this hour, and on the ground frenzy in the state. millions under mandatory evacuation orders. the entire state faces flash flooding. and then record-shattering storm surge, water officials say as high as 18 feet. enough to swallow two suvs stacked one on the other. one official warning if you are caught in that surge, you simply will not survive. let s get straight to our correspondents on the ground binning with beginning with bill weir. what are you seeing and what are you told to expect? reporter: this whole community is really bracing for the worse. the new numbers this morning sunk the pit of the stomach everyone here, trying to think about a 17 foot storm surge. and we re on the back side of the storm and this is sort of the reverse storm surge. locals never see this exposed seabed here. we re looking at crab traps and oyster beds blowing around in the wind with the rest of us here. but of course the water as the storm comes ashore will fill in fast. and we re next
Evacuate two neighborhoods. something our city government has never done before. if this is a trend, it s simply not sustainable. no, it s not sustainable. things that can t go on don t. it s true. sandy was a freak storm, a back luck confluence of events. but this climate, our climate, is warming. as it does, low probability events like this will become more probable and more intense. carbon emissions are trapping extra energy in our atmosphere and comes more extremes, higher sea levels, higher droughts, hotter summers and heavier, wetter storms. we need a crash program in this country right now to re-engineer to deal with the climate disruptions we ve already endured, the carbon we ve already put in the atmosphere, as well as aggressive change of our economy and society to reduce the amount of carbon we will put into the atmosphere in
More intense. carbon emissions are trapping extra energy in our atmosphere and with extra energy come more extremes, higher sea levels, drier droughts, hotter heat waves and heavier, wetter storms. we need a crash program in this country right now to re-engineer the nation s infrastructure to cope with and prepare for the climate disruptions that we have already ensured with the carbon we ve already put into the atmosphere. as well as an immediate, aggressive transformation of our energy production, economy, and society to reduce the amount of carbon we will put into the atmosphere in the future. this is as fundamental, as elemental as human endeavors get. the story of civilization is the long tale of crusaders for order battling the unceasing reality of chaos. and it is a kind of miracle that we have succeeded as much as we have, that airplanes fly through the air and roads plunge beneath the water and the entire teeming lattice work of human life exist