Storm flooded Cambria facilities office with 4 feet of water, leaving staff homeless
As North Coast homeowners clean up flood damage from a powerful January storm, one local agency is doing the same.
Cambria Community Services District supervisor John Allchin got a shock early Jan. 28 morning when he visited the district’s Facilities and Resources Department office on Rodeo Grounds Road and found four feet of water there.
Santa Rosa Creek had overflowed again.
“We needed fuel for the equipment,” Allchin, who heads the district’s Wastewater Department, explained via email. He was fortunately “able to access the tank,” he said. “It was very dark so we could only see the water.”
Carlos Mendoza, supervisor of the district’s Facilities and Resources Department, and his crew had prepped for the storm Jan. 2, relying on their historical knowledge of past floods and warnings about the incoming storm, according to CSD general manager John Weigold.
Before the rain hit, Mendoza and his crew hung power equipment such as weed eaters and chain saws from the walls or the ceiling, he said, and put all their important documents, computers and printers on top of desks or other high points.
Because they also moved major equipment such as tractors out of harm’s way, Mendoza said, “we didn’t lose any of it, just one old 1999 (Ford) F-150 (truck) that was due for replacement and a paint storage shed” in which most of the tightly sealed paint survived. The pickup truck was damaged beyond repair.
However, the office did suffer some flood damage, as Mendoza and crew members Alberto Novas and Martin Garcia discovered.
By the time they arrived at Rodeo Grounds Road, the water level had receded somewhat, leaving behind gloppy mud and debris including branches and tree trunks.
While that space is cleaned up, the department is operating out of the small side offices of Cambria’s Veterans Memorial Building, Mendoza said. “We’re out in the field most of the time anyway, so all we really need for now is a place for the computer and the printer.”
He said he didn’t know how long it would take for things to be back to normal. Once the flood remediation company completes its work, gutting the offices and taking out anything that was wet and damaged, the decision of reopening goes to the CSD board.
According to Mendoza, the office has flooded before — including once during San Luis Obispo County’s landmark flood of 1995.
He said repairs were made after that inundation and his department, which manages and maintains district buildings and properties including the 430-acre oceanfront Fiscalini Ranch Preserve, moved into its current creekside facilities six or seven years ago.
The district’s Facilities and Resources Department played a crucial role in late December 2020 in the removal of an illegal encampment on the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve’s East Ranch area near Highway 1 and the creek.
“That whole area wound up flooding,” Mendoza said, was “under a foot to a foot-and-a-half of water, and all that stuff (that had been in the camp) would have wound up in the creek. We were able to get everybody out of there ahead of time, so nobody got hurt.”
Cambria residents clean up homes after flooding
Meanwhile, local homeowners were mopping up the mess left behind by the late January storm, which dumped as much as 18 inches of rain in parts of San Luis Obispo County.
Ingrid and Andrew Turrey, owners of Pacific Hair Salon in Cambria, watched rain spill into their Lodge Hill home early Jan. 27 after fierce winds lifted the edge of the house’s roof. Water flooded their upstairs bedroom, and proceeded to soak everything else.
Ingrid Turrey said Feb. 4 that she and her husband had packed up the contents of their house, which had been drenched top to bottom by rainwater. They were expecting information from their insurance company and delivery of a storage pod the following day.
“We’re in a holding pattern at the moment,” she said, adding, “this is just a little hiccup.”
Homes in Cambria’s Sherwood Drive neighborhood were also inundated during the storm.
Diane Tappey’s house sustained widespread water damage Jan. 28 after debris from the storm blocked a public drain, resulting in flooding.
“Jack Della Bitta and his crew have dug out the courtyard, ripped all the carpeting out, cleaned out my garage and replaced the things in it,” Tappey said Feb. 4.
They also “added house furniture, came to take out two downed trees that lay in my front yard on (Jan. 30) and have cleaned out a drain that was full of mud,” she said.
Tappey told The Tribune on Jan. 28 that she’ll likely have to replace her carpets and wood flooring, as well as thoroughly clean the oriental rugs she has in her home.
On Feb. 4, she said she had no idea what the repairs were going to cost. “I’m okay,” she said, “but it’s a nightmare!”
This story was originally published February 5, 2021 at 1:43 PM.
