captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this editiona forday, september 15... dangerous flooding and record rains pummel the carolinas as tropical storm florence slows. the cost of subsidizing home insurance along the flood prone coast. and in our signature segment: an unconventional experiment with blockchain to save journalism next on "pbs newshour weekend." >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundatron. lind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america--

designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by pbsntributions to you station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new rk, hari sreenivasan. >> deenivasan: good evening thank you for joining us. the winds are slowing, but the water is still rising. the rains from what was hurricane florence are flooding the eastern portions of north and south carolina. matindatory evac orders were issued this afternoon for those living within a mile of the cape fear and little rivers. at veleast fi people have died, at least a million are still without power. resincuers are boats to bring people to safety. north carolina's governor plenoaded with residet to return to their homes and to prepare for more damage and uction. >> rivers will rise days after the ra has stopped.

we the east they will crest monday, tuesday anesday. remember most storm deaths occur from dwning in fresh water, often in cars. don't drive across standing or moving water. >> sreenivasan: the storm is now forecast to move slowly across southt carolina where fi responders are preparing for the possibility of catastrophic flooding. joining us now via skype is south carolina etnreporter gavi jackson. gavin, tell me where you are and what you've seen today so far. >> reporter: heary, 0'm in georgetown county, in an armory, about miles south of myrtle beach, the big impacts of the storm have been on the coast. myrtle beach did get a lot of tropical-storm-force winds yesterday. i did see trees on power lines yesterday. it's just been a little bit of rain today, not too much wind. lot of that rain is moving inland right now, and officials

are telling us that we should expe 8-12 incs measure rain across want state for the next cowk of days. but they're really worried about inland flooding at this poinant keeping their eyes on a couple of waterways that typically fld in these situations. >> sreenivasan: tell us a little bit about the types of impacts it's havg when it mes to the smaller creeks andrs rivehat are starting to swell up, and they might not even crest unorl monday tuesday in some cases. >> reporter: that's the thing. we've been driving over some f the bridges in the state, and they are loong pretty full. and those are only excted to get more and more flooded and swollen as the water comes down from national security council. and we saw this from hurricane in 2015. they're telling citizens to kind of expoact what they alreaowdy kno hapn. so people know where the flood-prone areas are, and they know they should be looking out for those rising waters. in a lot of places we're still sder flash flood warnings. and myrtle beach ill under

evacuation orders because they expect conditions to slowlye deterior? areas due to the flooding. >> sreenivasan: what's the challenge been for first responders as they try to get into some of these areas are where there have been evacuation orders but there is still people deciding to ride it out? i, reporter: you know, har i was riding around with the national guard today. we traversed, the grand strand, which includes myrtle beach. we went up and down the major highways and we didnt see much damage or flooding at this stage. and we just heard from thego rnor's press conference that they haven't had to do any water rescues at this point. sadly, the only fatality we had in south carolina wabout 150 miles inland in union county where a woan last evening came across a tree in the roadway and gointo into an accident and died as a result of t. a lot of south carolinians have responded to these evacuation orders and officials are crediting that to the lack of any rescues in the state. >> sreenivasan: what about the people who are in shelters, the eones wholready took cover? is the governor telling them to come back at any certain pnt?

>> reporter: i think it's beming more of a local issue. a lot of other countries in the state have actually lifted their evacuation. orders they're still telling people not to come back necessarily until they know what the situation its in cerin areas. i think it's kind of a play it by ear in some of these situations. the shelters have been open. there is plentof room for people in the shelters. i can't remeofber the numbe my head, but there are a couple thousands people in shelters across the state. >> sreenivasan: in these kind of scenarios usually utility work version line workers ready to go and come back in to make sure they can kind of clear the power lines, turn the lights back on, considering all the trees that might have been downed. are you seeing any of that yet? >> hari, yesterday, actually, i was out in the wind and the rain with the local electric cooperative here that covers the myrtle beach area. they were actually up in a bucket truck in 40- 50-mile-an-hour winds, chain sawing a tree offow these lines, high-voltage lines, and they were doing it it like no

sweat, which was remarkae for rest of us to watch. and i wasnland in the city of florence, the county of florence, ironically enough,eynd a,re staging two,000 linemen there from floridnd that's just a small fraction of the 20,000 linemen i've been told c are l in response to the storms in the carolinas. sreenivasan: the military vehicles we see behind you. what's the role of any military resources in this? >> like i say elier today, i was in conway, an area prone too flng, and it's close to the w lumber riverch flooded during hurricane matthew in 2015, and they have been oning high water vehicle across the coast and inland for this emergency situation when it comes to flooding with these rivers that they know are going the high water ve ocles in case rescues which haven't happened yet. >> sreenivasan: gavin jackson, joining us via skype.

>> sreenivasan: a typhoon that meteorologists are calling the most powerful storm in the world this year, is now sweeping toward hong ko and china after striking the northern philippines. landslides frotorrential rains are making rescue efforts difficult as itv's juliet bremner reports from the philippines. >> reporte the sting in the sail of super typhoon manghut, raging water tears through the inland tows and villages of the northern philippines, bringing with it the fear of landslides and widespread flooding. athis is the damge caused by sustained winds of 120 miles an hour.e rketplace in cagayan, torn apart. flimsy structures stood little chance again the equivalentave category 4 hurricane. pekele are starting to their way back to what remains of their homes. despite repeated warnings, some refused to evacuate. "the wind blew realy strongly in one direction and then the other," he says"ripping my

roof right off." as torrential rain batters the region, theiast majorityd heed the evacuation orders. many remember 2013 when 7,000 people died. "we areum tatized by the supertyphoon," stays saiz this woman. "we were the last one when it hit and destour homes." the flooding has come at thee start of the rnd corn harvesting season, a serious blow for a region that relies on agriculture. an average of 20 typhoons strike the philippines every year. despite the devastation in tugeugarao, they were quickly back on the streets, recovering their belongs and trying to repair their propkhty. ma has now cleared the philippines, but with communications down, and areas diicult to access, there are olrnings that the death t could still rise. juliet bremner, itv news.en

>> sasan: two days after a series of gas explosions killed one person and injured dozens in towns north of boston, investigators are still trying to find the cause. ousands of residents wer evacuated on thursday during the explosions and fires in lawrence, andover and north andove firefighters, utility crews, and a national transportation safety board team are still oe, and massachusetts governor charlie baker has decled a state of emergency in the area. some sections of the natural gas pipeline system in massachusetts date back to the 1860s. >> sreenivasan: the threat of storms like florence, or harvey and mari has not stopped people from building along the coast. but some national home insurance companies have taken pause and have been pulling out od-

prone coastal areas. some areas are turning to government-subsidized flood n't meetnsurance demandsndse are om super-storms. joining me now is talia buford who reports on the environment and civil and human rights for "pro publica" and is also co- chst of the pbs digital studios climatge program "hot mess." thanks for joining us. we think about the repercussions of what florence is doing to the carolina coastline right now, give us the laof the land of how people are protected, what kind of insurance they have. >> well, we talked to insurers along the coast of national security council, and basically they td us most of the big insurers you have heard of, the ones with commercials and big,kn yo, agencies around the country, they don't east of 95. that's kind of the highway that runs and kind of divides -- >> that's a lot of lan >> that's a lot of lands. it's not just the outer banks. it's coastal communities, mmunities that just touch the water. and they say they are not able usually to get some of these bigger insurers insure them against wind stos like hurricanes and tropical storms. >> sreenivasan: there's the

national flas flood insurance pm that some people are famliar with. you're looking at there's even a bigger gap and states are filling that gap. what kind of programs, what kind of plans are those? >> right, so these plans are kind of state versions of the national flood insurance program, but instead of covering flood, they cover thwind. an were kind of created during the 60s tand erward to inoculate cities from blight ped to also givple who live on the coast a chance to get reasonable insurance. so it's kind of a way just to make sure if you live on the coast, you have a place to get insurance, even if the privat companies won't come out and insure you. >> sreenivasan: that's arsupposed to be the freeket at work, right. it's supposed to be if the price is too high for me insure this property, then maybe i don't build the property. >> sure. and that's one of th things our story says. it's kind of muting the signals we would normally get om the free market.

i think there is an argument, you know, that there are people there who have been there ford decades generations and they should be able to get insurance, sure. but it also means that maybe we should start considering other opportunities to move them away from the coast or to kindf not at least encourage more development in that area. >> sreenivasan: i canotally understand six generations of family, burt you also see a lot of new building going in now, and those are people who have not been there six generations. it's coa istal property, an'm assuming it's worth a ton of money for builders. >> absolutely. it's worth a lot of money for the state of national security you wouldn't want to stop development at is bringing thousands and thousands of people to jur state every summer. the ter banks is a huge vacation market other and you don't want people to stop coming there because they don't have some of the amenities. >> sreenivasan: in the wake of harvey, where we saw devastating losses, huge amounts money being spent, and a lot of this was uninsured ls,hat do the carolinas, what do thesedi

erent state plans-- whether it's new york or other places -- have in store? and can they deal with a big superstorm or are they going to bounce a check? >> sure.lo what wked at-- we looked at national security council specifically, and flppened to be ence made it a lot more timely. but for national security council, specifically, their plan has abothree million dollars they can pull from and that's where rhansurance,s where their own reserves, and that's also with a $1 billio assessment they can put on all other countries. the thing that makes north sarolina interesting is they have a proion to bill every insurer in the state or every person who gets insurance in the state, property insura te in the statpay off if they run a deficit. so if -- >> basically, taxpayers in the rest of the state are going to foot the bill for whatever happens on the coast, eve though they don't have the beachfront property. >> yeah, pretty much. >> sreenivasan: and this is also-- you know, it's not in a vacuum. this is in a legislature tt has actively denied climate

science, or at least wants to include other tngs besides climate science that says the sea level is rising. obthis is going to be a m that gets worse, right? >> right, right. and, i mean, climsate scienti are saying that the kind of storms that we're seeing-- ther harveys, the fces, the marias-- they are going to be more common. we're going to see these ronger storms developing more quickly. we're going to see them acting in ways, you know, we haven't normally seen them, you know, kind of standing ovetes for days or weeks at a time,ly poss so, i mean, you're going to see a lot of different change changm hurricanesa lot of the states just aren't prepared for >> sreenivasan: all right, talia buford from pro publica, thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you.as >> sreen: learn how to track the damage from florence at pbs.org/newshour. er >> sreenivasan: an journalism is facing a dilemma. it can't make enough money from advertising and subscriptions to sustain itself. as a result, local reporting-- long a pillar keeping thmmunities informed and holding e in power accountable- is in short supply in cities and

towns across the country. but there's a startu thinks it has a solution; it requires a whole new way of funding journalism, and it doesn't involve what weio traditnally think of as money. >> sreenivasan: reporter mauricio p working on a story about rising property taxes in a predominantly hispanic neighborhood in chicago. >> estoy tratando de hacer una historia sobre..an >> sreenivasthis neighborhood is peña's beat. he works for a new website cacalled "block club c." it's focused on telling hyper- ve kind of disinvested orrs have, no longer have t boots on the ground reporting that we are doing here. and when you don't have that a lot of things get overlooked. >> sreenivasan: peñaright. investing in local journalism like this is increasingly rare. he used to a work for a hyper- local news network calledna info. the owner shut it down abruptly last november saying that even though the network, which included a website called gothamist in new york, had 15

million visits a month online, it wasn't economically successful. >> our owner just made a decision that it wasn't working out. >> sreenivasan: shamus toomey was the managing editor of dna info in chicago. , ter the site was shutter and two other dna info editors co-foued block club chicago. >> we can guarantee that at least the oldna info audience will be interested in us. will they pay for us? it's up to us to figure that out. >> sreenivasan: block club go is a non-profit news site. it's relying on subscriptions for funding from readers. it also got a boost from a cro kickstarter.aign on but toomey and his co-founders also decided to t something more radical. they're partnering with a new york-based starcup called the ivil media company, which is building a network, or platform, for inpendent news ganizations, including a new model for funding jonalism using a technology called blockchain. if you've heard of blockchain at all, it's probably because that's what is under the hood of bitcoin. bitcoin is the cryptocurrency

whose value has swung wildly, making and losing a lot of money for a lot of people. in its simplest form, a blockchain is a giant digital ledger that keeps ack of transactions. the records aren't stored in any one place, but across independent computers anywhere in wothe rld. meaning, its supporters say, it's permanent and nearly impossible to hack. civil is trying to harness that same technology for journalism, including creating i own cryptocurrency to help journalists get paid for thei work. >> this isn't some kind of, your know, cy speculation. this is actually about supporting journalism. >> sreenivasan: vivian schiller is the c.e.o. of the civil foundation, which is a nm - profit ar the civil media company, and she's also a former executive atthe new york mes," "n.p.r.," and twitter. >> we're facing twin crises in journalism around the world. on the one hand there is a growing trust gap. there- is ople are farther and farther apart in terms of what hesources of information believe.

on the other hand there's also a financial sustainability gap. at civil what we're trying to do is get out solutions to both of those crises. >> sreenivasan: what does the blockchain have to do with those solutions? >> so, blockchain brings along with it a new kind of economics. at civil we are issuing a cryptocurrency calle"a cvl." >> sreenivasan: this week, civil is offering 34 million of those cvl tokens of its cryptocurncy to the public, which will eventually be traded on exchanges. just like bitcoin, the price of each cvl will fluctuate depeing on demand. the company is aiming to raise $8-millio and civil is setting an upper limit at $24-million to discourage peecople from ating. the money will be used by the civil foundation to fund grants to journalism projects. in addition to raising cash, the goal is for the civil token to tie tonigether a com of people creating and supporting journalism in the civil network. >> we encoursue everyone to ort a news organization in any way they see fit. if they're using a credit card

r u.s. currency that's fine. but on the additional ways that people can support news orgizations that just have not been accessible or available before. for instance micropayment or microtipping. >> sreenivasan: right now, if o tip a website, say, a quarter for an article you read, the site would lose money on the credit card aansaction fene. >> once you're in a crypto- economic world there are no transaction fees. there's no middleman. and they can make those donations directly to that news organization. you know, they can give them as little as a few cents to as much as they want.>> reenivasan: the civil token also plays a part in how the network governs itself. >> with your tokesans you have a in who is and isn't on the platform. >> sreenivasan: tokens enable the owner to do a few different things. with a wt least $1,0th of tokens, anyone can start a civil newsroom of thei aown. tokens ao used to challenge a newsroom if someone believes it violates basic

standards of journalism as outlined in a constitution the civil foundation has created. token ownershen vote, using eir tokens as proxies, on whether the offending newsroom should be removed from the network. >> that could be a lede tomorrow. >>an sreenivcivil provided a grant to block club chicago in cash a in civil tokens. editor shamus toomey knows the tokens aren't going to make block club chicago rich ovefurnight, but he is ho that the civil token can be part ofl. sustainable business mo >> i've been in this news business a long time and every place i've er worked we eventually end up in the sort of the same position of we just don't have enough money. soac the idea of going to a that had a new model a new idea, that was huge. you know, it's a gamble at this point. you know, we're trying to figure thn is oute fly. you know, we're hoping that this is going to be the one that's gonna really solve the puzzle. >> sreenivasan: in addition to block club chicago, there are mor de thanen newsrooms that have also received start-up grants from civil, partially in the form of cryptocurrency.

the startups range from local news outfits like the "colorado sun." it's founded by journalists who worked at the "denver post," a newspaper that has been decimated through layoffs. there are also top-focused newsrooms that report stories about, for example, money in politics, immigration, and even more narrow niches like the cannabis industry. it's also not just print media. >> welcome to season two of "zigzag. " i'm manoush zomorodi. >> sreenivasan: manoush zomorodi and jen poyant are co-founders of a new dcast company in ooklyn, new york. their first show is called zigzag, which explores, in part, how civil will work.y >>founder and i, we left our stliable pradio jobs to join an experiment using blockchain in an attempt to save journalism. what is blockchain? how is it going to save journalism? we didn't know. so we thought... >> sreenivasan: so you pth yourself in e middle of it. >> exactly. that should be the show. >> sreenivasan: for zomorodi, who previously produced and hosted "he podcast "te to self" for new york public radio,

civil is both an experiment and an incredible story. >> so this was an opportunity to be in at the ground up to. d don't have the tech chops to help bu, but i can give feedback about what the humans think of the actual use of it. and for a journalist to be parte of a ial solution, i think that's where we are right now in this country. you can't just report on it. you have to figure out how you fix it. >> sreenivasan: so what happens after these tokens go out into the world? >> well i don't know. i mean we're not banking on it. to me, they give us an amazing story to tell. this is the best story i've ever covered in my life and i happen to be in it. if it goes well, it's unbelievable. if it doesn't, it's fascinating and... >> sreenivasan: it's still a good story. >> oh, yeah, and i have a front row seat. this is an amazing opportunity for me as a journalist. >> this is "pbs newshour

weekend," saturday. >> sreenivasan: the rwandan government granted early release to more than 2,000 prisoners today, including opposition leader victoire ingabire. ingabnire was arrested in 2010 charges of undermining the government andenying the 1994 rwandan genocide, charges she denied. human rights tch says that she was more likely imprisoned for criticizing the gernment befoe the 2010 election. human rights groups say rwands president paul kagame regularly silences political dissent by jailing his critics. ten years ago today the investment banking firm lehman brothers filed itr bankruptcy. as a tipping point in what became a global recession. four days after its fenkruptcy the ral government declined to bail out the country's fourth largest investment bank. there were protests today in europe, including one in frankfurt germany outside the stock exchange. about 100 aceful demonstrators

held signs and pelted bull and bear statues with paint in an anti-globalization protest. nasa launched a new satellite early this morning designed to measure changes in the earth's ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice. the rocket carrying th"ice, cloud and land elevation satellite 2" lifted off from vandenberg air force base in california. nasa's earth science division says the $1-billiomission will provide new data on how ice melt in greenland and antarctica is contributing to the rise of global sea levels. thch was the 100th and final flight of the delta two rocket. it is world clean up day. first started inia ten years ago, the event now takes place across the globe. in lebanon volunteers picked up litter along beaches. ina's prime minister narendra modi helped sweep and clean up trash at a new delhi school. and in nigeria volunteers picked up plastics at a beach in lagos which were packed and shipped to recycling companie

>> sreenivasan: join us tomorrow for updates on the deadly weather here and in asia as rescue workers in the philippines continue to try to reach remote areas. anard in china, prions are underway as the typhoon approaches. that's all for this ition of "pbs newshour weekend." i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. have a good ght. cay ptioning sponsoredet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by:

d irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of ameca-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional suppo has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs e station from viewers lu. thank you. be more. pbs. be more.

anteriormente en "desperate housewiwes"... re the women who dub "desperate housewives" into spanish. [ moaning ] "desperate actresses." i nevey wanted to play anosties or drug dealers or maids. okay, people, i need a job! "voces" was made possible in part aby the nional endowment for the arts -- art works, the national association of latino arts and culture, and by the corporation for public broadcasting.