‘We probably lost everything.’ Storm photos show extensive flooding in Monterey County town
As a new atmospheric river storm hit the Central Coast, workers hauled truckloads of rocks Tuesday to plug a levee failure that flooded a Monterey County farm community and forced thousands of people from their homes.
The town of Pajaro near Watsonville was inundated with floodwaters when the aging levee was breached during Friday’s storm.
At one end of the muddy Pajaro River’s ruptured levee, the long arm of a yellow earth-moving machine pressed rocks into place Tuesday before big boulders were brought in to fill the gap.
The levee breach grew to at least 400 feet since the failure late Friday, officials said. More than 8,500 people were forced to evacuate, and about 50 people were rescued as the water rose that night.
Pajaro, an unincorporated community known for its strawberry crops, was largely flooded. Some residents of the largely Latino farmworker community stayed. Others went to an emergency shelter where they wondered what became of their homes.
“We live seven houses away from the river and the water level was 6 feet high, 7 probably,” said evacuee Andres Garcia. “So we probably lost everything.”
A second 100-foot breach in the levee opened closer to the Pacific coast, providing a “relief valve” for floodwaters to recede near the mouth of the river, officials said at a news conference Monday.
Built in the late 1940s to provide flood protection, the levee was a known risk for decades and had several breaches in the 1990s. Emergency repairs to a section of the berm were undertaken in January. A $400 million rebuild is set to begin in the next few years.
The river separates Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. Highway 1, a main link between the two counties, was closed along with several other roads.
Monterey County officials also warned that the Salinas River could cause significant flooding, cutting off the city of Monterey and the rest of the peninsula.
Here’s a look at images from the flooding:
This story was originally published March 14, 2023 at 12:50 PM.
