Ann Schneider

Millbrae Mayor Ann Schneider has expressed worry a proposed Bayside flood barrier from SFO to San Mateo would have a detrimental affect on her city’s Bayfront, despite assurances by project leadership that a barrier would be the most effective way to protect against sea-level rise.

It would also reduce or remove residents from federally required flood maps, which require costly insurance, proponents contend.

A natural barrier like a retention pond would work better, according to Schneider, who also believed the proposal could limit Bay access and has not received adequate community input.

“I’m one of those people that believe that we’re going to be at sea-level rise much greater than what America wants to deal with, but we still have time to do the job and do it correctly. OneShoreline should go back to the drawing board, they should hold public meetings,” she said.

OneShoreline, the county’s Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District, is overseeing the project. It is currently in the proposal stages and is awaiting an environmental impact report, permitting and feedback from various government entities before construction would begin, CEO Len Materman said.

If approved, the structure would connect from the San Francisco International Airport’s barrier, which is in the construction phase, and span from Millbrae as far south as Coyote Point on the San Mateo and Burlingame border, Materman said during an Oct. 16 Burlingame City Council meeting.

Multiple studies point to the county’s unique vulnerability from sea-level rise over the years, which is projected to rise up to a foot in the next 30 years and up to 6 feet over the next century. It will significantly affect the 53 miles of county shoreline, threatening cities on the Peninsula with low-lying areas home to vital infrastructure and private developments.

Schneider said that Millbrae Bayfront area — which she acknowledged as comparably smaller than other city Bayfronts included in the project — has already been “taken” from the city by San Mateo County and San Francisco, particularly because of SFO, and building a barrier would leave the city with minimal remaining Bay.

Materman said that building offshore, as opposed to other potential options like building floodwalls around creeks, would create the least impact on public access.

“The barrier is open 99% of the time, but closed when big atmospheric rivers and king tides come,” he said. “The offshore structure doesn’t have to be this big, imposing wall.”

Schneider also contends Millbrae was not adequately included in the planning process for the barrier, with only one representative on the OneShoreline board for the entire Burlingame to Brisbane region, and would have liked to see requests for public input. Materman said Millbrae’s input had been included from the beginning of the project.

Schneider, who received her degree in environmental science, said that she also sees climate resiliency as a major issue for Millbrae residents, but that nature-based solutions are the answer.

“Instead of the old Army Corps of Engineering thing, which is ‘build a levee, build a wall, build a dam,’ let’s see how nature can help us resolve some of these environmental problems,” she said.

She proposed retention ponds, which capture water and gradually absorb it into the ground, as one potential solution, and enhancing wetlands so they can fully function as another.

But for OneShoreline, another important objective of the project — and one that might require a barrier — is reducing or removing flood insurance requirements for both Millbrae and other Peninsula residents.

“That’s an important goal, and one that requires structural elements,” Materman said, explaining that the Federal Emergency Management Agency doesn’t certify natural barriers when considering if flood insurance is a requirement for homeowners.

The size of the tidal lagoon and project costs are yet to be determined. Materman hopes construction will be done within the decade.

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An off-shore barrier is being proposed from SFO to as far south as Coyote Point to create a lagoon that would protect the shoreline from sea-level rise through doors that could close during large storms or extreme tides.

The proposal is by OneShoreline, the county’s Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District, and its CEO Len Materman is making the rounds to various government agencies to explain the concept and gather feedback.

“OneShoreline was created to address huge problems that need huge solutions. I don’t want our legacy to do things on the margins. I want to address this issue,” Materman said.

The proposed off-shore barrier is still in the concept phase. However, if approved, the structure would connect from the San Francisco International Airport’s barrier it is constructing and would span from Millbrae as far south as Coyote Point on the San Mateo and Burlingame border, Materman said during a Burlingame City Council presentation Monday, Oct. 16.

During extreme tides or storms, there can be less than a foot of protection. However, Materman

said the barrier would address this issue, allowing water to ebb and flow. The structure’s doors would be open about 99% of the time, and OneShoreline would close the doors when large storms or extreme tides occur, restricting the water back and allowing the on-shore drainage systems to flow freely.

Materman said drainage systems are like a clogged shower pipe and water has nowhere to go so it gets increasingly higher. This winter’s storm is a prime example, he added. Many of the streets far from the Bay were flooding because the water in the pipes had nowhere to go, he said.

The agency is working collaboratively with cities around the Bay to fight off the dangers of sea-level rise, which is projected to rise up to a foot in the next 30 years and up to 6 feet over the next century.

“As you know, there are mud flats out there, and it’s not going to take much sea-level rise for those mudflats to be permanently covered in water,” Materman said.

As sea-level rise persists and water levels increase, the doors will be closed more frequently. When sea-level rise is 1 1/2 feet higher on average, the doors would be closed during the peak of high tide, about one hour a day. When the water level reaches 3 feet higher than today’s average, which would equal today’s 100-year storm level, the structure doors would be closed during each high tide, twice a day, about seven hours total, Materman explained.

Habitat protection

While addressing the increasing waterline and protecting the Peninsula from flooding is the agency’s top priority, it is acutely focused on improving the environmental habitat and public access around the Bayside.

“We want habitat that works for today’s ecosystems but, more importantly, the habitat that works for future conditions,” Materman said.

One idea is to have oysters and other aquatic life use the barrier as a lifeline, like an artificial reef. Another idea is building a trail above the structure, but it would need approval from outside agencies. One of them is the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a regional agency that oversees all development on the Bay.

“We want it to have other values besides the flood protection,” Materman said.

Another benefit would be that the barrier would lift the Federal Emergency Management Agency flood zone designation for many residents of the Bayside, he added.

Sea-level rise threat

Multiple studies point to the county’s unique vulnerability from sea-level rise over the years. It will significantly affect the 53 miles of county shoreline, threatening Burlingame and other cities on the Peninsula with low-lying areas home to vital infrastructure and private developments.

FEMA rules call for sea-level infrastructure to be built with a height 6 feet above the current elevation a 100-year flood would reach. That means infrastructure within the city limits would need to be built up to 16, 17 and 18 feet, getting taller as it moves south. The first floor of buildings must be 3 feet above the 100-year flood elevation.

In 2022, Burlingame was the first city in the county to include sea-level rise in its zoning and now requires new buildings in low-lying areas near the water to have raised first floors. Some may need to build and maintain infrastructure like levees or sea walls or leave room for such infrastructure to be constructed in the future.

The majority of land east of Highway 101, the highway itself, and a sizable strip west of the highway are projected to become inundated within the next 100 years if no action is taken, according to the city’s projections.

“As I mentioned, sea-level rise will put our current habitat under water and completely cover it with no ability to manage it adaptively,” Materman said.

Conceptual phase

The entire scope of the project is still in the conceptual phase and will need buy-in from communities and outside agencies. Project cost still needs to be determined. One alternative was to build the creek banks higher, but it would be difficult because of access issues and more expensive, Materman said.

A week ago, the OneShoreline approved a grant application from the city’s Park and Recreation Foundation to restore and create a new habitat at the mouth of Mills Creek. The creeks in the area were rerouted during the airport’s construction, which is why there is lots of flooding in San Bruno, Millbrae, South City and Burlingame, Materman said.

“The project’s coastal protection objective is to keep the Bay’s shoreline, creeks and lagoons from overtopping,” Materman said.

The agency plans to work with the cities, perform public outreach, and complete 30% of the conceptual design by spring 2024, according to the presentation. Materman said he hopes to see it constructed within the decade. The tidal lagoon size has yet to be decided but will be worked on in the next year.

At the Burlingame council meeting, Mayor Michael Brownrigg said a third of the city’s revenue comes from Bayfront businesses. The water treatment facility on the Bayside is also a concern, he said.

“So this isn’t a passing interest to the city of Burlingame,” he said. “It is almost an existential threat.”

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San Francisco homeowner Erika Gemzer is nearly a week past her due date.

Instead of resting with her feet up, the expectant mother is in the middle of a six-month ordeal that has forced her to move out of her home, send hundreds of emails and swim in a sea of multicolored spreadsheets as she attempts to repair her home—which was destroyed after her upstairs Airbnb guests clogged her toilet and completely flooded the property.

READ MORE: San Francisco Airbnb Bookings Plunge as City Battles Bad Press

On Friday afternoon, she walked through the halls of her gutted home with floorboards torn up, dismantled drywall, and personal belongings stacked up in disarray. It’s become a familiar routine for her and her husband as they’ve dealt with a virtual army of contractors, plumbers and claims adjusters.

“When does it end? That’s the unknown I live with every day,” Gemzer said. “How long am I going to think about this and replay this moment in my life?”

Erika Gemzer inspects the walls of her AirBnb unit while offering a tour of her damaged home on Friday. | Source: Juliana Yamada for The Standard

Gemzer, who detailed her story in a viral Twitter thread, said that instead of offering aid, Airbnb has given her a monthslong runaround with an eventual offer of only around 10% of the financial losses she estimates the issue caused.

She added that the company’s AirCover policy, meant to provide “top to bottom protection” for hosts during catastrophic events, fails to live up to that promise.

READ MORE: Airbnb Profit Jumps as Bookings Increase, Rental Rates Hold Steady

“We offered to pay the loss of bookings, her insurance deductible and additional reimbursement as a gesture of goodwill – we have been in continuous contact with the Host, including speaking today, to continue to support her,” an Airbnb spokesperson said in a statement.

The two-unit Edwardian in the heart of the Mission District was a stretch for Gemzer and her husband to purchase in 2018, but it allowed them to set roots in the city. The decision to purchase was due in part to their ability to help offset the cost of the mortgage with rental income.

Erika Gemzer looks at photos of her friends and family in her sewage-damaged home. | Source: Juliana Yamada for The Standard

After the property’s long-term tenants moved out of the top-floor flat in fall 2021, the couple decided to rent out the unit on Airbnb to earn revenue while keeping the place open for visiting family members.

Other than the occasional broken appliance or repair, hosting on the platform went relatively smoothly until this past April when two visitors from Turkey booked to stay in the flat for a month.

Gemzer and her husband had just started telling close family they were pregnant with their first child in April when soon after they woke up to a dripping sound and discovered water flowing in through the ceiling and fixtures.

They alerted their upstairs Airbnb guests and when her husband went inside they found the unit vacant and water covering the floor. The source of the water became evident quite quickly as he saw a streaming toilet with fecal matter still in the bowl before he rapidly shut off the water on the building.

When they opened the door to their underground storage space and saw five inches of water flooding they started to understand their home was virtually uninhabitable.

“That’s when we realized just how much water had traversed the three floors,” Gemzer said. “Doing a quick water calculation, you’re like volumetrically, this is really, really bad.”

Since her social media post went viral, there have been some people who have taken aim at the guests, but Gemzer said she does not believe the guests intended for this level of damage.

“I don’t want them to be harassed,” Gemzer said. “It’s a crappy thing to do to abandon the clogged toilet, but there’s no way in their mind they thought they were going to ruin the house.”

The toilet in Erika Gemzer’s AirBnb, which she calls “The Murderer,” caused extensive water damage to her property. | Source: Juliana Yamada for The Standard

Gemzer estimated that around 50% of the square footage of the property received water damage from the flooding. The family called in a water remediation specialist who set up deafening dehumidifiers around the house.

Without any certainty about insurance coverage, Gemzer and her husband stayed among the ruined wallpaper and warped floorboards for a week, before ironically—decamping for an Airbnb with their chihuahua mix. Their orange tabby cat, however, wasn’t allowed, and the couple went back and forth daily to check on their pet.

Drying out the house took a total of seven weeks and cost a total of $130,000. When they were able to finally get a construction estimate, that total came in at just shy of a quarter of a million dollars.

While the bulk of these costs are being shouldered by her homeowners insurance, Gemzer said she hopes Airbnb will help her pay for a number of costs, including revenue from lost bookings, insurance premiums, mortgage payments for her inhabitable home, additional water damage demolition not covered by insurance, and the gap between the approved amount for repairs and the actual cost charged by her contractors.

Light beams in through an exposed ceiling in Erika Gemzer’s home. | Source: Juliana Yamada for The Standard

Left without a permanent home, the couple moved from short-term rental to short-term rental before signing a seven-month lease at a house a few blocks away. Repairs, which are expected to take another half year, have yet to be started.

The process with Airbnb first required Genzer to ask the guests to foot the bill, which was unsuccessful. The company then assigned someone to her case and eventually connected her with a third-party adjuster who asked for additional documentation over the course of weeks in an effort to determine liability.

“We take Aircover requests incredibly seriously, including in this case, where we tried to send a third-party investigator to review the damage, but the Host declined, stating that her homeowners insurance company was supporting her with the damage as well as temporary accommodation,” an Airbnb spokesperson said in a statement.

The Standard viewed dozens of emails between Genzer and the third-party investigator Crawford & Company who eventually would send a plumber to diagnose the issue.

“I was continuing to spend hours and hours and hours a week justifying what had happened,” Gemzer said. “Literally our house was empty at this point, we had to beg them to leave the toilet, which was uninstalled and sitting on the ground upside down.”

The damage left torn-up floors and baseboards in the rental flat. | Source: Juliana Yamada for The Standard

The plumber snaked the line and found baby wipes and paper towels lodged in the pipes, but was unable to comprehensively determine the cause of the flooding.

“The cause of the problem was from abuse of drain and toilet internal parts not functioning properly,” the plumbing report stated.

The issue was caused by a combination of the toilet bowl clogging, the wipes and paper in the pipe and the float valve in the tank allowing the toilet to continue to run and flood the home.

Unable to gain traction through the normal process, Gemzer was able to connect with a former Airbnb employee who told her about how to find someone inside the company that could elevate the case internally.

But Gemzer said Airbnb required her to get individual quotes for items prior to being told if it would be covered by the company’s policy, meaning a continual hamster wheel of finding a vendor, getting a quote and sending it to Airbnb before being told if it’s covered.

Over the course of her entire communication with Airbnb, Gemzer said she never was able to speak to someone over the phone. After her post went viral, Gemzer said an executive called her husband, but she has yet to hear directly from the company.

Instead of having hosts just rely on their limited policy, Gemzer said she hopes that Airbnb could partner with other short-term rental insurance providers to offer negotiated rates for additional protection, and educate hosts on the limits of their baseline coverage.

“I just want to stop the bleeding and know that the mountains of financial losses are not going to continue to mount,” Gemzer said. “You advertise that we got your back when things go really wrong, but you don’t and you know that you don’t.”

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(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Ask a rabbi about self-driving cars and you’d better be ready for a long answer.

Self-driving cars — also known as robotaxis, autonomous vehicles or driverless cars — with their whirring sensors and their odd, almost tentative movements, have become a familiar sight on the streets of San Francisco.

Familiar they might be, but not without controversy. With local incidents of self-driving cars trying to drive into active fire zones, stalling en masse and even crashing into a fire truck this month, reports of autonomous misconduct have been plentiful. Regardless, the California Public Utilities Commission in mid-August expanded commercial robotaxi service to daytime hours in San Francisco for GM’s Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo autonomous vehicle divisions. City officials are opposed to the expansion, citing safety and other concerns.

And yet the all-electric fleets offer intriguing Shabbat possibilities — not least for observant Jews who traditionally refrain from driving and using electricity on the day. So what do local rabbis say?

“As an Orthodox Jew, in order to evaluate new realities, they are going to try and understand how they work and categorize them within already existing precedent in Jewish law,” said Rabbi Joel Landau of Adath Israel, an Orthodox synagogue in San Francisco.

There is one existing piece of technology that might offer a clue, he said. It’s the Shabbat elevator, which automatically stops and opens its doors at each floor, negating the need to press a button. 

It may seem that an autonomous vehicle, if pre-programmed, could possibly meet the same requirements as a Shabbat elevator. But Landau said it’s not that simple.

“Not everyone is happy with a Shabbat elevator,” he said.  

Many elevators make adjustments based on the weight of the passenger, he said, which negates their neutrality, so to speak. By contrast, a running escalator or moving walkway might be OK.

If self-driving cars react to a passenger’s weight or position, that alone might rule them out for Shabbat use among observant Jews. The same is true if riders would need to activate anything to start the ride. Landau said he’s sure the technological know-how to make a Shabbat-compliant autonomous electric car could be developed. He’s just not sure it should be.

The issue of driving on Shabbat was addressed in the Conservative movement back in the 1950s when rabbis allowed driving to synagogue for services as Jews moved into the suburbs and lived too far from shul to walk. Still, the movement does not encourage driving on Shabbat.

“The ideal is that one does not drive on Shabbat and that people live close by to their Jewish communities — to walk to synagogue, share meals, raise families,” Rabbi Amanda Russell of Congregation Beth Sholom, a Conservative synagogue in San Francisco, wrote in an email to J.

But not everyone can reach that ideal, she said. “We know that to be in community on Shabbat, many people have to drive.” 

But what about self-driving robotaxis? Would they be better than driving?

“Funny you should ask about this,” Russell said. “These cars have become a small topic of conversation at Beth Sholom, simply because they are taking up precious parking spots in the early morning for daily minyan and on Shabbat!”

Annoyance aside, Russell said the question comes down to the way the cars operate, what they are used for and whether they undermine the spirit of Shabbat. If “pre-arranged and prepaid,” she said, self-driving cars could be “more ideal” on Shabbat than someone driving even an electric car.

So how do self-driving cars really work? Could they really be Shabbat-compliant?

To put it simply, an autonomous car is equipped with an array of sensors and imaging devices, including cameras and LIDAR, which is the spinning device atop the cars that uses light to measure distance. While GPS helps the car map its route, it’s all those sensors that help the car navigate a chaotic street environment.

Right now, riders access the cars through apps on their phones, but pre-arranging a robotaxi pickup is possible. 

“To make it permissible, one would want to make the arrangements before Shabbat: pickup and drop-off locations, payment, etc.” Russell said. “That would prevent the passenger from having to use their phone, any ride-share-related technology and any form of money, all of which are prohibited on Shabbat.”

Russell and Landau both said that focusing on keeping the spirit of Shabbat is a crucial guide. Landau said that even if self-driving cars can technically be used — an assumption that hasn’t been truly tested yet — he doesn’t believe that most observant Jews will tap on the Waymo app a few minutes before sundown on Friday.

“Not everything you could do, you should do,” Landau said. 

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PAJARO, Calif.— It was half past midnight on March 11 when a cacophony of sirens and shouting jolted Emilio Vasquez and his family from a sound sleep. “Get out of your houses immediately!” a voice barked in Spanish through a bullhorn. “The water is coming!” 

Vasquez and his wife, undocumented Indigenous Mexican immigrants who speak Mixteco, understood just enough Spanish to bolt out of bed, grab their two young children and race to their car. They headed south out of town, wondering why water was threatening their rental in Pajaro, an impoverished, unincorporated farmworker community, about 95 miles south of San Francisco, that helps power Monterey County’s $4 billion agriculture industry. 

Vasquez, who asked not to use his real name for fear of retaliation, did not learn until the next morning that the storm-swollen Pajaro River—which forms the border between Monterey and Santa Cruz County to the north—had demolished a section of the levee on its long-neglected southern side. The levee’s deficiency was clear soon after it was built in 1949. It failed twice in the fifties, prompting Congress to authorize millions to fix it, then again several times in the 1990s, when a catastrophic flood killed two. 

The poorly maintained levee proved no match for a waterway transformed by winter’s relentless succession of monsoon-like atmospheric rivers. The breach sent a tidal wave of mud and water through Pajaro, stranding cars, damaging hundreds of homes and small businesses and forcing the town’s 3,000-some residents to evacuate, just as it had nearly to the day, in 1995. 

The March floods inundated more than 8,700 acres of cropland worth $264 million, according to the Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, bringing total damages from winter storms to $600 million. 

How many farmworkers’ jobs were washed away with the crops is unknown.

Workers were already struggling to feed their families, as farmers had fallowed fields during California’s multi-year extreme drought. Now, a warming planet was making farm work, already among the nation’s most dangerous occupations, even more hazardous. 

Climate change is increasing the risk and extent of wildfires, the frequency and severity of heat waves, the intensity of atmospheric rivers and the likelihood of devastating floods.  

That places workers like Vasquez, who get paid based on how many fruit or vegetable boxes they pick, in greater danger as they move through fields as fast as they can, even when nearby wildfires release clouds of toxic smoke or soaring temperatures increase their risk of heat stroke or death. 

Vasquez, clean-shaven with a slight but muscular build and straight black hair, stands with remarkably erect posture for someone who’s spent years bent over picking berries. Now, that grueling work is the least of his concerns. 

Vasquez and other Indigenous farmworkers are finding themselves at the mercy of cascading climate disasters, bouncing from one hellscape to another like characters in a dystopian climate novel. But the catastrophic flood has made the devastating toll these disasters take on their lives and livelihoods all too real, with no relief in sight. 

Migrants dispossessed by decades-old free-trade agreements in the mountains of Mexico risked their lives to eke out a better living picking strawberries for dollars a day only to become dispossessed by climate change. They played no role in global economic policy or the climate crisis yet are reeling from the repercussions of both. Robbed of the means to make a living at home, they now struggle to survive life-threatening floods, heatwaves and wildfires without a safety net in one of the richest countries in the world. The federal government, which relies on the cheap labor of unauthorized workers to keep food prices low, has done almost nothing to help them, leaving a state saddled with a budget deficit and under-resourced local governments and nonprofits scrambling to do what they can.

Workers pick strawberries in a field unaffected by flooding near Aromas, southeast of Pajaro, on the north side of the Pajaro River. Credit: Liza Gross

About three-quarters of California’s roughly 800,000 farmworkers, including most Indigenous farmworkers like Vasquez, are undocumented. They lack access to healthcare, unemployment, loans and other resources that help authorized workers get through a disaster. Most live in daily fear of deportation, making them more likely to accept subpar wages, working and housing conditions rather than risk getting fired or deported. Many speak little English or Spanish, limiting their ability to understand emergency warnings or access recovery aid.

And fear of La Migra, the immigration police, can lead to paranoia and isolation during an emergency when language barriers make it difficult to know what’s happening, an early study of Indigenous farmworkers found.  

Although farmworkers were deemed essential at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, their immigration status severely limits their resilience during a crisis.

“What we are seeing with Indigenous language speakers with this disaster is that they are being disproportionately negatively affected,” said Nancy Faulstich, executive director of the nonprofit Regeneración Pajaro Valley Climate Action. 

“The community hasn’t had the time or resources to advocate for itself,” she said. Even if they did, she added, most don’t want to attract public attention, worried they would face repercussions for being undocumented.

Climate change-fueled disasters compound the environmental racism that created infrastructure and resource deserts in communities like Pajaro, said Michael Méndez, assistant professor of urban planning and policy at the University of California, Irvine. 

“It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone when an extreme storm event, a heatwave, a wildfire or drought hits, that these communities with crumbling infrastructure and historic disinvestment are hardest hit,” Méndez said.

Migrating Out of Necessity, Not Choice

About 170,000 Indigenous migrants live in California, according to the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, with nearly half living on the Central Coast, from Oxnard near Los Angeles to Watsonville south of San Francisco. Ninety-two percent of Pajaro’s residents are Mexican and about a third speak little or no English, according to U.S. Census data. But the agency has scant data on those who speak primarily Indigenous languages in Pajaro or anywhere else. 

Vazquez was in his mid-twenties when he left his Mixtec community in San Martín Peras in 2017, the same year then-President Trump ramped up efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. The discrimination heaped on Vasquez and his village peers for their bronze-colored skin and small stature followed Mixtec migrants across the border. Yet for Vasquez, a deeply private man who refuses to have his picture taken to protect his family, those shared traits serve a determination to blend in among Indigenous Mexican expats and escape U.S. immigration authorities’ notice.

President Biden has taken steps to expedite legal pathways for migrants. But the unremitting fear of detention, deportation and family separation has taken a psychological toll on many undocumented workers, whose distrust of institutions prevents them from seeking help. That fear is compounded by an often traumatic border crossing, persistent language barriers and, now, climate change.

Vasquez, whose wary hypervigilance seems to have etched permanent worry lines across his young brow, did not want to talk about his immigration status or journey across the border. A gentle but serious man, he allows only the occasional smile, as if to acknowledge the absurdity of having so little control over his fate. All he would say, shifting in his chair, dark eyes downcast, was he came straight to Watsonville, following two brothers who live in the area.

Vasquez and his wife, who let her husband do most of the talking, left their hometown because there were no jobs. “There is no money to buy food, shoes, clothes, basically everything that we need,” he said through a Mixtec interpreter in a community center in Watsonville, as his nine-year-old son and chipper two-year-old daughter played in an enclosed courtyard a few feet away. 

Schoolwork from one of Emilio Vasquez’s children still hangs on the wall of the home he rents with his family after the devastating Pajaro flood made it unlivable. The family is still waiting to hear when they can move back in. Credit: Liza Gross

Many farmworkers in Pajaro who were displaced by the flood were first displaced in Mexico by free-market policies that upended their way of life.

The 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement drove prices for corn and other crops so low that small farmers couldn’t afford to grow them. Mexico eliminated farm subsidies around the same time. Indigenous communities could no longer depend on subsistence production and cash crops to support themselves. 

The poverty rate for Indigenous populations in Mexico is now nearly double that for non-Indigenous people. They are among Mexico’s most marginalized populations, a legacy of Spanish colonial practices that devastated native cultures, societies and economies as well as modern-day discrimination leading to lower education levels, fewer job opportunities and limited access to healthcare and credit.

Migrants hoping to leave the trappings of poverty and discrimination behind when they come to the United States instead find the same forces at work, made even worse by lack of citizenship status and federal carveouts for farmworkers. U.S. law has excluded farmworkers from federal labor protections starting with the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, ostensibly to protect crops from a strike at harvest.

Indigenous Mexicans, now the fastest-growing segment of California farmworkers, are more likely to occupy the bottom tier of the farm labor market, performing more arduous, lower-paying tasks, like picking strawberries. When workers receive higher wages, a study of Indigenous farmworkers found, it’s likely to be because they worked faster, under poorer conditions on a piece-rate basis. Even then, most make only about $85 to $100 a day, which has to support their families during the months-long off season.

Many end up living in historically neglected towns like Pajaro. 

There’s nothing natural about the way a natural disaster affects communities like Pajaro, said Méndez. Policy decisions and political choices intentionally withheld vital resources in infrastructure, funding and disaster preparedness from the most marginalized and stigmatized communities, like those with undocumented migrants and farmworkers, he said.

For weeks after the floodwaters receded in Pajaro, towering mounds of fetid, mud-caked debris lined nearly every street. Appliances and furnishings that took years of savings to buy—sofas, mattresses, refrigerators, stoves—lay in ruins alongside children’s bikes, stuffed animals, family photos and other cherished possessions. 

Undocumented workers already knew the fear of having their lives destroyed in an instant by La Migra, which they fear could show up at any time after a grueling day in the fields. And though the literal debris has been cleaned up, the disaster has only exacerbated the precariousness of living in the shadows, without a safety net.

Vasquez didn’t know how U.S. immigration policy penalizes undocumented workers when he left his remote village in Oaxaca. He knew nothing of Pajaro’s flood risk or that government plans to protect it had languished for decades when he rushed his family out of the house that scary March night. He had no idea his life would be turned upside down when he joined the throngs of rattled evacuees on the two roads out of town. 

Vasquez drove his family about 20 minutes south to stay with his brother in the Salinas Valley. When he woke up the next day, he learned that the whole town of Pajaro was underwater. Standing water, mud, mold and debris had ruined hundreds of buildings, including the house his family rented. 

In the rush to escape the advancing water, Vasquez had no time to gather his family’s belongings. “We lost everything,” he said, his voice trailing off.

Essential but Illegal

In February 1998, a series of El Niño storms pushed warm water toward the West Coast, causing intense flooding in Monterey County and forcing the entire town of Pajaro to evacuate. Twenty-three years later, the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency was formed by the city of Watsonville, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties and water agencies to reduce flood risk in the region. Before the latest flood disaster, the $400 million project to shore up flood protection for Pajaro and Watsonville was slated to break ground in 2025. Now, officials plan to start construction next summer.

The level of need in Pajaro overwhelmed local governments, which scrambled to help cash-strapped residents. Monterey County ran an emergency shelter at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds in Watsonville, which at its peak housed more than 500 people with nowhere else to go. The county closed the shelter in mid-May, and offered a limited number of hotel vouchers through a program slated to end July 30.

Agricultural fields remain waterlogged around Pajaro, California several weeks after the storms that drove the flooding in the region. Credit: Liza Gross

Fields that would normally be full of strawberries in spring were bare after the flooding that devastated Pajaro, California in March, 2023. Credit: Liza Gross

Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli said fewer than 30 people are living in hotels now. He’s confident anyone still in need of housing will find it before the program closes. “We’re not walking away from folks,” he said. 

The county provides services to all residents regardless of immigration status, Pasculli said. There was “a herculean effort” to let Pajaro residents know about available resources, he said, led by the county’s community-based organization partners. 

Yet nonprofits that serve immigrants are not equipped for disaster aid, said Méndez. They were stretched thin from Covid, he said, and now these under-resourced organizations are being asked to do all this additional work with little funding. 

 As a result, many, including Vasquez, never heard about the shelter or hotel program.

“We just got out of the house and we’re just roaming around,” Vasquez said matter of factly, hands folded on his jeans. “We haven’t done anything when it comes to researching for resources because we don’t speak very good Spanish. The language barrier is big and we really don’t know where to ask for help.”

When federal officials declared farm laborers “essential workers” near the start of the pandemic, they extended only limited health and safety benefits to undocumented workers. As a result, agricultural workers had the second-highest Covid-19 death rate in California, with noncitizen immigrants at highest risk.

These workers still cannot access federal unemployment insurance and disaster assistance, among other benefits critical to economic stability.

More than 2,000 Monterey County residents registered for disaster relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which has approved close to $4 million in aid so far, Pasculli said. The agency provides only county-level data, so it’s unclear how much went to Pajaro residents.

Unauthorized immigrants are eligible for FEMA only if a child or other household member is a citizen. A friend told Vasquez, whose daughter was born in the States, that he could apply for aid at Pajaro Park, where FEMA had set up a recovery center. He went to the park to see if he could get help to pay for a hotel room in early May. Someone entered his information on a computer and assured him he’d hear back in two days. “We never got a call,” he said, clearly frustrated, but without a hint of anger in his voice.

He’s struggling to make ends meet in Monterey County, where the cost of living is 37 percent higher than the national average. “We live in one of the most expensive counties in the country,” said Eloy Ortiz, special projects manager for Regeneración Pajaro Valley Climate Action. “And agricultural workers are among the lowest paid for the hardest work.”

Farmworker wages average $35,200 in Monterey County, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But these surveys likely miss many undocumented workers, who are often paid less and, like many farmworkers, vulnerable to wage theft. Vasquez said he and his wife each make only about $21,000 a year picking strawberries—when there’s full-time work during the season. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to mobilize funds for undocumented workers in March, after touring Pajaro. Finally, in June, the state Department of Social Services announced it would distribute $95 million for people who can’t access federal relief. So far, $6.2 million has been allocated to Monterey County and $5.1 million to Santa Cruz through the Storm Assistance for Immigrants Project, according to a department spokesperson. 

“Frankly, I am very frustrated by hearing all of this supposed good news coming through, when on the ground, I’m not seeing any of it,” said Ann López, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Farmworker Families. “We still have farmworkers calling all the time begging for Target gift cards so they can buy food, wondering if they’re going to be able to stay in the hotel.”

Ann López, executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families, speaks about the needs of Pajaro Valley’s farmworkers at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Santa Cruz County in May. Credit: Liza Gross

López said some 1,500 families need at least $25 million to get back on their feet. The region’s small farmers, she said, need another $5 million to stay in business and get their crews back to work. 

Floodwaters ruined nearly 2,000 acres of strawberries, Monterey County’s top crop worth more than $968 million, and a major source of farmworker jobs. 

The January storms destroyed seven acres of strawberries on Javier Zamora’s 200-acre organic farm, JSM Organics, a few miles south of Pajaro. The creek that runs along his fields rose four feet in early January, leaving his strawberries underwater for a month. Zamora, who is as passionate about sustainable farming as he is about his workers, estimates he lost $150,000. 

It pained Zamora that he had no work for his farm hands for a month and a half. Zamora’s customers advanced him $87,000, which helped. “But as far as government money?” he said. “Zero yet.”

Javier Zamora, owner of JSM Organics, south of Pajaro, lost $150,000 worth of strawberries during January storms. Floodwaters quickly inundated seven acres of strawberries, he said. Credit: Liza Gross

Vasquez and his wife couldn’t find work in the strawberry fields until mid-May. Even then, the young couple worked far fewer hours than normal.

But no one is tracking the flood’s impact on farmworker jobs.

The unemployment rate for the county was 6.3 percent in May compared to 4.7 percent last May, according to a recent California Employment Development Department analysis. But the rates are likely much higher for farmworkers, since the figures are derived partly from unemployment insurance claims—which unauthorized workers cannot file.

California just passed a budget earmarking $20 million to Monterey County to support people affected by the flood, regardless of immigration status. Yet distributing these funds is likely to take months of screening and possibly longer to reach Indigenous-speaking workers. By that time, workers may have left to find jobs elsewhere, advocates say. 

“This is climate displacement and who’s being displaced in California are farmworkers,” said Faulstich. “People don’t have work and then they don’t have money to spend in the businesses, so small businesses are suffering.”

These climate change-induced shocks throw everything off, she said. “And we’re just so not prepared.”

Risking All for a Better Life

Elena Mendoza, a shy, soft-spoken mother of seven from a Mixtec village in southern Mexico, lives far enough north of the Pajaro River in Watsonville to have escaped flood damage. But like hundreds of other farmworkers in the region, she struggled to find work and pay her rent after the storms laid waste to thousands of acres of agricultural fields in the region. 

Mendoza, who asked not to use her real name because she is undocumented, missed months of work, she said through a Mixtec interpreter. She’s worried if she falls too far behind on rent, she’ll lose the home she shares with her husband and children.

Many Indigenous farmworkers spent just a few years in primary school. Mendoza made it to sixth grade, yet it’s been overwhelming for her to figure out what aid she’s eligible for. The county and state offer resources in Mixteco on their websites, but neither Mendoza nor Vasquez knew that. A friend told Mendoza that local nonprofits distributed food and basic supplies each month to help families affected by the floods, which has been a big help.

But if Mendoza can’t pay the rent, she will have a very hard time finding a new place to live. 

There is an urgent need for affordable farmworker housing in the Pajaro and Salinas valleys. Nearly 90 percent of the region’s 91,000 farmworkers live in exceptionally crowded conditions, with a quarter sleeping in a room with three or more people,  a U.C. Merced Labor Center report found. 

Though many farmers in the region reported facing a labor shortage in a 2018 study, most did not connect their trouble finding workers with the housing crisis. But the lack of safe, affordable housing is so acute, the county recently found more than 60 families, many Indigenous, paying up to $2,500 a month to live in converted greenhouses south of Pajaro that lacked ventilation, operable windows, heat, smoke detectors, proper plumbing, bathrooms or kitchens.

The county shut the rogue operation down. But such living conditions are common in the Pajaro Valley, farmworker advocates say.

Mendoza, a slight 35-year-old with a broad face and almond-shaped eyes that radiate warmth and optimism, didn’t know what to expect when she left her rural, mountainous Oaxacan village some 20 years ago in search of a better life. 

She is from a different region of Oaxaca than the Vasquezes. But like most Indigenous Mexicans, she faced similar challenges. Her parents grew beans, squash and corn following ancient milpa companion planting practices designed to boost pollinator diversity, soil health and reap other ecological benefits. But her parents, like most people in her little town, grew just enough for their family. They had no money to buy other foods or basic necessities in a region where nearly 1 in 4 people live in extreme poverty.

Mendoza, clad in a gray sweatshirt emblazoned with the word California, was just a teenager when she left home, hoping she could find work in the States to help support her struggling parents. She didn’t know if she’d ever see her parents again. She just knew she had to try to help them, she said, nervously pulling her sweatshirt hood over her long, dark hair. 

Mendoza and her brother caught a bus near their home in San Martín Peras and traveled three days to the desert town of Altar, a last stop for migrants hoping to reach the States. Her brother found a “coyote,” a guide who said he could smuggle them across the border, for $2,000 each, about $3,300 in today’s dollars. The coyote told them to buy as much food and water as they could carry.

They then walked for three nights, when temperatures dipped near freezing, and had no protection from the cold or the seemingly endless rain. They rested during the days, to escape notice. That’s when she saw the snakes. And realized, to her horror, that the hair and bones sticking out of the dusty dirt were someone’s remains.

Hundreds of people die each year trying to cross the border, desperate to find work. The vast majority are from Mexico.

Mendoza and her brother made it across somewhere in Arizona. She doesn’t know where. On the last day, the Border Patrol apprehended and deported them. They went back to Altar to try again. But her brother stayed behind, hobbled by badly blistered feet. Mendoza, scared but determined, found another coyote. 

When she got to the border, the coyote directed her to a waiting van. It had dark windows and no seats, to cram in as many people as possible. Mendoza squeezed into the mass of bodies, hoping for the best. 

This time, she made it.

Mendoza landed at a cousin’s in Oxnard, a major strawberry-growing region with a thriving Indigenous Mexican community, north of Los Angeles.

She looked for work in the strawberry fields but everyone told her she was too young. So she decided to try her luck in Salinas, which she heard also grew strawberries. She went to a field and asked the supervisor for a job. He told her to go to school. Desperate for money to pay for food and rent, she shadowed him all day, begging for work. Finally, he relented.

Now, 20 years later, she’s nearly as desperate for work. 

Mendoza never tried to return to her village, unwilling to endure another border crossing. She now lives with the heartache of not seeing her mother before she died, four years ago. 

Mendoza did not want to talk about her fear of La Migra, she said, her hand over her lips as if trying to trap the words. But she thinks the people who risk their lives to walk through the desert, hoping to find work to help their families back home, should be granted permission to work here. And she thinks that maybe when farmworkers can’t find work, the taxes she sees taken out of her paycheck could go to some sort of fund to help them get by.

Still Waiting for Relief

Vasquez and his family have not been able to return to their home since the flood made it uninhabitable. The family stayed with Vasquez’s brother in the Salinas Valley for a few days, then drove back north to stay with another brother, who lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Watsonville. Vasquez and his wife sleep in the living room, while their kids crowd into the bedroom with his brother.

Vasquez’s family can stay as long as they need to, as far as his brother is concerned. But the apartment manager forbids overnight visitors. “We can’t even allow our kids to cry,” Vasquez said. “If they cry, then we will have to find a way to distract them. Otherwise they’ll find out, and we’re afraid that they will kick us out.”

The disastrous Pajaro flood made the home Emilio Vasquez rents with his family unlivable. He’s still waiting to hear when he can move back in. Credit: Liza Gross

So he and his family have been bouncing back and forth between his brothers’ homes for months, as he waits for his landlady, Evelia Martinez, to fix their one-bedroom.  

Martinez, a mother of five, including a niece she calls her own, applied for FEMA aid to fix the Vasquezes’ house. But she discovered rental properties aren’t eligible. She finally got a loan, but reconstructing the walls and floors and replacing all the trashed furniture and appliances will take time.

Martinez, who volunteers at her nine-year-old son’s school, lost her own home in a rural area of Watsonville, after the storms knocked down power lines. Martinez, her husband and three of their kids are crowded into her sister’s house in downtown Watsonville. 

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A petite woman with curly brown hair, Martinez said she’s usually a positive person with a can-do attitude. “But when Pajaro flooded, it kind of just crushed me,” she said. 

Dealing with her own displacement, the loss of the small income she got from her rental, and seeing the Vasquezes, “a great family,” left without a place to live was more than she could bear.

She relays as much information to Vasquez as she can in Spanish, unsure how much he understands. She felt terrible when he asked her if they could stay in a tool shed next to the house until the repairs were done and she had to tell them no. She just couldn’t let them live with their kids in a shack with no heat, windows or plumbing. Instead, Vasquez has been using it to store the few things he salvaged from cabinets above the water damage. 

But as the months without his own place drag on, the stress of hiding from his brother’s landlord and La Migra weighs heavily on his mind. If he could, Vasquez said, he would ask political leaders to get him the help and support his family needs. And permits so he can work here legally. He thinks it’s only fair for all the hard work he and his wife do.

Meanwhile, farmworker advocates worry that another disaster could be around the corner, now that El Niño is officially here. The weather system heats up the Pacific Ocean, potentially bringing heavy rains.

The levee reconstruction won’t be finished for nine years, said Ortiz of Regeneración Pajaro Valley. “What’s the plan, if this happens again next year, or even two or three years from now?” 

The agricultural industry depends on people from Pajaro and other marginalized towns to keep food prices low, Ortiz said. People have already left the region to find work or housing. “Without a safety net for people,” he said, “what’s going to happen if all the farmworkers move?”

This reporting was supported with funding from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism 2023 California Health Equity Impact Fund.

Liza Gross

Reporter, West Coast, National Environmental Reporting Network

Liza Gross is a reporter for Inside Climate News based in Northern California. She is the author of The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook and a contributor to The Science Writers’ Handbook, both funded by National Association of Science Writers’ Peggy Girshman Idea Grants. She has long covered science, conservation, agriculture, public and environmental health and justice with a focus on the misuse of science for private gain. Prior to joining ICN, she worked as a part-time magazine editor for the open-access journal PLOS Biology, a reporter for the Food & Environment Reporting Network and produced freelance stories for numerous national outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Discover and Mother Jones. Her work has won awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Professional Journalists NorCal and Association of Food Journalists.

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Amid dramatic ocean waves and flooding atmospheric flows, a new report uncovers a hidden aspect of sea-level rise that has exacerbated Bay Area flooding.

The report, released on Tuesday, maps areas that could be inundated by groundwater that is just a few feet or even centimeters below the ground. This layer of water is pushed up as denser water from the ocean moves inland due to rising tides. On its way up, before the water breaks the surface, it can seep into basement cracks, infiltrate plumbing, or, even more insidiously, remobilize toxic chemicals buried underground.

Communities that consider themselves “safe” from sea-level rise may need to think differently, said Kris May, lead author of the report and founder of the Pathways Climate Institute, a research-based consultancy in San Francisco that helps cities adapt to climate change .

“I started looking at sea level rise, then I’m exposed to extreme rainfall, and then to groundwater … but it’s all connected,” May said. She noted that hotspots where the ground is already exposed to rising groundwater flooding was among the first to occur when a series of atmospheric flows recently brought record rainfall to California: “These giant storms illustrate the magnitude of the risk.”

The new findings are the result of an unprecedented collaborative effort by May, the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), UC Berkeley and a broad-based team including regulators, building officials and flood protection agencies to find out where groundwater is located along the bay’s shoreline is close to the surface or is already breaking off. A series of searchable maps available to the public online shows Alameda, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties — the first of many jurisdictions researchers hope will undergo this intense data refinement process.

In this screenshot of the interactive map released Tuesday, the purple areas show where groundwater has already appeared in Marin City and Sausalito. Red and orange indicate where groundwater is within 6 feet of the surface.

(SFEI/Pathways Climate Institute)

The maps are based on a new but growing body of research. In 2020, another study conducted by the US Geological Survey laid the groundwork for this problem along California’s 1,200 miles of coastline, and state toxin control officials have since begun their own mapping efforts to better understand how rising groundwater is affecting contaminated land could.

Similar research into vulnerable communities in Southern California is also currently underway by a team led by Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Northridge.

This emerging risk of flooding raises many difficult questions, but the data to date make it clear that urgent action is needed.

“We really need to focus on where pollutants might be mobilized by rising groundwater because that could have an immediate impact on a six-year-old, a pregnant woman, or someone whose immune system is particularly vulnerable,” said Kristina Hill, a UC Berkeley researcher. who is particularly concerned about underserved communities like Marin City and historically industrial areas like East Oakland, where much of the soil is contaminated. “The [remobilization] could happen now while it’s wet outside.”

When it comes to groundwater, there are two types to consider. One type, which researchers are now concerned about, is the unbound water that collects in the pore spaces of the soil very close to the surface. This is the water that runs off the road and seeps into the ground. The other type, trapped in aquifers hundreds of meters deep, is the water we tap for drinking.

As the tide moves inland, the shallow fresh water tends to float on top of the denser salt water — and is pushed up toward the surface as sea levels rise. Because the shallow groundwater is not consumed, few people have studied this layer of water in California.

(Lorena Iniguez Elebee/Los Angeles Times)

Hill, who directs the Department of Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley, first realized nearly a decade ago that this shallow aquifer had been overlooked in talks about sea-level rise. Along with May and Ellen Plane, who is now an environmental scientist at SFEI, she analyzed data from 10,000 wells across the Bay Area and concluded that more than twice that amount of land could be flooded from groundwater if the ocean continues to rise .

Then, in a remarkable move to turn those initial approximation studies into data that government agencies would actually use, the researchers called on officials themselves to help fill in the data gaps. City and county officials searched for geotechnical reports and other potentially useful records that had been archived in different (and often isolated) departments. They went through hundreds of PDFs and spreadsheets to compile all of the underground data that had been collected for building permits and projects.

Public works officials then checked the updated maps against their own observations, such as storm sewers that back up during high tide and roads that tend to flood even when there is no current.

Discover the current groundwater conditions in this interactive map:

Patterns emerged. Many of the communities most exposed to the flooding were built along historic streams or on reclaimed wetlands. If you overlay 5.5 feet of sea level rise on the map, water is expected to flow back into virtually any wetland that has been filled.

Officials in San Francisco are already considering this data when considering new construction projects. Other cities and counties are beginning to reconsider their flood mitigation options—after all, a traditional levee or seawall wouldn’t do anything to stem groundwater as it moves with rising sea levels.

Ultimately, officials need to figure out what to do with all of the contaminated sites along the bay that are still awaiting remediation — or those that need further remediation, said Hill, who has completed another set of maps that will show where and In which direction might rising groundwater remobilize harmful chemicals underground? The commonly used approach of ‘covering’ a toxic waste dump, for example, rather than actually removing the contamination from the ground, may no longer be sufficient.

Regulators at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board have been following all of this research with keen interest and are already looking at the updated maps, said Lisa Horowitz McCann, deputy executive director. The board recently ordered its long-term flood control plans for 16 bayside landfills to take groundwater rise into account, and caseworkers are now going through hundreds of cases to determine which sites require further action.

“This data gives us the ability to take stronger action — and even legally supports it,” Horowitz McCann said. “We’re looking at a larger universe of cases now.”

Researchers hope to continue this mapping work for the rest of the Bay Area. Next up is Contra Costa County in the East Bay, where a number of historically contaminated sites are being considered for remediation along Richmond’s industrialized coast.

An aerial photo shows a cyclist riding through a flooded bike path in Mill Valley during a royal flood in 2022. Many low-lying areas along the San Francisco Bay are at increased risk of flooding, according to a new study.

(JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Much more work also needs to be done to understand what the actual damage to gas lines, sewage treatment plants, foundations and other buried infrastructure will be, said Patrick Barnard, whose research team at the US Geological Survey has performed extensive flood modeling by officials across the state used.

“We need to start bringing this information together with the world of technology,” he said. “We built everything assuming the ground is dry. What does it mean that he is now constantly full?”

Barnard has also studied what scientists call “composite extremes.” What do we do when seawater enters at high tide, while our rivers and storm sewers try to flush excess rainwater into the sea and the ground cannot absorb anything because the groundwater also floods?

“We looked at this in a case for the Napa River, and basically an average annual winter storm could turn into a 100-year flooding event when the ground is already saturated,” he said. “Add in any amount of rain, even amounts that are not normally catastrophic…and you have catastrophic effects.”

For Chris Choo, Marin County Planning Manager, the support for the recent mapping effort has been eye-opening in a number of ways. She has spent years helping communities prepare for climate change, and the challenges have grown more complicated as one disaster seems to overwhelm the next.

“From drought to drought to drought to a big concern that we don’t have enough water, all of a sudden, within two weeks, we’ve seen the effects of way too much of it,” she said, not just citing the flooded streets who kept their colleagues working around the clock, but also the heavy surf that swept much of California earlier this month and even split a pier in two.

“People still tend to see these things as isolated terrible things and not part of a collective change…in terms of what the future might hold,” she said. “We live in nature and too often think we’re separate from it… but nature still rules.”

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As of Saturday, there are flood warnings for 21 million people across Southern California, including Los Angeles and San Diego. Flooding, downed trees and damaged power lines were likely through Saturday morning as the storm swept across the state, the National Weather Service said.

The heaviest rain in the state was expected on Saturday morning. So far, Topanga has received 9.36 inches of rain, while Pasadena and Los Angeles have received 3.62 and 3.46 inches, respectively. Another 1 to 4 inches are possible.

Across the country, half a million homes and businesses in southern Michigan were left without power as of Friday night after an ice storm battered the region, and officials warned power could not return for many until Sunday.

In Michigan, about 500,000 utility customers were out of power Friday, according to poweroutage.us, with outages reported from Lake Michigan to Lake Erie. Over much of the region, temperatures should drop into the 20s overnight and drop into the teens with the wind chill, the National Weather Service said.

Mark Miller clears debris after ice storm damage in Kalamazoo Township, Michigan (Rodney Coleman-Robinson/MLive.com/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP file)

Almost 400,000 were left without power as of Saturday night, according to poweroutage.us.

Light snowfall was expected across much of the area, according to the agency.

In Lansing, city officials initiated a “Code Blue” plan to respond to cold weather, repurposing libraries, community centers and other buildings as heat centers. County officials also opened warm centers in Lenawee County and the Red Cross operated a 24-hour shelter.

Officials urged Kalamazoo residents to prevent frozen pipes by opening cupboards around their lines and running a “pencil-sized” stream of water from a faucet if their internal temperature dropped below 32 degrees.

In Jackson, south of Lansing, resident George Ellis cooked outside on a gas-powered grill while a generator provided enough electricity to keep a refrigerator and space heater running, Lansing-based NBC affiliate WILX reported.

The story goes on

When the broadcaster asked how he and his wife were doing, he answered with a single word: cold.

Garrick Rochow, chief executive officer of the state’s largest utility, Consumers Energy, said Friday that power would be restored to the majority of the company’s customers by Sunday. Rochow described the utility’s response as “all hands on deck” and said 540 crews were deployed across the state.

Detroit-based DTE Energy President Trevor Lauer estimated that 95% of this utility’s homes and businesses would also have power by Sunday.

Speaking to reporters, Lauer described the great winter storm that hit the area as “historic” and likened the quarter inch of ice that fell on the electrical system to a “baby grand piano hanging on those wires.”

Warmer weather is expected this weekend, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees on Sunday.

San Francisco on Friday recorded its lowest temperature on record — 39 degrees, while parts of Northern California that rarely see snow reported several inches or more between Thursday and Friday, according to the weather service.

In Southern California, the first snowstorm warning ever issued by the National Weather Service’s San Diego office remained in effect through Saturday afternoon. The same warning was issued for the mountains of Los Angeles and Ventura counties for the first time since 1989, the weather service said.

Heavy snow and blizzard conditions will persist in parts of the Sierra Nevada and Transverse Ranges on Saturday. Snow reports to date include 45 inches at Soda Springs and 37 inches at Big Bear Lake. Additional snow accumulations of about a foot are likely, with more likelihood over the highest passes and peaks.

A plow clears snow on Mount Baldy Road in the city of Mount Baldy, California February 24, 2023. – Californians, who are more used to flip-flops and shorts, enveloped the warm Thursday in a rare winter blizzard, the first since more than 30 years ago, loomed over Los Angeles even as the US east coast basked in summer temperatures. (Allison Dinner / AFP – Getty Images)

More than 113,000 people in the state were without power as of Saturday night, according to poweroutage.us.

The storm is expected to hit the Central High Plains by Sunday night, the weather service said. This puts 4 million people at risk of severe weather, including in Oklahoma City, Abilene, Texas and Wichita, Kansas.

In this storm system, large hail and damaging winds will be the primary threats, with an isolated tornado also expected in the late afternoon and evening hours.

As this system advances east Monday, there is a low risk of severe weather throughout the Ohio Valley. That includes 5 million in the cities of Cincinnati, Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky, with the primary concern damaging wind gusts over 60 miles per hour.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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San Francisco residents, property owners and businesses that were badly impacted from January’s series of winter storms may be eligible for financial relief, Mayor London Breed announced on Tuesday.

Since the beginning of the year, San Francisco has been hit by a series of storms that prompted flooding, mudslides and power outages.

“The severe weather we just experienced has impacted many of our small businesses and residents in heavily affected areas and these initial efforts will help as part of our City’s recovery,” said Breed. “While these flood relief programs will provide support in the storms’ aftermath, we are hard at work making improvements to our infrastructure as part of a $632 million investment to help reduce the risk of flooding in the future.”

Small Business Grants

Via the city’s Flood Disaster Relief Grant program, small businesses in the city’s “flood zone” — the regions most likely to experience severe flooding in a 100-year storm — are eligible for up to $5,000 in awards, and small businesses outside of the zone can receive up to $2,000.

The San Francisco Office of Small Business will lead the effort, prioritizing businesses in the flood zone that face the most severe damage.

Grants are available for registered San Francisco businesses with a physical location that have experienced physical damage from winter storms, retroactive up to Dec. 27, 2022. Damages due to wind or power outages are not eligible.

Permitted and licensed home-based businesses, like daycares, are also eligible.

Businesses must have 100 or fewer employees and less than $5 million in gross revenue.

“We know that the recent storms have added additional difficulties to small businesses that have already been trying to recover from pandemic impacts,” said Katy Tang, executive director of the Office of Small Business. “While we recognize that this grant program will not solve all challenges, the City is offering support along with other resources and services currently available to businesses.”

A detailed map of areas determined the most at risk of flooding can be found at https://sfplanninggis.org/floodmap/.

Applications are open on Friday and close on Feb. 10. More information on the application process can be found at https://sf.gov/get-help-if-your-business-was-damaged-flooding.

The San Francisco Arts Commission and Grants for the Arts also plans to create a collaborative storm relief fund for San Francisco artists and art organizations. More details will be shared on the agency’s website once details are finalized.

Property Damage Relief

For those facing property damage, the city recommends residents and businesses to contact their insurance company to assess damages and purchase flood insurance.

Businesses and homeowners can also apply for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Floodwater Management Grant Assistance Program, which can provide over $100,000 in flood mitigation improvements on properties.

Tax Relief Opportunities

San Francisco property owners may also be eligible for property tax relief if they suffered over $10,000 in flood damage. A disaster relief form must be submitted to the Assessor-Recorder by one year of the date of loss.

“We know that these recent storms are unlike anything our city has seen in decades and have caused significant hardship for many property owners. Given the impacts of this severe weather, the Office of the Assessor-Recorder wants all San Franciscans to be aware they may qualify for property tax relief and that our staff is available to help walk them through the process from start to end,” said Assessor-Recorder Joaquín Torres.

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By J. Elliott Mendez

At 11:53 PM, Sunday, The National Weather Service issued a Coastal Flood Advisory warning the King Tides “will cause minor coastal flooding at low lying spots during high tide Monday night.”

In addition to flooding, “the lowest tides of the event will be observed in the early morning hours which may lead to trouble for mariners navigating shallow waterways,” said NWS.

While tidal levels will also rise along the Pacific coast, impacted areas will be more localized to San Francisco, North Bay Interior Valleys and the San Francisco Bay Shoreline.

“Tides have receded tonight allowing tonight’s advisory to expire,” said NWS. “But tides will increase again Monday night and successive nights this week.”

The advisory is to take effect at 8:00 PM Monday, and will last 4 hours, expiring at Midnight. However, NWS expects tidal readings to peak around Wednesday night.

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May 31, 2022

An image from the Stern Grove concert series.

Courtesy of Stern Grove Festival

San Francisco music festivals don’t get much more beloved than Stern Grove.

Now in its 85th year, the free summer concert series has been a staple in the Bay Area, but its status was put in jeopardy last year after a flood severely damaged the park grounds. Thankfully, renovations are nearing completion, and the reopening party is going to be one to remember.

The June 12 kickoff features two historic Bay Area acts — rap legend Too $hort and prolific horn section Tower of Power — both of whom were originally scheduled to perform for the 2021 season finale. The rest of the lineup was announced in unconventional (and accidental) fashion with an advertisement on Muni.

Traditionally, the Stern Grove concerts were first come, first served. As a result, attendees would arrive in the early morning hours to secure a parcel of grass for picnic blankets and coolers. That changed with the pandemic, which led the organizers to launch an online reservation system. Tickets are still free, and go on sale 12 days before each show, with additional tickets released throughout the week prior to the event.

Ticket reservations will open for the June 12 event at 2 pm at Stern Grove’s website.

Dan Gentile is the culture editor at SFGATE. He moved to San Francisco from Austin, TX where he worked as a vinyl DJ and freelance writer covering food and music. His writing has been featured in Texas Monthly, American Way, Rolling Stone, Roads & Kingdoms, VICE, Thrillist and more. Email: Dan.Gentile@sfgate.com.

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