A levee failure on the Pajaro River in Monterey County overnight triggered massive flooding and prompted hundreds of evacuations and dozens of water rescues as the latest atmospheric river storm pummeled large swaths of California.
The levee — three miles upstream from the town of Pajaro — breached late Friday night, said Nicholas Pasculli, a Monterey County spokesperson. Patrols noticed boils “bubbling up in the adjacent farmland” at 11 p.m., the first sign that there was a problem.
Thirty minutes later, the levee failed, Pasculli said. As of Saturday morning, he said, “the failure is approximately 100 feet wide.” The town of Pajaro, made up of mostly farmworkers, is under water, he said.
Authorities conducted 60 rescues overnight, which included the use of high-water vehicles, the sheriff’s diving team, as well as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s swift-water team, officials said. National Guard personnel were dispatched to assist there. At least 96 people were placed in county shelters.
Teams will be going in Saturday morning to assess the depth and extent of the flooding. In addition, Pasculli said, the state would be sending helicopters loaded with fill material, which they’ll drop, to help “plug the hole” in the levee.
Pajaro, a small town of about 1,700 people, weathered the last set of storms because a flood wall in the lower part of the levee held up, said Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo said.
“We had avoided just barely, by the grace of God, the flooding of the community,” Alejo said.
On Friday afternoon, residents were ordered to evacuate but some didn’t, Alejo said, because they “were hoping that the worst would not happen because the levee did not breech during the last set of storms.”
Monterey County sheriff’s officials, Watsonville police and the California Highway Patrol conducted a second round of evacuation notices around 11:30 p.m. Friday.
Alejo said he’s reached out to President Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom to invite them to visit Pajaro. He said it will take months for residents to repair homes and that the town will need significant help to recover.
“This is a disadvantaged community that often doesn’t get the attention it deserves,” Alejo said. “These are our friends, our neighbors, these are people that we really care about and we know that they’re going to go through some tremendous hardship over the next several months.”
Elsewhere in Monterey County, the Salinas River flooded around the community of San Ardo prompting overnight evacuation orders.
Rain is expected to continue in the county Saturday, with possibly up to half an inch falling along the coast, said Cindy Kobold, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. A tenth to a quarter of an inch is expected for northern portions of the county from the morning into the night.
Efforts associated with the levee break, Kobold said, are “going to be further hampered by incoming weather.”
Another atmospheric river event is expected to hit the area early next week.
“This next atmospheric river event is not looking like it’s going to be as strong, but when you have a flood on top of a flood, it just makes a bigger flood,” Kobold said. “That means this next one could be more impactful because the ground is way overly saturated and we’re going to have additional rainfall, with gusty winds.”
In neighboring Santa Cruz County on Friday, a woman was caught in a flood-prone area of Watsonville, where waters had risen to 8 feet. By the time swift water divers from California State Parks got to her, she was standing on top of a full-sized pickup truck with water up to her thighs, said Gabe McKenna, a spokesman for state parks.
Rescuers swam out on paddle boats, put her in a PFD, secured her on one of the boards, and swam her 100 feet to shore, McKenna said. The parks have nine swift water divers who are currently situated around Santa Clara County in high-risk areas ready to deploy.
“I think we’re supposed to be dying down in the rain a little bit with another one coming in a couple days,” McKenna said. “So we’re trying to anticipate these and be prepared and have the staffing available wherever situations do occur.”
Kobold, with the National Weather Service, urged residents to “turn around, don’t drown.” Some areas were so hard hit that it could be difficult to gauge the depth of water on roadways.
“It might seem like it’s only 6 inches deep, but if that road is washed away and there’s erosion below that, it’s possible that it could be 6 to 12 inches or deeper and you could get into a very dangerous situation,” she said.
Further north, in Butte County, a swiftwater rescue team helped two people stranded on an island in the Feather River in Oroville. Releases from the Lake Oroville Dam caused water to rise downstream and trapped them.
Flash flood warnings are in effect for parts of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Monterey, Tulare, Sonoma, Fresno, Madera and Mariposa counties, according to the National Weather Service. At least two recent deaths have been confirmed as storm-related, officials said.
Major flooding was reported in Tulare County’s Springville area — where officials conducted dozens of water rescues Friday morning — and in Kernville, where the roaring Kern River surrounded some houses and mobile homes, spurring evacuations.
Highway 99, one of the state’s main north-south thoroughfares, is closed for a four-mile stretch in Tulare County just north of the Kern County line due to flooding in the area, according to the California Department of Transportation. A detour is available. A portion of Highway 1 near Big Sur in Monterey County remained closed.
The chief concern now is the threat of thunderstorms in Saturday afternoon, said Gerald Meadows, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford. The greatest risk, he said, is from the southern edge of Tulare County and northern edge of Kern County, all the way north through the San Joaquin Valley.
“We can see winds in excess of 45 miles an hour gusts out of any thunderstorm or increased rainfall potential,” Meadows said. “It’s just going to exacerbate any flooding issues that we’re already seeing.”
A tenth to a quarter of an inch of rain is expected in the valley, with a quarter inch to a half inch of precipitation in the Sierra Foothills and higher terrain, according to Meadows.
Although the bulk of precipitation fell in the last 36 hours, Meadows said Saturday morning, “we do have another event on the horizon coming in early next week that’s going to bring in a considerable amount of precipitation.”
While it won’t be as much as the one that moved through Friday, he said, “with a little bit higher snow levels or snow melt range expected we can see as much, if not more, flooding impacts.”
“One of the big messages we want to get across for the folks in the San Joaquin Valley especially, as well as the Sierra foothills, is though it’s clearing up and it’s not raining very hard right now, we’re not through this just yet,” Meadows said. “The impacts are going to increase and the thunderstorms can change the situation pretty rapidly.”
Rain in Southern California was light during the day Saturday, but was expected to pick up again starting Monday evening, according to the National Weather Service.
Two-day precipitation levels in Los Angeles were around one inch in coastal and central areas, reaching as high as 2.74 inches in the Opids Camp area of the Angeles National Forest, as of 6 a.m. Saturday.
About an inch of precipitation had fallen in the past two days around Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead, most of it rain as temperatures stayed above freezing, according to the weather service. The San Bernardino Mountains have been pummeled by recent back-to-back storms that have blanketed the region with record snowfall, trapping some residents, closing roads and making it difficult for rescue workers to get food and other supplies to those in need of help.
Times staff writer Rust reported from Pajaro; Mejia and Dillon reported from Los Angeles.
Susanne Rust, Brittny Mejia, Liam Dillon
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