THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE in San Rafael’s poorest community are at a growing risk of being islanded by flood waters, with no drivable escape route. Central exit roads are just three to four feet above sea level and already see some flooding during winter storms. Substantial storms, king tides and earthquakes, pose threats that are only worsening with sea level rise, which is happening at an increasing rate of 0.17 inches a year, according to data from NASA.

“In the past, the flood level was 10 feet, and that’s what we built to, and now, because of these emissions, sea level is going to continue rising through generations. It will be a dynamic that doesn’t stop. We’re kind of on a train now,” said Kate Hagemann, San Rafael’s Climate Adaptation and Resilience Planner.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.