Water-logged San Diego started monstrous cleanup efforts Tuesday after record-breaking rains battered homes, choked streets with mud and damaged trolley lines — causing millions in damage and displacing several people.
City and county officials assessed the damage as some residents picked through soggy belongings and others demanded answers about how water backed up so quickly. Monday’s powerful storm — far more potent than expected — unleashed sheets of rain on the region, flooding neighborhoods from the South Bay to Oceanside and turning roads into rivers.
Hundreds were rescued from flooded streets and swollen rivers across the region. No deaths were reported, but rescue crews saw a man going underwater in Spring Valley and were not able to find him.
A day after people scrambled onto rooftops or watched wide-eyed as cars floated down city streets, residents in San Diego’s hardest hit areas, including Mountain View and Southcrest, shoveled mud and hosed down cars. People sorted whatever they could salvage, tossing saturated toys, clothes and furniture into sodden piles of trash. Water lines on buildings dirtied walls as high as 5 feet in some spots.
San Diego Mayor Gloria told reporters Tuesday that in the neighborhoods of Southcrest and Mountain View as many as 100 homes may be uninhabitable due to flood damage. He called the impact of the damage “absolutely devastating.”
“I saw that entire lives changed in just a few minutes,” Gloria said.
By midday Tuesday, San Diego had logged at least $6 million to $7 million in damage to public infrastructure, damage that city officials hope will be reimbursed by the state, said Chris Heiser, director of the city’s Office of Emergency Services.
City and county governments proclaimed local emergencies, and Gov. Gavin Newsom also declared an emergency in San Diego County. The declarations fast-track cleanup and aid efforts.
Monday’s storm went down as San Diego’s rainiest January day — preliminary numbers had San Diego International Airport getting 2.70 inches of rain between midnight and 4 p.m. — since record-keeping started in 1850.
Rescuers on Monday plucked scores of people from homes and streets and from surging rivers — with about 125 people rescued in Southcrest alone, San Diego Fire-Rescue Chief Colin Stowell said. There were an additional 50 rescue incidents in places including San Ysidro, Mission Valley and San Diego riverbanks. Thirty animals were also saved from rising waters.
“Fortunately, we saw no fatalities. For a storm this size that is simply just remarkable,” Stowell said.
The drenching created peril countywide, and emergency crews outside the city of San Diego rescued people from about 250 residences, including apartment complexes and trailer parks, San Miguel Fire and Rescue Division Chief Andy Lawler said.
Lawler said there were at least seven swift water rescues — but that is likely an underestimate. He said crews saw man with a German shepherd go underwater in Spring Valley’s La Presa area sometime around 11 a.m. to noon, but could not find him. It is unclear what happened to him.
The La Presa neighborhood was especially hard hit. Water inundated entire streets and reached 5 to 6 feet high inside homes, and people took shelter on top of cars, Lawler said.
“I’ve worked in the area for 25 years, and I’ve never seen water flow to that magnitude,” he said.
At a mobile home park on Division Street in National City, where floodwaters also hit 5 feet, families scavenged through their homes.
“I’m not finding anything,” said Lalo Najera as he ed trash bags filled with food and other household items to a waste hauler. “All of it is, unfortunately, trash now.”
Similar scenes of mud-filled homes and debris played out in Tijuana, where streets turned to rivers and first responders logged some 70 rescues Monday.
Cleanup crews worked overnight and by Tuesday afternoon 95 percent of the city’s main roads affected by the rain were back to normal, officials said.
San Diego Gas & Electric estimated that at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday the effects of the storm had knocked out roughly 26,000 meters from customers across its service territory. By the late afternoon, less than 200 customers were still without lights.
A couple of schools will remain closed Wednesday, including KIPP Adelante Preparatory Academy and SOUL Academy, which will be shuttered for several days so heavily flooded classrooms can be cleaned. Classes at SOUL will move online for now, according to San Diego County Office of Education.
Transit also took a hit in the rain, but freeways choked by water Monday were open Tuesday.
Still, stretches of the trolley lines remain down, the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System said. The Orange Line took the brunt of the storm damage — the agency tweeted a picture of dirt washed out under tracks — and is out of service between Euclid Transit Center and the Lemon Grove Transit Center. MTS will rely on a bus bridge there for several weeks during the repairs.
So why was Monday’s rain just so torrential?
The storm was a direct hit from the west, rather than the glancing blows from the usual northwest approach. Plus, the system drew extraordinary amounts of moisture from the subtropics, with upward of 250 percent as much water in the air than usual.
And when the storm clouds hit the far side of San Clemente Island, just off the region’s coast, the moisture condensed into rain as it swept toward the mainland.
The storm overwhelmed the city’s aging drainage system that officials have acknowledged is far behind on proper updates. A year ago, city officials estimated that there were $2.1 billion in backlogged stormwater infrastructure projects.
Two of the city’s 15 pump stations failed Monday, said Kris McFadden, the city’s deputy chief operating officer. Out of 200 segments of flood channels in San Diego, the city only has funding to do major maintenance on four of those each year, said Todd Snyder, director of the city’s stormwater department.
Gloria said he thinks Monday’s storm would have overwhelmed any drainage system, but he also acknowledged that it is inadequate — something that he and other city officials attributed to a lack of funding and time-consuming bureaucratic processes such as permitting.
“It is fundamentally true that our stormwater system is not resourced correctly, and that’s a long-term thing that we have to probably talk to the voters about,” Gloria said.
Two years ago the city approved a plan, funded by a $733 million federal loan, that will fund storm drain system improvements over five years, including replacing aging pipes, pump station upgrades and replacement of deteriorating stormwater infrastructure.
The loan will fund 50 projects, including one for Beta Street in the hard-hit Southcrest neighborhood, McFadden said. But the planning, permitting, environmental mitigation and other requirements to get those projects done are time-consuming, he said.
A city spokesperson said Monday that, before the rain hit, it had several hundred employees clearing storm drains and doing other prep work to help reduce flood risk across San Diego.
City officials urged residents and businesses to thoroughly photograph damage because they said federal and state officials will want documentation before doling out aid.
Officials encouraged residents and businesses to their insurance companies about damage. But they also acknowledged that many people don’t have flood-specific insurance coverage or may not have insurance. San Diego officials are working with the county on identifying potential sources of immediate aid for people in that situation.
The county urged people to report storm damage to its online survey, which will help determine whether the county will receive state or federal disaster aid, and how much or what kind of aid the county may receive, county officials said.
Some residents and business owners turned to GoFundMe to raise recovery funds. The platform has launched a centralized hub featuring all verified fundraisers related to the flooding in San Diego, as well as aid for winter storms across the country. Fundraisers on the hub can be searched by city and state.
Staff writers Karen Kucher, Alex Riggins, Gary Robbins, Emily Alvarenga, Tammy Murga, Alexandra Mendoza, Rob Nikolewski and Pam Kragen contributed to this report.
