Deliver tools for self. March on the water.
It looks like a bomb went off there.
Imagine the biggest storm you've ever
been through. He had the chainsaw
his way out his front door.
Cold hard rain has local
creeks and rivers running high.
All this came underneath the doors.
What if the rain didn't stop?
A levee breaks your neighborhood
starts taking on water.
In Sacramento
region alone, there's over
514,000 people that are
protected by these levies.
Studies suggest that Sacramento
is actually one of the top
ten in the nation most at
risk for flooding due to rivers.
The most intense atmospheric
river storms are likely to become
significantly more intense.
And certainly this spillway
incident was one of those
instances where did not have time.
Are we prepared?
This is megaflood.
Atmospheric rivers,
which are intensified by climate change,
account for more than 90% of
flood damages in California.
These storms present the
biggest threat to our low lying
areas that sit below levees,
which keep water away from people.
The place. So this is where flood
response across the state is coordinated.
Liz Bryson is the manager of
flood operations at the California
Department of Water Resources.
Liz and DWR lead the state's
flood response when activated.
People packed this relatively small and
unassuming room right here in Sacramento.
One big part of what we do during
high water is facilitate discussions
between reservoir operators,
because those releases into
the rivers could have.
Major impacts downstream.
So we want to make sure that all
the appropriate agencies are in
the conversation and so they're
not just making decisions in silos.
Emergencies begin and end at the
local level, and so when a local
agency runs out of resources,
they move up to the county,
and the county runs out of resources,
they come up to the state level.
So the flood Operation Center
coordinates and supports that response.
The flood OPS Center was most
recently activated in 2019.
For four days in 2017,
the center was active for 151.
That was the year of the Oroville Dam crisis.
Nearly 200,000 people living downstream
from the dam were told to leave their homes.
It was a crisis Butte County
Sheriff Corey honey remembers well.
There's been an ongoing effort to try
to get people to understand that we
don't issue these warnings lightly.
They're based on the best
information we have at the time.
They're based on our experience with
these kinds of events and ask that
they heed those warnings and move
to an area where they're much safer.
One of the things that we were learned
is that the most effective way to get
somebody to evacuates for a uniformed
law enforcement officer to go to their house,
knock on their door,
tell them of the emergency,
and tell them what they need to do.
Um, but sometimes you don't
have the time for that.
And certainly the spillway incident was one
of those instances where did not have time.
In 2017, Sheriff Honey personally
called David and Mariana Rodriguez
to tell them to leave their home.
I said all right, well we're going
to get out of here fast as I can.
And I know a bunch of back roads do
you want through our culture roads?
So it was able to get me pretty fast to the
Nice landing area until we hit that area.
So everybody was trying to
go out to either Woodland,
Colusa different areas.
So once a nice landing to woodland,
it took me about 2 hours to
get into woodland.
Should be only about 20 minute drive.
They opted to take the back roads instead
of the major thoroughfares, something not
recommended should flooding occur.
Are there designated flood evacuation routes?
There absolutely are designated flood
emergency routes from every community
in Sacramento County and San Joaquin
County and up and down the valley.
John Kane with River Partners works
to restore natural floodplains and
bolster defenses that protect flat,
low lying areas in the
Sacramento and central valleys.
What building and the
floodplains does behind a levee?
Below a dam, it puts a whole bunch
of people at harm's in harm's way
and enriches some developer that
put houses in the floodplain.
They're not paying for the dam,
they're they're delivering a bill,
almost certainly to future generations,
to have to pay for that foolish development.
Following the Hurricane Katrina
disaster in Louisiana,
officials put a building moratorium on
Sacramento's Natomas neighborhood until
2015 over concerns the levees were
not strong enough to help hold back
the American and Sacramento rivers.
The levee system was,
and still is being upgraded to
better withstand heavy storms.
What's really important is everybody
understands what the evacuation route is,
and it's particularly important
for residents to know where
to go and where not to go.
Sometimes people think all I
got to do is get out of town.
Well, you could be driving
right into the flood.
These renderings from Sacramento County
show the evacuation route should a levee
fail in South Natomas as large portions
of the area would be underwater in hours.
If a levee broke in the
area around Old Sacramento,
most of downtown and the pocket would
be under 16 feet of water within a day.
As we live and continue to build and
flat low lying cities in the valley,
it's important to know your
way out should disaster hit.
Your best defense against
flooding is to be prepared.
Brendan, we aired this piece in
December before any of these storms.
I mean, we really got a taste of
what this can do to our area and
what it can mean for our area.
Yeah. And with this intense string of
atmospheric rivers that we've had,
we just wanted to show how big the
impact of 1 levy failure could have.
So let's take natomas, for example.
People living there would only have
a few hours to get out of their
homes if a levee were to break.
This levee helps protect neighborhoods
in South Natomas from being underwater.
It's located near Discovery
Park on the American River.
The levees here are maintained by
Reclamation District 1000 and they
rely on decades old pumps to help push
water back up and over the embankments.
If the levy were to buckle in this area,
residents would only have about 2
hours to start evacuating before
major roads like El Camino Ave.
become impassable.
In that time,
neighborhoods along Garden Highway
could already have a foot of water in
their living rooms and their backyards.
Within six hours,
the floodwater would rise even more,
forcing major highways like I5I-80 and Hwy.
99 to close.
Effectively cutting the state in half,
both north to South and east to West.
The Sacramento International Airport
would have to close down to with
standing water on the tarmac.
This alone would have massive economic
impacts on the entire state of California.
At its peak,
there could even be between 15 and
20 feet of standing water in the
most populated parts of Natomas,
which is enough to at least
partially submerge A2 story house.
About 130,000 people live in
this part of Sacramento alone.
It's a huge reason why Sacramento
County has some of the highest
flood risk of any major city.
In the United States.
And on a smaller scale,
I mean we did see this in Wilton.
I saw some of those breaches first hand.
Yeah. I mean I was working that night here
doing the weather the night that we there.
I guess that was right after New Year's.
We had all of the flooding concerns going on,
all that rain coming in.
We got the flash flood warning.
It said Levy break imminent in Wilton and
residents only had a few hours to pack
their belongings and get out and leave.
Yeah. And and that is the kind of
thing that we're talking about here.
Doesn't really matter where you live,
all of Sacramento and.
To some degree as well,
Stockton down towards Modesto,
all protected by levees and
this flood infrastructure.
So when it rains, yeah,
it's gonna work 99% of the time, right.
But it's always the question mark is,
is it going to hold this time?
Right.
We've had all this rain and megaflood
scenario like this where you have 30
days plus of rain and it just keeps
falling and reservoirs are dumping,
they're in flood control management.
Yeah. No break, no breaks.
And that's when we start to wonder.
Look there we could have
some issues with Levy.
So it's important everybody has flood
insurance and you have your go bag,
you know, just take it.
Seriously.
Right.
You're not going to need to
evacuate every single time.
But it's important to know where
the evacuation routes are.
It's important to know what
to bring and what to have with
you. Yep. And the flood OPS center that
you talked about in your piece, it was
activated for the first time since 2017.
What do we know about how it went?
Yeah, it was active for four days in 2019.
That was the most recent time.
But then it activated this January.
And a lot of what they were focusing on was
the Wilton area with the Communist River.
They had flood fight materials down there.
They had flood fight
experts over there as well.
Just to help reinforce that levy
because it broke early on, right.
We had multiple breaks in the
levy early on in this line of
atmospheric storms that we had.
So it was important to help reinforce
it so that we could maintain or manage
the flooding that we had down there.
Alright, Brendan, thank you.
And this isn't the end
of our Mega flood series.
We do have Carly coming up tomorrow and
she's really looking at how you can prepare.
Do you have flood insurance?
So she'll be answering all those
and the importance of go bags.
Yes, exactly. Alright,
Brendan, thank you so much.