Creeks remind all us of their presence again

Heavy and sustained rains changed those calm conditions, sometimes within hours. We saw any number of examples of the sudden transformation of once-benign creeks into raging torrents.

Six of the larger and more active (and problematic) bayside waterways were (and are): San Francisquito Creek on the Santa Clara County border, Cordilleras Creek in the San Carlos-Redwood City area, Belmont Creek, San Bruno Creek, Colma Creek and San Mateo Creek.

Coastside communities have their own set of creeks to handle. Along those lines, the Pescadero Creek comes to mind immediately.

As others have noted, San Mateo Creek can have significant damaging potential along its course east from the Crystal Springs Dam all the way through portions of Hillsborough and San Mateo and into the waters of San Francisco Bay in the low-lying and vulnerable Shoreview area.

When conditions are right (or wrong, depending on your point of view), San Mateo Creek can become a serious problem. If rainfall is strong, Bay tides are high and, on occasion, reservoir levels behind the dam are reduced by releasing water into the creek, well, that’s a formula for trouble.

One choke point in particular can emerge as particularly dicey: The spot where the creek is funneled into an underground drainage system on the east side of El Camino Real below the city’s downtown commercial core.

It’s there that too much water can back up and cause flooding for low-lying properties along the creek’s banks. That happened during the latest series of storms.

This circumstance is a reminder of the importance of the dam itself.

Finished in 1889 and raised and improved over many decades, the structure and the reservoir behind it, both the property of the city and county of San Francisco, is of vital importance to the community and the surrounding region.

The sturdy dam has stood the test of time — and several severe earthquakes, especially those in 1906 and 1989. Neither of those quakes caused any measurable damage to the concrete dam.

A failure of the Crystal Springs Dam would make recent flooding look like child’s play in San Mateo and beyond. Let us hope that day never comes.

San Mateo and its residents and businesses have quite a bit more than San Mateo Creek to worry about during very wet weather. The city has a number of other waterways that spring to life in times like these.

From north to south, they are: Poplar Creek, Leslie Creek, Beresford-Borel Creek and the two branches of Laurel Creek in the Hillsdale area north of Belmont.

2023 MARKS A MILITARY ANNIVERSARY: For local military history buffs, the new year marks the anniversary of an event that had an emotional impact 50 years ago.

It was in the spring of 1973 that two men with deep San Mateo County roots as youngsters were returned to the United States from imprisonment as the Vietnam War grimly wore on.

Robert Stirm and Ernest “Mel” Moore were repatriated by North Vietnamese authorities after the pair spent several exceedingly difficult years in prison (most notably the infamous “Hanoi Hilton”), enduring isolation, starvation and torture.

At different times in the late 1960s, they and their combat aircraft had been shot down over North Vietnam; they were quickly captured by the enemy. Stirm, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, attended San Mateo High School and what was then San Mateo Junior College. Moore, a U.S. Navy pilot who flew his jet from an aircraft carrier, attended Burlingame High School. He died in 2020.

Email John Horgan by at johnhorganmedia@gmail.com.