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Residents fear rising sea level

January 27, 2008 12:16 am

BY KAFIA HOSH

RUFISQUE, Senegal--Mbaye Dieng woke with a start one morning last summer to the sight and sound of water gushing into his small bedroom.

A powerful thunderstorm the night before flooded Dieng's home in Thiawlene, a suburb of the town of Rufisque.

Fifteen-foot waves crashed into the beach-side community, bursting its earthen levy and flooding dozens of homes and the local cemetery.

Dieng, 78, is the patriarch of his family, about 100 of whom live in a small compound of square concrete houses.

The night of the flood, water seeped into the bedrooms "and lifted all the beds," Dieng said through an interpreter.

Children were evacuated to neighboring homes or hauled onto rooftops.

rising sea levels

The thunderstorm's damage was exacerbated by a recent phenomenon--rising sea levels off the coast of Rufisque.

In the past 20 years, the ocean has moved 150 meters inland, swallowing up homes and a mosque along the way.

Thiawlene, a fishing community of about 5,000 people, was settled centuries ago by watermen.

"There is no organization on how they settle," said Lt. Col. Mamadou Adje, whose army engineer battalion led relief efforts after the flood. "They just settle near the sea. This is one of the problems of Rufisque, people live too close to the sea."

Climatologists blame rising sea levels largely on global warming.

Melting glaciers increase the oceans' volume, and rising temperatures "warm seawater and cause it to expand," explained Carl Hershner, a marine science professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester. "Those things combined cause a rate of sea-level rise."

virginia suffers, too

Like Dieng in Senegal, Virginians have had problems with rising sea levels.

In 2003, Hurricane Isabel ripped through Colonial Beach, where 8-foot-high waves destroyed homes, restaurants and the pier.

Representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency soon arrived, setting up shelters and repairing downed power lines.

In Thiawlene, the Senegalese government distributed rice, blankets and sponge mattresses. But the community mostly had to fend for itself.

Dieng has heard of Hurricane Katrina and other torrential storms that have ravaged the United States' coastline.

"We feel the difference is that we don't have the same means," Dieng said. "We had no means of evacuating the people as they did in the United States."

something irreplaceable

Soon after the flood, which occurred on July 4, the Senegalese engineer battalion headed by Adje installed 24,000 tons of boulders that block the volatile ocean from nearby homes. The levee stretches for a mile along Thiawlene's dusty coastline, littered with plastic bags, wrappers and old tires.

Relief workers also repaired the neighborhood's drainage system and a 1.5-kilometer road.

But the flood destroyed something irreplaceable: nearly half of the cemetery where many of the residents' ancestors were buried.

The graveyard is a mixture of modest plots and elaborate tile headstones decorated with Quranic verses written in Arabic calligraphy.

Thiawlene residents fear that rising sea levels could eventually wash away their ancestors' remains.

"The people don't think about the impact on themselves, they think about the cemetery," Adje said. "A lot of the bodies that had been properly buried have been taken by the waters."

impact on industry

Throughout the years, climate change also has shaken the core of Thiawlene's fishing industry.

Rising sea levels have destroyed the marshes where marine life feeds, causing a decline in fish population.

Saliou Ba, 25, is a fisherman with the cherubic face and slim frame of a teenager.

He said Thiawlene's watermen find better luck fishing off the cost of neighboring countries such as Guinea-Bissau.

"The rising sea level prevents us from having any economic activity," Ba said through an interpreter. "You can't go fishing once the sea is rising this way. It's very difficult."

Ba's forefathers once made a living from fishing.

"That is impossible today because of the destruction of the environment," he said.

That problem, too, is echoed closer to home.

Rising sea levels have caused a reduction of crab and fish stocks in Virginia's waters. Higher sea levels and warmer waters destroy the marine vegetation that is a critical habitat for juvenile fish and crabs hiding from predators.

"As the water gets deeper, submerged aquatic vegetation find it increasingly difficult to survive," Hershner said. "They are at the limits of their tolerance."

In the Chesapeake Bay, about 70 percent of commercially important fish spend part of their life cycle in marshlands, according to Chuck Epes, spokesman for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Virginia.

But as rising sea levels destroy wetlands, they also kill the feeding source for marine life such as blue crabs, finfish and shellfish.

"It would gradually impact their populations as wetlands decline," Epes said.

Climate change also blocks the natural replenishment of wetlands. Rising sea levels push the wetlands inland, but they rarely survive.

"They get crunched between development and rising sea levels," said Paula Jasinski, the Virginia program manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay Office.

trying to get help

In Thiawlene, Ba organized the Young Fishermen's Association about three years ago. The group, which now has more than 100 members, lobbied the local government for assistance.

The mayor's office eventually donated 500 life jackets and two motor-boat engines to the association.

"We make our living in an honest manner through fishing," Ba said. "We want help."

Thiawlene's residents are not sure about the reasons for the rising seas.

Saliou Ndoye, 67, said he believes it is God's will.

But other residents worry the Atlantic will one day submerge their entire community.

Dieng grew up in a home where the ocean now lies.

"All we want is someone to really help us stop the advancement of the sea," he said. "We're very worried, because we have no place to go."

Kafia Hosh: 540/735-1977
Email: khosh@freelancestar.com