City officials ordered more than 14,000 residents to evacuate as water from swollen Coyote Creek flooded homes and temporarily shut down a portion of a major freeway. Another 22,000 people near the creek had been encouraged but not required to evacuate.
“If the first time a resident is aware that they need to get out of their home is when they see a firefighter in a boat, that’s a failure,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said at a news conference. “We are assessing what happened in that failure.”
Liccardo declined to go into detail, saying there would be time for reflection after the emergency was over.
With water levels receding later in the day, officials said some residents would be allowed to return home, although an evacuation order remained for parts of the city. Authorities warned residents to careful about hygiene and handling food that may have come into contact with flood water that had traveled through engine fuel, garbage, debris and over sewer lines.
Updated maps showing the evacuation areas were being posted on the mayor’s website .
Flood warnings were in place until Saturday because waterways were overtaxed, and another storm was forecast Sunday.
The city began alerting residents of the flood situation on Tuesday via social and mainstream media and sending emergency alerts to those who had signed up for it, said city spokesman Dave Vossbrink.
When water levels changed dramatically overnight, they sent police and firefighters door-to-door during the dramatic overnight evacuation.
“It was scary,” said Irma Gonzalez, 59, whose two-story apartment complex is alongside the creek. She was awakened about 2:30 a.m. by police pounding on her door. “They were like, ‘You’ve got to hurry up and go! Move it!”
Gonzalez spent the night at her sister’s house and said she was thankful for the wakeup call and evacuation. “It’s better than to wake up and have water coming in.”