Flood of excuses

It’s among the more damning facts of the February San Jose flood that while the city’s Happy Hollow Zoo managed to evacuate meerkats, lemurs and the rest of its menagerie without losing an animal as nearby Coyote Creek overflowed, thousands of human residents got their first warning not from city authorities notifying them to seek higher ground, but from the water at their doors.

Santa Clara Valley Water District Chairman John Varela noted the discrepancy this week in response to a strongly worded letter from Mayor Sam Liccardo, who has faulted water district data for the city’s failure to alert and evacuate residents in advance of the flood. Varela pointed out that flood warnings from the district, the National Weather Service and others made the gravity of the situation sufficiently clear to zookeepers as well as Santa Clara County.

“The city-owned Happy Hollow Zoo evacuated, and the county took evacuation/ closure actions at two of its facilities,” Varela wrote. “The zoo and county had the same data as the city, and they acted.”

While Liccardo and other San Jose officials have repeatedly said they accept responsibility for failing to warn those in harm’s way, hundreds of whom have been unable to return home, they have at the same time repeatedly blamed the oversight on the district’s underestimation of the precise flow that Coyote Creek could handle.

But water district officials noted that to be effective, evacuations must be ordered well before a stream reaches flood stage. Moreover, the district’s Anderson Reservoir had reached capacity, and well predicted rainstorms were soaking the already saturated region. In that context, the mayor’s legalistic focus on one piece of water district data still smacks of scapegoating and deflection.