‘Long, Slow Journey’ for Monterey County, Calif., Recovery

Read Time:5 Minute, 27 Second

(TNS) – This weekend will mark a grim milestone for the community of Pajaro. It was one year ago March 11 when heavy rains caused the Pajaro River levee to breach shortly after midnight which resulted in extensive flooding throughout Pajaro, residents evacuated, homes damaged and agricultural fields experiencing severe financial losses.

That anniversary was the subject of Monterey County’s latest weekly virtual news briefing Wednesday which reflected on the past year and the work that remains to be done in Pajaro as the community moves further into recovery mode.

“It has been a very long year for people who were affected by the disaster and people who were supporting the community during the disaster,” said Maia Carroll, Monterey County’s public information officer. “We want to take this opportunity to take a look at the timeline, look at the year in review and how this community is going to recover.”

Kelsey Scanlon, Monterey County’s director of emergency management, reviewed how the county responded to the flood in the days and months afterward. For the 68-day incident period, the county had four local emergency proclamations issued, two emergency operations centers activated and more than 200 disaster service workers deployed. The county’s response operations included flood fighting, evacuations, rescues, drone deployments, care and shelter services, distributing commodities, removing debris, setting up hygiene hubs and assessing damage.

Throughout the county, Scanlon said approximately 10,000 people were evacuated and 300 people were rescued from floodwaters. No fatalities were reported, although she said one firefighter was injured.

During the evacuations, the county opened five emergency shelters — including at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds in Watsonville — which brought in more than 600 individuals who were sheltered over the course of 65 days.

Scanlon said the impacts to the community were extensive. These included increased demand for social services, health risks resulting from contaminated soils and the accumulation of mold, erosion depriving the soils of nutrients, the disruption of sewage and clean drinking water, $600 million in damages to the agricultural industry and $30 million in damages to businesses and commercial structures, including the Pajaro Branch Library, Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, historic water tower and Pajaro Middle School , whose students have been attending classes at Lakeview Middle School in Watsonville for the time being.

During the floods, 446 properties were damaged, including 240 single-family residences, 42 multi-family residences, 81 commercial buildings and 76 mixed-use or minor structures. Seven single-family residences had also been destroyed.

“Though heartbreaking for those seven families, I expected this number to actually be higher as we went into the damage assessments,” said Scanlon. “I don’t want to diminish the significance of what damaged means as well, the fact that 240 single-family residence structures and 42 multi-family residential structures based on FEMA standards for flood categories does not fully encompass the total amount of damages that this community experienced. Far more than 446 structures were impacted by some amount of flood damage.”

In addition to its congregate shelters, Scanlon said the county offered a non-congregate shelter program where 265 evacuees from 76 households stayed in hotel rooms and received services as they transitioned back into their own homes.

Scanlon also discussed the long-term recovery plan. In July, the county established the Pajaro Revitalization Committee to develop an inclusive community-led recovery plan for Pajaro and strengthen its preparedness for future disasters.

“In this transition from short-term recovery to long-term recovery, we could develop projects and programs that would accommodate that community vision,” she said.

The county also received $20 million through Assembly Bill 102, the state budget bill authored by Assemblyman Phil Ting, to go toward long-term recovery planning for Pajaro. Over the next five months, the county will work on allocating the money to different departments, developing memoranda of understanding with public agencies, issuing requests for proposals for preparedness contractors and working with fiscal agents to design a community-based grant program.

Other current work has consisted of rolling out FEMA’s Individual and Households and Small Business assistance programs. While not mentioned in the briefing, local elected officials entered into an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in November to expedite a systemwide levee rebuild that will begin work later in the year.

Glenn Church, who represents Pajaro on the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, said the community has experienced decades of neglect, especially with several flooding incidents before last year.

“It’s a community of working people that were economically stressed before this disaster, so this just added to it,” he said. “While we can’t really address all this neglect, right now, I’m really hopeful when I look at what we’re proposing, what we’ve done, what is coming down in the future. In the near future and the long term, this community is gonna come back and be something stronger than what it was.”

Earlier Wednesday, North Monterey County experienced another major flooding incident when areas of Prunedale and northern Salinas were inundated with flash floods. Scanlon said the North County Fire Protection District has conducted a half dozen water rescues and a temporary evacuation center has been set up at the Prunedale Branch Library with an American Red Cross representative on site to connect residents to sheltering services.

These events may provide a sense of deja vu for North Monterey County residents leading into the anniversary of the levee breach, but if there was any takeaway from the briefing, it was Scanlon’s comments on how Pajaro is a resilient community.

“I know very much that it has been a very long, slow journey these past almost 365 days since the levee broke,” she said. “Our office is acutely aware of the trauma that comes along with any disaster but mostly in our highly vulnerable populations, and I think one of the things that we have really learned over the past year is that resilience is something that requires a grassroots commitment. The Pajaro community is committed to increasing their own resilience, and that’s something that we’re here to facilitate at the request and in support of their vision.”

___