https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/22/california-storms-rain-flooding-san-jose-homeless
[Oddly, as watchers are increasingly changing their language from
'climate change' to 'catastrophic climate change', the mainstream
speakers are clinging to an idea that climate change will be gradual and
measured, even as the new powers that be in Washington D.C. somehow
manage to convince themselves that climate change isn't even a real
thing. Yet, in the past week, much of California - not a small place -
has shifted from almost a year of drought conditions to massive flooding
across much of the state - essentially in just 4 days.]
As rain batters California, floods leave homeless with even fewer places
to go
Wet conditions statewide present a mortal risk to the homeless people
living along the state’s waterways, who are displaced with wearying
regularity
Alastair Gee in San Jose, California
Wednesday 22 February 2017 12.00 GMT
Last modified on Wednesday 22 February 2017 13.09 GMT
Shortie Mendoza has lived along a creek in the Silicon Valley city of
San Jose for six years. Early on Wednesday, he was returning to his camp
from a night of dumpster-diving and errands.
“I hear yelling and I’m like, ‘my God’,” he said. During the hours of
darkness, the creek had overflowed, washing out the tent he shared with
his girlfriend and tearing apart the community of perhaps 40 to 50
people. His girlfriend waded out in chest-high water with her two
pitbulls. “I feel like I failed because I should’ve been here earlier”
to help, Mendoza said.
More than twice as much precipitation as normal has fallen in northern
California since 1 October, a boon for farmers and climatologists. But
wet conditions statewide present a mortal risk to the homeless people
living along California’s waterways – the Los Angeles river, the Santa
Ana river as it flows through Orange County, the Russian river in the
redwoods north of San Francisco.
Some say they are there because they find such places vastly preferable
to the prospect of a street corner, whatever the downsides during the
rainy season.
“I never even knew San Jose had a creek until a friend introduced me,”
said Mendoza, 31.
“For me, it was more laid-back after the Jungle,” said his friend,
Phillip Quiroz, 45, referring to a vast, infamous encampment in San Jose
that was cleared out several years ago. By the creek, which bisects a
municipal golf course, the sounds are of water, birds and the distant
clink of a club connecting with a ball. The course superintendent said
his staff had even seen homeless people playing golf at night.
That doesn’t mean riverine life is idyllic. Even though the golf course
is wedged between suburban neighborhoods, getting to and from the local
stores and services is exhausting. “Living out here is a workout,”
Mendoza said.
“It’s just a process to do anything,” Quiroz added. “Just to make dinner.”
Or to go to the bathroom. The superintendent said cleaning crews had
found buckets of human waste.
More than 400 people live along the Santa Ana river in Orange County,
said Paul Leon, the CEO of the Illumination Foundation, a local
nonprofit. “It’s almost impossible for them to stay dry,” he said.
“They’re probably not going to drown, but they’ll freeze to death or get
sick and pass away from that.”
The life expectancy for homeless people is estimated at about 50, he
said, and even those on the younger side struggle with pulmonary
conditions such as pneumonia. Individuals living by the water, he said,
are “already compromised”.
Flood conditions make everything more difficult. Rains in Los Angeles
have forced homeless people out of the concrete channel of the city’s
eponymous river. In the northern California town of Guerneville,
homeless people are “used to maybe being displaced once or twice during
a season”, said local activist Chris Brokate. But this season it has
happened with wearying frequency.
When the Oroville dam seemed on the verge on failing last week after
heavy rains, homeless residents of the city said they felt bewildered
and abandoned: the San Francisco Chronicle reported that, lacking
smartphones or televisions, some heard about the danger when somebody
yelled, “The dam is breaking! Get out now!”
That wasn’t necessarily the case in San Jose, where Quiroz said he had
been following the weather on his phone, and Mendoza said that homeless
residents had gleaned information on reservoir outflows. Even so, events
unfolded too quickly for people to save their tents or belongings.
Rescue crews helped them to safety.
“I’m the one who called 911. There were people yelling and screaming all
over the place,” said the course superintendent, Don Paul. Seated in a
golf cart, he surveyed the inundated 6th hole. “Just like me, they
didn’t think it would happen.”
Homeless people stood on a bridge and looked down at their possessions
snagged in trees below or half-submerged by the floodwater: tents,
clothes, blankets.
“Oh, my baby’s bike,” Mendoza said, spotting one that belonged to his
girlfriend.
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Quiroz had spoken that morning to his sister, who heard about the flood
on the news. “She was crying when I talked to her. She thought I’d died
or something.”
A man who lived in a home nearby, James Castro, had come by to see how
the campers had fared. “They barely have anything and now they don’t
even have nothing,” he said.
But despite what had happened, few said they would abandon the creek.
A woman who gave her name as Lanette walked up to her tent, which had
been hastily pulled on to the bank, and sodden belongings that had been
rescued from the current: a purple pair of boots, bottles of water, a
dog trailer. She was exhausted.
“We have to move somewhere else, I don’t know where,” she said. She
gestured to the public footpath that ran past. “There are people with
kids walking right through here, I don’t want people to see us like this.”
Then she took off her shoes, climbed into her tent and slept.
