February marked my sixth month working as a full-time reporter at Texas Public Radio, my first full-time reporting job anywhere.
It’s been a learning process and I still don’t have it all down, but there’s no place I would have rather started my career than my hometown public radio station.
Reflecting over the past six months, I decided to look back on the first story I ever published as a full-time reporter.
Climate change may make flooding worse. How can San Antonio’s past help the city prepare?
This story winds a tale from the disastrous 1921 San Antonio flood that killed dozens of residents and destroyed much of downtown to a future where climate change may make floods even more dangerous and unpredictable, and questions about whether the city has done enough to make up for its past failures to protect marginalized communities, especially West Side Latinos.
An estimated 80 West Side Latinos were killed by that 1921 flood, making up the vast majority of the dead. That’s because poor flood infrastructure and poor housing stock was pervasive on the West Side.
Despite organizing in the 1970s that got hundreds of millions of dollars for West Side flood infrastructure, there’s concern among some residents that it wasn’t enough — and that climate change may produce powerful floods that San Antonio’s current flood infrastructure isn’t ready for.
These are the kinds of stories your support helps reporters like me tell at TPR — deep dives into the past and rigorous research of the science to better understand how city policy affects your life and the lives of those you care about.
Take a look at five other stories listener support has helped me produce, you can read through this thread I posted on Twitter.
It’s listeners like you who help me tell stories that matter. Please support TPR if you’re able.
Thank you,
Josh Peck
