Redwood City officials assess massive storm response

Nearly 1,000 phone calls were made to the Redwood City Police Department on New Year’s Eve, three times the department's daily average. Another 232 calls for service were made to the Redwood City Fire Department, six times that department’s daily average. The city’s Public Works Department received 85 calls of its own that night compared to the 15 a weekend it typically receives.

A combination of high tides and an atmospheric river dropping around 4 to 5 inches of rain on the city. That caused its mobile home parks to flood, residents to lose power and trees to topple down, prompting the city to open an evacuation center at the Veteran’s Memorial Senior Center. The site has also served as the city’s emergency operation center.

About 20 unsheltered residents accepted shelter through county programs while another 25 entered programming through the Fair Oaks Community Center. And roughly 5,000 sandbags were distributed for a total of more than 16,000 going out to the public this winter, Stevenson Diaz said.

Stevenson Diaz also issued a Local Emergency Proclamation Jan. 5. Her order came on the heels of the county’s proclamation Jan. 3 and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state of emergency proclamation on Jan. 4.

“While we expect continued wet weather this week and into next week, it appears at this time that the worst may have passed, and I say that with some hesitation because we all know that the forecasts continually are changing this month,” Stevenson Diaz said, adding that she feels the city is now prepared to weather what storms come next.

Praise and perspective

Redwood City councilmembers voted unanimously to ratify Stevenson Diaz’s proclamation, allowing her to bypass some bureaucratic measures to continue swiftly reacting to the emergency and for the city to potentially qualify for federal aid.

But before granting their support, councilmembers both lauded city staff and local agencies for their responses while stressing the need for improvements.

Vice Mayor Lissette Espinoza-Garnica shared concerns the city was not conducting storm-related outreach in languages other than English until they brought the issue to the staff's attention. Though happy with the city staff's swift action to rectify the problem by posting content online, Espinoza-Garnica shared hopes that multi-lingual outreach would become standardized and distributed beyond social media platforms.

Espinoza-Garnica also noted some residents may have feared responding to wellness checks by police officers given their immigration status and encouraged those who are checking in on residents during emergencies to step out of their vehicles, an issue she said was raised by residents.

“I know that working overtime and on holidays was not exactly on everyone's agenda but I think that we really did have a lot of city staff come out and do the best to their ability,” Espinoza-Garnica said.

“We did a lot of good work yet some people were failed.” Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, a friend of a Redwood City resident living in a mobile home park at 1903 E. Bayshore Road, said she was on site for five hours before support arrived. She’d made calls to former Councilmember Giselle Hale who directed her to Mayor Jeff Gee who, she said, then informed her that the mobile park was under the county’s jurisdiction.

Once someone did arrive, Espinoza Salamanca said the person going door to door did not speak Spanish and did not offer an evacuation plan. When some residents decided to visit the Veterans Center, she said no staff was present and no food was available.

Espinoza Salamanca, the founder of DREAMer's Roadmap, an app meant to help undocumented students access academic scholarships, said the lack of adequate response emphasizes the need for better collaboration across jurisdictions.

Similarly, Espinoza-Garnica said they were grateful the effects of the storm weren’t worse while also suggesting it could be a learning experience about how underserved community members are more vulnerable in a crisis.

Next steps

Councilmember Alicia Aguirre acknowledged that the storms came on suddenly but also questioned why the city was not better prepared to respond given that flooding in parts of the city is not new, particularly around mobile homes that are located closer to the Bay.

“I don’t know why we weren’t prepared but we weren’t,” Aguirre said. “All of the things that we did was reactive. … Obviously, it came so quick, so fast on the 31st but where have we been for planning for the worst-case scenario?”

Moving forward, Aguirre encouraged the city to better recruit residents of mobile home parks to its Community Emergency Response Team Program which trains the public on how to respond in moments of crisis.

Fire Chief Ray Iverson said more than 70 residents have been trained across three classes last year, one of which was held in Spanish in North Fair Oaks. Ultimately, he said, the program is meant to help residents help each other rather than being an officially organized group and agreed the department will need to do more outreach to mobile home parks.

Councilmember Diane Howard also stressed the importance of multi-jurisdictional collaboration when it comes to hardening the region against future environmental crises such as improving the Bayfront Canal, a system meant to help drain stormwater.Construction on the canal was completed last January after more than a decade of work and cooperation between the city and neighboring jurisdictions, prompted by previous flooding. Though the canal helped prevent some flooding during recent storms, some councilmembers agreed more work is likely necessary to make the system more efficient.

Reflecting on the effects of the recent storms, Gee said his biggest takeaway was that the region is not ready for “the big one,” meaning an earthquake that could make accessing emergency services difficult, leaving residents stranded, similar to the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.

“As much as we want people to be able to show up — bilingual, multilingual — an event may happen where they’re not even able to get to Redwood City,” Gee said. “So we have to not only as a city get ready but as a community get ready. As we move forward, my encouragement not only to the Redwood City community but as I shared with elected officials across the county, we as a region need to get ready.”

sierra@smdailyjournal.com

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