At least 25 have people died in Kentucky– including four children – in the flooding caused by the torrential rains and flash floods earlier this week, Gov. Andy Beshear said Saturday.
“We continue to pray for the families that have suffered an unfathomable loss,” the Democrat governor said. “Some having lost almost everyone in their household.”
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About 25% of critical infrastructure in the U.S., or 36,000 facilities, is at serious risk of being rendered inoperable as a result of flooding over the next three decades, according to an industry report released Monday.
American infrastructure such as police stations, airports, hospitals, wastewater treatment facilities, churches and schools were all considered in the analysis, according to First Street Foundation, the group that published the first-of-its-kind report. The U.S. is “ill-prepared” for a scenario where major flooding events become more commonplace, the report concluded.
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Virginia awarded about $7.8 million in state grants for 19 local projects designed to address flooding, sea-level rise and extreme weather, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Tuesday.
Funding for the Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund grants is provided through the sale of carbon emission allowances, which began when the state joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in January.
The initiative requires businesses to purchase a certain number of carbon emission allowances depending on how much carbon they emit. The number of carbon emissions allowed is reduced annually. About 45% of the revenues obtained through these sales goes toward the flood preparedness fund.
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Tropical Storm Cristobal weakened into a depression early Monday after inundating coastal Louisiana and ginning up dangerous weather along most of the U.S. Gulf Coast, sending waves crashing over Mississippi beaches, swamping parts of an Alabama island town and spawning a tornado in Florida.
Heavy rainfall and a storm surge continued posing a threat across a wide area of the coast after Cristobal made landfall Sunday afternoon packing 50-mph (85-kph) winds between the mouth of the Mississippi River and the since-evacuated barrier island resort community of Grand Isle.
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