Latest California storm leaves at least two dead, breaks levee

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MAMMOTH LAKES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 11: Snow is blown by strong winds as storm clouds pass, with snow continuing to fall in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the wake of an atmospheric river event, on March 11, 2023 in Mammoth Lakes, California. Flooding washed away roads and breached a levee in parts of northern and central California due to runoff from the state’s 10th atmospheric river storm. The eastern Sierra Nevada currently is holding 243 percent of its regular snowpack for this time of the year. President Joe Biden has approved Governor Gavin Newsom’s presidential emergency request in response to recent storms impacting California.  (Photo by MARIO TAMA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)

by Glenn CHAPMAN

Another powerful storm pummeled California overnight into Saturday, forcing thousands to evacuate and resulting in at least two deaths, while causing a levee to give way in coastal Monterey County.

“We were hoping to avoid and prevent this situation, but the worst case scenario has arrived with the Pajaro River overtopping and levee breaching at about midnight,” Luis Alejo, a Monterey County supervisor, said Saturday on Twitter.

Residents told AFP they were alerted by local fire officials in the middle of the night that they needed to evacuate.

“Just the noise of the fire department — their sirens and all — woke us up,” said Moses, a resident of the area for around 20 years who preferred to give only his first name.

He said officials later came and knocked on his door multiple times, but that he decided to wait until 5:00 AM to make a decision.

After returning home from surveying the flooding, Moses said water was beginning to cover his street.

“That’s when I told my wife, ‘hey, we got to get out of here,'” he said.

The area remained under a flood warning Saturday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

Friday night, state emergency services director Nancy Ward announced that the storm had already claimed at least two lives.

Images posted on Twitter by the state’s National Guard account showed guardsmen rescuing residents trapped in their cars by high water.

At least one road was washed away in Santa Cruz County, just north of Monterey.

Residents in several towns, mostly in the north, have been ordered to evacuate.

An unusually intense and seemingly endless series of storms has battered California for weeks.

The latest storm was expected to dump as much as nine inches (23 centimeters) of rain on already saturated grounds.

An aerial view shows people making their way around a flooded neighborhood in the unincorporated community of Pajaro in Watsonville, California on March 11, 2023. – Residents were forced to evacuate in the middle of the night after an atmospheric river surge broke the Pajaro Levee and sent flood waters flowing into the community. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP)

– ‘Pineapple express’ –

Part of a powerful atmospheric river known as a “Pineapple express” — for the warm, subtropical moisture it brings from Hawaii — this latest storm will speed the melting of the enormous snowpack that has built up in higher elevations.

The resulting runoff threatens to aggravate already serious flooding.

In Pajaro on Saturday, the fire department and national guard used drones to survey the flooded areas, checking for people stranded in their homes, AFP reporters saw.

Two cousins, Angel Martinez and Christian Garcia, waded through the water carrying a plastic bag of food salvaged from the kitchen.

They told AFP their neighborhood was a “wreck,” with water three-feet (one-meter) deep in their backyard.

They were only able to grab phone chargers, some blankets and a first aid kit when they hastily evacuated.

US President Joe Biden on Friday approved an emergency declaration that clears the way to expedite federal aid to the western state.

Governor Gavin Newsom said California was “deploying every tool we have to protect communities from the relentless and deadly storms battering our state.”

Storms in January were blamed for the loss of 20 lives.

© Agence France-Presse