California residents struggle to recover after weeks of storms

Ashley Harper was looking forward to ringing in the new year surrounded by friends and family at her home in the northern city of Soquel. Californiaon the west coast of the USA.

But as the successive storms As they blanketed the state in heavy rain, Harper began to worry. The normally peaceful stream next to his house had begun to rise.

“I woke up one day and thought, ‘Wow, that creek is really high and it’s going up really fast,’” he told Al Jazeera during a recent phone call.

Soon, a fence bordering his property collapsed, and within 20 minutes, his entire backyard was filled with water. In the struggle to leave, he lost his car in the floods. Some of the buildings on the property remain filled with mud and mud to this day, as persistent rains forced them to evacuate three more times.

Harper is one of millions of California residents who continue to deal with the effects of a historic storm system that dropped record amounts of rain on places like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Now, after three straight weeks of narrow, intense storms, known as “atmospheric rivers,” cleanup efforts have begun across the state. High winds and torrential rains have left roads crooked and power lines down. Many areas remain vulnerable to flooding and landslides.

Experts warn that the storms could ultimately cost the state billions in damage. US President Joe Biden plans to visit the state on Thursday after issuing an emergency declaration last week.

“Luckily it’s sunny today and it’s not supposed to rain again,” Harper said. “But we are still trying to fix things. We’ve had to clean everything ourselves and just got to our garage floor last Friday. Another building is so full of mud that we can barely open the door.”

And cleaning your house is just the beginning. Harper and her family still have to sort out their flood insurance, catch up on their jobs and find a place to move the huge piles of mud scattered across their property.

“What do we do with all this mud?” Harper asked. “Luckily we are all safe, but the cleanup has been a disaster.”

Evacuation orders lifted but dangers persist

About 93 miles (150 km) north of Los Angeles, the coastal city of Santa Barbara received almost 90 percent of its annual average rainfall in less than two weeks, with thousands of people evacuated due to the risk of landslides. and neighborhoods inundated with water up to the waist.

While the weather is expected to moderate, county officials urge residents to continue to exercise caution.

“All evacuation orders have been lifted, but there are still some areas where road access is an issue,” said Kelsey Buttitta, a county spokeswoman. “Many roads were covered in mud and stones. It will take some time to get things rolling and moving again.”

The dangerous conditions have led to a series of dramatic rescue efforts. Scott Safechuck, a spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, said more than 100 water rescues have been carried out in recent weeks as residents were pulled from their homes and vehicles trapped in rising waters.

On Monday, emergency services rescued two people who capsized their kayak off shore amid turbulent ocean conditions.

“One person was exhausted and clearly overwhelmed when rescue swimmers reached her,” Safechuck said. “During a time of extreme weather, it’s important to think things through. Something that could normally be routine can become very dangerous.”

Treacherous paths lead to cliffside rescue

California Highway Patrol Officer Chris Murphy saw firsthand how a routine trip can turn into a life-threatening event. On Friday, he was serving the Santa Cruz area, just south of San Francisco Bay, when he was alerted by emergency dispatcher to reports of motorists stuck in a “ditch.”

“It had been a pretty active week with power lines, trees and mudslides,” Murphy recalled. He wondered what the urgency was: if the car was in a ditch, why didn’t the passengers get out?

“When I got there, it was clearly more than a ditch. It was a very deep ravine and there was water flowing from all directions,” she said. He estimates the drop was 100 feet (30.5 meters) downward and the vehicle was teetering on the edge.

Three people were trapped inside, and Murphy feared the car would break loose, roll to the side, and land “on its roof at the bottom of the ravine.” He believes “unpredictable weather” was responsible for the situation: the driver was familiar with mountain roads and had not been speeding.

“The rain was so heavy it could have obscured his vision,” Murphy said. When he opened the car door, he found the driver in a panic. “I still had the car running and my foot on the brake. She was completely frozen. She was afraid to move because she didn’t want the car to risk rolling forward.”

After calming the driver down, he instructed her to slowly lift her foot off the brake. Satisfied that the car was not going to topple over, Murphy helped the driver and passengers to safety. He encourages other drivers to be aware of their surroundings in the coming weeks.

“There are a lot of roads that aren’t open yet, that they’re still trying to clean up,” Murphy said, noting ongoing problems with sewers and other hazards. “It’s going to take quite a long time to fix those roads, especially in areas where they washed out, which are usually quite hilly.”

Mudslides force evacuation of homes and train

Mudslides also continue to threaten the state, and passengers were forced to evacuate a westbound train passing through Niles Canyon, just east of the San Francisco Bay Area, Tuesday after a mudslide 30.5 meters (100 feet) will block the tracks.

Just a day earlier, about 30 miles (40 km) north of Berkeley Hills, another mudslide tore through the Park Hills neighborhood, forcing evacuations.

Berkeley City Councilwoman Susan Wengraf had received a call around 7:30 a.m. from the city manager, alerting her to what was happening. When she reached the quiet cul-de-sac of Middlefield Road, she discovered a mud wall more than 10 feet (3 meters) high, leaning against the north end of a one-story ranch-style house.

The mud had gone through the wall where the dining room and kitchen were. While talking to the residents there, Wengraf learned that the morning had started out like any other.

The owner of the house, he said, “went to the kitchen to make coffee. And he felt that the room was darker than usual. And he looked to the north and he saw that the whole wall was broken and there was mud right there. They hadn’t heard anything, he told Wengraf. They had not felt any tremors. It was a complete surprise.

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“They were both pretty shaken up,” Wengraf said of the owner and his wife. The city of Berkeley had to put a “red tag” on the home, preventing the couple from re-entering.

“Until last night, it was still considered an active landslide. Clearly the water was still moving up the hillside,” Wengraf explained.