City officials pave a safer path

Back in 2017, San Mateo County experienced a series of storms, but the storms that kicked off the start of 2023 may rival the winter of El Niño in 1997 and 1998, according to Peter Brown, the Public Works director of Belmont.

“We had to close Harbor and Old County because the whole underpass underneath the CalTrans tracks was fully underwater, and we had to rescue a few people that had driven their cars into the floodwaters,” Brown said. 

The public works department of Belmont would receive more than 160 calls over the next two weeks after the first storm, but the city was prepared to be available for these upcoming storms and emergencies.

“After that first storm, we were better prepared. We had more resources, and public works and fire and police department staff ready to come in during extra hours and overnight,” Brown said.

As a preventative measure, in San Carlos, there are regular storm drain cleanouts in the summer and fall to manage potential flooding. However, no city was perfectly prepared for the bizarre circumstances that the first storm on New Year’s Eve presented. 

“Certainly, that storm was larger than we expected, and seeing it take some of the damage was just unprecedented in terms of the amount of rain,” said San Carlos Mayor Adam Rak.

Despite the difficulties, emergency workers stepped up when the floods infiltrated residential streets and parks. 

On San Juan Blvd., a mudslide on Jan. 14 resulting from the storm closed off the street for about two weeks while it was evaluated and repaired.

“Think of it as a sandcastle or something where if you move that mud at the street level, some root systems and other things could be impacted, and that would make the slide worse,” said Belmont Mayor Julia Mates.

In addition to residential areas, the floods closed off several parks in Belmont and San Carlos, like Twin Pines and Canyon Park, respectively. These open spaces closed because of downed and unstable trees and saturated, slippery soil that posed a threat to children and walkers. City social media amplified these dangers to the public and warned people not to enter the parks until it was safe.

“We even had a eucalyptus tree fall on a city work truck when they were out to inspect some other downed trees. So it was very impressive — the preparedness and the response from the Belmont city staff,” Brown said.

With damages adding up, federal funding went under consideration. As the storms were declared a state of emergency for California, this opened up resources from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

“We always try our best, and I think we’ve had a good track record of getting reimbursement under FEMA, and so we’re positive or hopeful that will happen again this time,” Brown said.

San Carlos explored the option of federal funding as well.

“Similar to Belmont, we have a limited number of public work staff. So, we have on-call contractors who we can bring on in case of emergency to address cleaning rock creeks or other things or if there is stuff that we can’t handle in-house. So there are certainly costs around that that we’ll be looking at,” Rak said. 

Working with the county was also necessary for jurisdiction over properties like the Belmont Trailer Park and other county lands.

“The partnership that we have in this county where we all work together when we need to is something we should really uplift and talk about because I don’t know about other counties, but it is nice that when things like this happen, we kind of all work together, especially in those first few hours when it’s just crazy and hectic,” Mates said.

For the state of California, the abundance of rain made a dent in the drought, but not until there are more consistent rains and state operations will there be a systematic way to both prevent flooding and improve the drought. The Shasta and Oroville reservoirs — the biggest ones in the state — had noticeable improvements after the storms, but laws that require them to be open during the winter may have hindered their potential to maximize water storage.

“There are some antiquated laws on the books that are dictating how some of the state’s dams and water resources are managed, and those need some updating and revisiting. So that’s one thing that is difficult to balance, and until we get some significant revamping and changes in those dam operations, we’re not going to improve the situation,” Brown said.

Despite the lack of control over the drought from cities, public works teams in Belmont and San Carlos made a plan for damage repair in their respective communities.

“We have to prioritize which things need to be repaired first, and we’re also keeping track of all these things because the private property owner of the city is also eligible for federal and state emergency resources,” Brown said.

San Carlos was prepared to help any residents in need with the help of generous contributions from city staff.

“We had our Parks & Recreation team helping with the potential to have a shelter open if need be, but we didn’t need to use that, and some of them were also helping with sandbags. We had our trade services team working on manning the phones or answering phones if residents had concerns or issues or downed trees or things like that,” Rak said. “So the staff stepped up in terms of being able to all pitch in.”

Nearing the end of the storm, city officials like Brown did not foresee any persisting impact from the storm, but rather, as an opportunity to move forward and create stronger groundwork for future weather events.

“I don’t believe there’ll be any long-term impacts. I think all the damage that has happened is all reparable. But hopefully, both the city and its residents and its businesses keep moving and doing what we can to become more resilient and prepared,” Brown said.