US: Communities brace for flash floods

Don Pedro dam is gushing water for the first time in 20 years, reaching dangerous levels

Communities downstream from a Northern California reservoir gushing water for the first time in 20 years braced for flash floods and evacuations after authorities warned them to prepare for rising rivers and creeks.

Northern California was forecast to get a brief break from persistent downpours yesterday but the surge of water released from Don Pedro Dam into the Tuolumne River in the foothills east of Modesto was expected to reach overtopped levees later in the day.

Katie Whitley, who manages the Driftwood Mobile Home Park in Modesto, said residents nearest the river have been moving their trailers out since the start of the weekend. “We’re just holding our own,” Whitley told the Los Angeles Times. “That’s what we have to do. You just have to hope for the best.”

The water released from Don Pedro is expected to reach its peak along a stretch near Vernalis that’s already at danger stage, said Tim Daly, a spokesman for the San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services. The water isn’t expected to spill over the levees but rather increase pressure on them, causing possible breaks in any weak places.

Farther south, the Anderson Dam in Santa Clara County reached capacity over the weekend and after heavy rain it began overflowing into the Coyote Creek.

Rescuers chest-deep in water steered boats full of people, some with babies and pets, from a San Jose neighbourhood inundated on Tuesday by water from the creek. At least 225 residents were taken to dry land and rinsed with soap and water to prevent them from being sickened by floodwaters that had travelled through engine fuel, garbage, debris and over sewer lines, said San Jose Fire Captain Mitch Matlow.

Rescuers went door-todoor searching for people who needed to leave the neighbourhood. Only residents who could prove they had been cleaned of the floodwaters were allowed to board buses to shelters.

The rains were the latest produced by a series of storms generated by so-called atmospheric rivers that dump huge quantities of Pacific Ocean water on California after carrying it aloft from as far away as Hawaii.

AP Rescue crews take out residents from a flooded neighbourhood in San Jose, California, on Tuesday. Rescuers chest-deep in water steered boats carrying dozens of people, some with babies and pets, from an area inundated by water.

AP Heavy storms over the past two weeks caused parts of the shoulder and one lane of westbound Highway 50 to give way, on Tuesday, near Pollock Pines, California.

AP A boy after being rescued from a neighbourhood on Tuesday in San Jose.