United States: a series of deadly deluges hits California

Rescuers resume their search, Wednesday, January 11, 2023, to find 5-year-old Kyle Doan, who was swept away Monday, January 9, by floodwaters near San Miguel, California.

PA

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

Some 4.5 million people on flood alert, tens of thousands of homes without electricity and 18 dead since the end of December: northern and central California continue to suffer record torrential rains.

And among all the disappearances and destruction, a drama has particularly moved California, that of a five-year-old boy missing since Monday, January 9 in San Miguel, south of San Francisco, when a cyclone alert was launched. Wednesday evening.

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On Monday morning, Kyle was on his way to school in his mom's car when the waters suddenly rose on the road, our Miami correspondent

reports .

In a few minutes, this artery of San Miguel, a small town in central California, turns into a torrent so powerful that it carries away the car of the five-year-old boy and his mother.

In extremis, residents manage to save the mother by grabbing her arm, but it is impossible to hold Kyle back;

the little boy is carried away by the waters.

Wednesday evening, the search to find him continued.

A Merced resident carries belongings from his flooded home in California on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023. AP - Noah Berger

The nightmare is about to be over

His story moves all of California and illustrates the violence of the bad weather that has lasted for several weeks.

From Los Angeles to Fresno via San Francisco, the entire state is affected by these historic rains, with mind-blowing images like that of these gaping holes which literally suck up crushed cars on roads ripped open by gigantic flows of sludge.

And “

”, warns Governor Gavin Newsom, who expects the storms to last at least until January 18.

These torrential rains on soils already saturated with water have generated vast power cuts, numerous floods, uprooted many trees and cut major roads.

Some regions have recorded levels of precipitation not reached for 150 years.

While it is difficult to establish a direct link between these series of storms and climate change, scientists regularly explain that warming increases the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

However, these torrential rains will not be enough to replenish the water reserves in California.

Several winters of above-normal rainfall would be needed to compensate for the

of recent years, experts say.

Megadroughts.

Wildfires.

Historic floods and atmospheric rivers.

This whiplash weather is not an anomaly.

California is proof that the climate crisis is real and we have to take it seriously.

pic.twitter.com/XWd35aWOOj

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 11, 2023

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