Authorities ordered residents in the California farming town of Pajaro to evacuate early Saturday after a nearby river swollen by recent torrential rains breached its levee.
(Bloomberg) — Authorities ordered residents in the California farming town of Pajaro to evacuate early Saturday after a nearby river swollen by recent torrential rains breached its levee.
The California National Guard and first responders rescued more than 50 people overnight near the Pajaro River, which topped its banks in Monterey County in Central California. A video posted by the Cal Guard showed stranded cars nearly covered by floodwaters as one driver was pulled from their vehicle.
The devastating flooding comes after a winter storm pounded California with intense rain, high winds and heavy snow that closed roads, triggered evacuations, toppled power lines and caused at least two deaths. The first of two back-to-back storms — atmospheric rivers that draw warm, moist air from far out over the ocean — struck as California struggles to recover from months of extreme weather.
“We need all the help we can get from our state and federal leaders to assist our families through this devastating hardship,” Luis Alejo, chair of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, wrote in a Twitter post Saturday. “This matter is urgent!”
Pictures posted by Alejo on Twitter showed flooded streets and businesses in Pajaro, which has about 3,000 residents.
At the request of California Governor Gavin Newsom, President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency on Friday due to the severe winter storms, flooding and landslides.
Some 9,400 Californians were forced to flee their homes in flood-prone areas as of midday Friday, Nancy Ward, director of the state’s Office of Emergency Services, told reporters in a briefing. Many more people are under evacuation warnings. Two deaths have been blamed on the storm already, she said, without elaborating.
Nearly 40,000 homes and business were without power across the state on Saturday with most of the outages occurring in Monterey County, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks utility power cuts.
Emergency officials warned residents to stay off roads in storm-damaged areas and to be on the lookout for flash flooding. The California Department of Transportation said it had deployed 4,000 workers on 12-hour shifts to clear roadways.
Another atmospheric river forecast to hit the state early next week will bring additional heavy rain and cause snowmelt at lower elevations that may lead to more widespread flooding, the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said. At least 13 California rivers were forecast to reach flood stage with the additional rain and snowmelt, according to the California Nevada River Forecast Center.
Up to three feet of additional snow could fall in parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains by Wednesday, where some residents have had to dig out of their snow-entombed homes. The weather service warned late Friday of higher risks of roofs collapsing in the Lake Tahoe resort area from “dangerous roofalanches” as heavy snow piles up on buildings and mountain cabins.
–With assistance from David R. Baker.
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