The flooding happened quickly at the apartment complex off National Avenue. One couple drove down the street to buy sandbags, and by the time they returned not much later, several feet of water had invaded their home, killing four of their parakeets. Another resident emerged from a quick shower to find water seeping up through the floor.
Within minutes, Alejandro Padilla, freshly bathed, was wading through filthy, waist-deep water trying to rescue his frail, 67-year-old mother, with whom he lives as her caretaker.
“It was just a little puddle,” Padilla said, pointing to where the water had been gathering in the complex’s parking lot. “Fifteen minutes, man, or 20, that’s when the water rose.”
Karla Gomez Rodrigues, left, and Lidia Delarosa cleaned Tuesday at a complex off National Avenue in Mountain View. Rodrigues, 36, lives in a one-bedroom apartment at the complex with her husband and two children. Delarosa works maintenance at the complex.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The 37-unit complex in the Mountain View neighborhood took severe damage during Monday’s flooding, which hit southeastern San Diego particularly hard as the result of the wettest January day on record, the city’s aging drainage system and blockages along a swollen Chollas Creek. Across many of those neighborhoods Tuesday, shaken, bewildered and exhausted residents — some of whom had been rescued by firefighters or sought shelter on the roofs of their cars or houses a day earlier — returned to their homes to see what, if anything, survived the mud and muck that had forced them to flee.
Many of those residents, who said they hadn’t been aware they were living in high-risk flood areas, did not have flood insurance. They were left to wonder Tuesday if they’d been left with few belongings and even less recourse.
Debris built up during Monday’s storm and clogged Chollas Creek beneath National Avenue, causing the waterway to spill over and flood an apartment complex and church in the surrounding Mountain View neighborhood.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The flooding in Mountain View occurred because huge piles of debris washed down Chollas Creek and clogged its path underneath National Avenue, creating what amounted to a dam. As more and more water rushed toward the clogged bridge Monday morning, it had nowhere to move except out and away from the wide, tall concrete drainage that makes up the urban creek in that area. The murky floodwaters carried away trash bins and vehicles. The water penetrated nearby Nu-Way International Christian Ministries, ravaging most of the church. And it rushed into the ground-level apartment of the complex next door, knocking over refrigerators, picking up couches and sending residents scrambling out of their windows.
Juan and Maite Lopez were inside their apartment noticing the water starting to pool in the complex’s central parking lot when they left for about 15 minutes to drive up the street for sandbags. By the time they got back, the murky water had risen so high the complex was inaccessible. The floodwaters had picked up an Acura sedan and slammed it into their unit’s wooden front fence.
“I was thinking about my dog, because my dog was drowning,” Maite Lopez said. Fortunately, an upstairs neighbor saved Dubsky, a Doberman husky. But four of the family’s parakeets were killed, while nine others and a cockatoo survived. “I was thinking about my animals. The stuff inside the house, to me it’s nothing, I didn’t care about the stuff inside. All I cared about was the animals.”
The Lopez family — the couple has a 14-year-old son, and Maite is two months pregnant — stayed with Juan Lopez’s mother Monday night. Maite Lopez said the family hopes to clean and dry out the apartment and continue living there.
Padilla, who rescued his mother after getting out of the shower, said he was waiting on city officials to assess the apartment before deciding what to do, but was assuming it would be uninhabitable for a lengthy period. He figured that even if government agencies provided financial help, it would be the landlord who would reap that benefit, not the renters.
Tenants stacked their personal items in the parking lot during the clean up at the apartment complex on National Avenue.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Armando and Sandra Aguirre live toward the front of the complex with their three daughters, who were not home at the time. The couple said the floodwater moved in so quickly, they didn’t have time to leave. They were stuck inside their apartment until firefighters helped them climb out their front window and wade to safety.
“It was very ugly,” Armando Aguirre said Tuesday in Spanish.
Upstream just a few hundred feet, homes built along the banks of Chollas Creek also flooded.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Carlos Gutierrez, who has lived in a home on San Miguel Avenue for 20 years, said in Spanish as he cleaned a muddy mess from his driveway. He said a large, empty field situated between his home and the flooded church and apartment complex looked like a lake for much of the day Monday. His car, parked near the field, was submerged in water. He figures it will no longer work.
Karla Gomez Rodrigues and Javier Pizzano clean up after the rain storm flooded their one-bedroom apartment on National Avenue.
(Hayne Palmour IV/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Residents at the apartment complex that flooded joined local civil rights activist Shane Harris in criticizing both the city’s response on Monday and its apparent lack of preparation in dealing with a swollen Chollas Creek.
“Today we are here because this is a symptom of a decades-old and decades-long illness that the city of San Diego’s elected leaders have created,” Harris told reporters outside the complex. He said residents he had spoken to in several southeastern San Diego neighborhoods “have no faith that government is going to be there for them. They have no faith that government is going to help them in the midst of this crisis.”
City leaders acknowledged Tuesday at a briefing that the storm overwhelmed the city’s aging drainage system, which is far behind on proper updates. Mayor Todd Gloria said he thought Monday’s storm would have overwhelmed any drainage system, regardless of how updated it is.
“This is called climate change,” Gloria said, while also acknowledging that the storm drain system is inadequate.
Louis Edwards, who is in his 70s, cleans after heavy rain Monday caused flooding near Birch and Una Streets in Southcrest. Edwards has lived in the home for 12 years.
(Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Jerry Hernandez, a resident of the hard-hit Southcrest neighborhood, said he called the city around 8:30 on Monday morning when he noticed water already starting to pool in the street. “But it kept ringing, ringing, ringing,” he said. “Nobody answered.”
By the time he returned home a few hours later, the water was reaching dangerously high levels. “So I called 911,” Hernandez said. “Nobody ever showed up.”
Hernandez has lived on Beta Street in Southcrest for about a decade. The backyards of homes on Beta Street butt up against Chollas Creek a few hundred yards east of where it dumps into San Diego Bay. He said the drainage issue in that area is a known problem, and the city had been doing construction recently on the sewage and storm water drainage systems in the area.
“Last week, with the little rain we had, they were out here with a suction truck ready,” Hernandez said. “Yesterday, they did not show up.”
Later in the day, Hernandez watched neighbors climbing onto their roofs as he stood on his raised front porch up to his armpits in rushing water.
“The city has been neglecting this area for years and years,” he said.
Vehicles were left smashed together Tuesday after heavy rain on Monday caused flooding near Birch and Una streets in Southcrest.
(Ana Ramirez/Ana Ramirez)
On nearby Birch Street, a group of people set up a table Tuesday morning filled with snacks, water, coffee and hand sanitizer. “We’re all here just trying to help,” Iliana Benzon said, adding that the table was set up by friends and family members of Birch Street residents.
As Benzon and others were helping their loved ones, more people showed up with clothing donations. “It’s really nice to see the community get together and how humble everybody is,” Benzon said.
Residents in Encanto who live along a different branch of Chollas Creek that runs next to Imperial Avenue had sought safety on the roofs of their cars Monday when the swollen creek flooded their neighborhood.
Even after the water had receded, they found little relief.
Adrian Rico had cleared his driveway Tuesday morning of debris after floodwaters covered half of his house off 63rd Street and Akins Avenue, just north of Imperial Avenue and the Metropolitan Transit System’s Orange Line trolley tracks. But inside the home was a different and more emotional cleanup effort.
“The fridge got knocked down,” Rico said as he trekked through a dark living room where only framed family photos seemed to have been left untouched by the flooding.
“I called my insurance and they said, ‘Oh, we’ll get back to you in two days,’” Rico said. “Dude, I’m homeless.”
The circumstances were no different for his neighbors.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Maria Puente, who has lived in the area 33 years. “The driveway was a river, and the house, I felt it move because of the pressure of the water. It was shocking.”
Puente felt she was going to lose the home where she raised her children, and where her grandchildren now visit. So, as soon as it was safe, she began photographing the aftermath to send to her insurance.
Unlike Puente and Rico who own their homes, Maria Elva Rivas Castillo and her husband, Alejandro Blancas, rent a two-bedroom house. She found it severely flooded Monday after returning from a grocery run.
“We lost everything,” Rivas Castillo said. “Our landlord is not picking up our calls, and we’re not sure who to call for help.”
Some help came from an unexpected place: a coworker of Blancas, a masonry worker.
“I’m really grateful for him because no one else is answering,” Blancas said, as he piled muddied clothes and shoes into trash bags.
The couple said they were contemplating visiting a shelter at Lincoln High School that the American Red Cross had set up for those impacted by flooding.
Staff writer Kristen Taketa contributed to this report.
