The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), which bills itself as the world’s largest organization devoted exclusively to broadcast and digital journalism, has honored KAZU News with a 2024 National Edward R. Murrow Award for The Pajaro Flood: A Preventable Disaster. The series of reports documents the flood that left some 3,000 people homeless and spotlighted the inequities in flood protection between rich and poor communities.
KAZU’s reporting won top national honors in the Continuing Coverage category for smaller market radio stations.
KAZU General Manager Helen Barrington praised the coverage.
“While I wasn’t at KAZU when these stories were reported, I am proud of what the station’s small newsroom was able to do under extreme weather conditions to serve the region’s communities,” she said. “This is a great tribute to their skill, care and perseverance.”
KAZU’s coverage of the disaster actually began nearly a month before the floodwaters started rising just before midnight on March 10, 2023.
After a series of winter storms battered California’s Central Coast in late December and early January, KAZU’s Scott Cohn visited Pajaro in February to report on the heroic efforts by local authorities to shore up the 75-year-old levee protecting the town, and worries that Pajaro might not be so lucky in the next storm.
The levee had failed several times in the past, and the KAZU report exposed the fact that for decades, local officials had been asking for improvements. Congress even authorized rebuilding the levee in 1966, but the project kept taking a backseat under a federal formula that prioritized more affluent communities.
That meant that emergency responders in Pajaro had to patrol the 13-mile levee system every time it rained, often installing makeshift patches to shore it up.
“We have to triage all those situations and put Band-Aids on a system that needs to be rebuilt,” Mark Strudley, Executive Director of the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency, said at the time.
When the levee did fail weeks later, KAZU was among the first on the scene in the early morning hours of March 11, reporting on the unfolding disaster and helping direct residents to safety.
Then, as the floodwaters subsided, KAZU followed residents trying to rebuild their lives amidst a crushing bureaucracy. And, the news team held public officials’ feet to the fire.
Jerimiah Oetting investigated promises by California Gov. Gavin Newsom of millions of dollars in aid to flood victims, and found that some of the numbers were inflated and mischaracterized. Instead of $42 million in relief that Newsom claimed was going to victims “today” on March 15, Oetting learned that the Governor was referring to previously approved Covid relief funds, that only $300,000 had been allocated to Monterey County, and that distribution plans were still being finalized.
Later, as members of Congress promised to finally expedite the levee reconstruction first approved nearly 60 years ago, KAZU learned that the project could still be years away from completion, in part due to bureaucracy and Congressional budget battles.
In November, state and federal officials finally signed an agreement to begin construction on a new levee in 2024. But it could still be as much as a decade before the job is done and the people of Pajaro are safe.
The Murrow awards, established in 1971, honor stories that “exemplify the importance and impact of journalism as a service to the community.” They are among the industry’s most prestigious awards. This is KAZU’s second National Edward R. Murrow award in two years. The station won the Excellence in Writing award in 2023 for Oetting’s feature on the so-called “corpse flower” at the UC Santa Cruz arboretum.