Rising Seas Could Create U.K.'s First Climate Change Refugees.
CABRERA: Welcome back. Besides severe storms that may have caused a deadly crane collapse in Dallas, people across Texas are also dealing with scorching heat indexes. Advisories and excessive heat warnings are, right now, in effect for Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and Brownsville. Temperatures now in the upper 90s across the state, but when you factor in humidity, it will feel as hot as 116 in some places. All this happening as crews battle wildfires erupting in parts of California and Arizona. Evacuations are underway right now in rural parts of California's Yolo County outside Sacramento due to a wildfire there. So far, no reports of injuries or damage. Now, the climate change threat coming on strong in a small village in the U.K. Rising seawaters could possibly wipe this village off the map. CNN's Phil Black met with villagers there to see how they're preparing for possible historic floods.</s>PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In this corner of North Wales, green and misty mountains slope dramatically toward the sea. The village of Fairbourne grew here on a flat stretch of marshland where the earth is low and wet. So low much of it lies only just above sea level. For a hundred or so years, this village has existed. People here have been fighting to hold back the sea. Now, even conservative sea level rise predictions suggest that battle will inevitably be lost perhaps in the coming decades. The people of Fairbourne could be Britain's first climate change refugees. From the air, you see the village, hunkered down. Hiding behind a bank of stones. When the sea gets angry, that largely natural barrier is all that protects people and their homes.</s>WILLIAMS: As the sea level rises, the energy hitting the shingle bank becomes greater.</s>BLACK (voice-over): Huw Williams, an engineer with the local council, says all available evidence indicates the barrier will eventually fail.</s>WILLIAMS: In reality, sea level rise is going to be of such a magnitude that you cannot build your way out of it. Climate change is here. We saw something for the future.</s>BLACK (voice-over): Local authorities have reached an uncomfortable conclusion. All of this -- homes, shops, infrastructure, a community of around 1,000 people -- will one day be gone. Claimed by the sea.</s>LISA GOODIER, SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER, GWYNEDD COUNCIL: What we're doing now is planning for what we feel is realistically going to happen.</s>BLACK (voice-over): Lisa Goodier has the job of preparing Fairbourne and its people for what she describes as the village's decommissioning. She's working to a rough time frame. From around 2045, Welsh authorities believe it won't be possible to maintain sufficient sea defenses. And soon after, it will be too dangerous for people to stay. The estimates based on data from local tidal gauges and the work of the U.N.'s climate change panel. They acknowledge it could all happen later or, as some scientists predict, much sooner.</s>GOODIER: By telling people as early on as we can, we're actually giving them the opportunity to plan. We're actually allowing them to still have choice in what they want to do to a large degree.</s>BLACK (voice-over): Not everyone here appreciates the well-intended advance warning because property prices have been hit hard. Mortgages almost impossible to get.</s>STUART EVES, CHAIRMAN, FAIRBOURNE COMMUNITY COUNCIL: To turn around now and say, we're going to destroy your village in 19 -- in 2045 or 2050 is wrong.</s>BLACK (voice-over): Stuart Eves runs the local camping ground and believes the estimates are imprecise and irresponsible given the impact on people's lives.</s>BLACK (on camera): It's a long-term problem so they've got to start thinking about it now, don't they?</s>EVES: To a degree. But if all your information is based on supposition and theory, then --</s>BLACK (on camera): Or science.</s>EVES: Or science, but science has got to depend on facts. And if the facts aren't there, then they come up with supposition saying we believe.</s>BLACK (voice-over): On Fairbourne's climate change front line, we meet Philip Hill.</s>PHILIP HILL, RESIDENT OF FAIRBOURNE, WALES: It's going to happen sometime, I don't dispute that. Global warming's going to happen.</s>BLACK (voice-over): He and his family bought a seafront home from where you can't see the sea earlier this year. To him the stone barrier still feels impregnable, the rising water a distant threat.</s>HILL: If we are to move, then we do. But at the moment, I'd rather 20, 30 years at this lovely place and enjoy it.</s>BLACK (on camera): And it is a lovely place.</s>HILL: Yes.</s>BLACK (voice-over): Fairbourne is engaged in a difficult conversation with many awkward questions. What will happen to these people? Where will they go? Who pays for it all? The scientific consensus says this community will not be alone in confronting these imminent consequences of climate change. Phil Black, CNN, Fairbourne, Wales.