Coast Highway.

We were fortunate that our rental home was miles away from the evacuation zones. But smoke throughout the region was so pervasive and so severe that we needed to stay inside for days at a stretch with the windows closed and a MacGyvered box fan-turned-air purifier running at all times.

The fires hit during the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the terrible air quality, meant we lost access to nature at the time when we needed it the most. So we stayed inside and watched news…

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