“When the rains from Hurricane Harvey finally stopped, everything Yesenia Rodriguez owned was under 20 feet of water.
"I lost my bike. I lost my car. I lost all my clothes," she says. "I found my baby picture in a tree."
Rodriguez, a real estate agent, went to stay with relatives and is now starting over from scratch.
But in a sprawling city like Houston – where pre-storm, 94% of residents owned a motor vehicle – getting to her job and around town without a car was impossible. An estimated 500,000 to 1m cars were destroyed by floodwaters. Many Houstonians don't have the means to replace their submerged vehicles and there's a rental car shortage in multiple Texas cities.
So people like Rodriguez will have to convert from four wheels to two. If she had a bike, she says, she wouldn't have to rely on her family to ferry her around in her aunt's car. She could use it to get between bus stops and train stations, to get to work and to go to the shops. But even a few hundred dollars for a bike is currently beyond her reach...
“Burning Man partners with local charities to take, refurbish and sometimes donate the bikes to needy families, but this year, the sheer number of bikes overwhelmed even these partners. An estimated 5,000 bicycles were left behind.
Logan Mirto, a Burning Man employee, took a picture of the dusty heap and shared it on social media with the caption: "Please don't leave your bikes at Burning Man."
The picture went viral...
“Within 48 hours of Burning Man employees putting out the call, all the bikes had been claimed and "Bike Apocalypse" was over. Now begins the difficult process of cleaning and repairing bikes that spent days baking in the sun and covered in corrosive dust.
After a hastily arranged GoFundMe campaign, Meg Kiihne and some friends rented a truck and a storage unit in nearby Reno, Nevada, and headed for the playa. They managed to harvest 110 bicycles.
““We have to go through an intensive cleaning process of cutting off all faux fur, lights, squeaky toys, baskets, and seat covers all trapping clumps of clay," says Kiihne.
But there is treasure in the desert. Underneath layers of clay-caked fur and fabric, for example, Kiihne discovered a gleaming, brand new child's Trek:
“Once the bikes are cleaned and fixed, the next challenge will be to get them onto trucks and shipping containers heading for Houston and to the Caribbean. Kiihne is continuing to fundraise and negotiating with her industry contacts to try to get her bicycles heading to the Caribbean as soon as possible.
Carter Stern, the executive director of Houston's bike share programme, predicted he could easily find owners for all 500 of Rockwell's Burner bicycles. Stern has been collecting donor bicycles for hurricane victims in a campaign called Keep Houston Rolling and says he already has takers for 500 brand new bikes donated from Trek and Giant. Weeks after the storm hit, was able to get Rodriguez a bicycle and she has rented a small studio closer to the heart of the city so that she doesn't need a car—at least not immediately.
"I'm able to bike around town now," she tells the BBC. "Slowly, things have progressed, but there's a lot to recover."”
read more: bbc, 25.09.17.
citymaus reblogged
climateadaptation-deactivated20
“Let me be clear,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We are not going to abandon the waterfront. We are not going to leave the Rockaways or Coney Island or Staten Island’s South Shore.” But he added that the city “cannot just rebuild what was there and hope for the best.”
“We have to build smarter and stronger and more sustainable,” he added, while conceding that the city had yet “to determine exactly what that means.”
NYC Mayor Bloomberg vows to put more people in harms way. (via climateadaptation)
Source: The New York Times