The San Lorenzo River runs under the Felton Covered Bridge in Felton on Sept. 24. (Amaya Edwards – Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

FELTON >> The San Lorenzo River flowed peacefully under Felton Covered Bridge on a recent Wednesday morning. This at-times calm river is situated in Felton Grove’s backyard, a neighborhood that has also many times seen the river transform amid heavy rain into a powerful, muddy torrent that floods the nearby streets.

Melissa Foley, president of the Felton Grove Road Association, has already been working with her neighbors to make sure they are prepared for a potential super El Niño this winter. El Niño is a climate pattern that causes temperatures to rise in the Pacific Ocean. In Santa Cruz County and the Central Coast, an El Niño brings a higher likelihood of severe weather events like heavy rain, flooding and mudslides. 

The mountain communities of Santa Cruz County face unique challenges — mudslides, power outages, river flooding, road closures, and more. Preparation will be key to avoiding large-scale emergencies this winter, and neighbors are already collaborating with local leaders to ensure people are informed of what to do should the worst occur.

The Felton Grove neighborhood is no stranger to El Niño’s effects. The Central Coast was hit with an El Niño in 2016, although the flooding was not as severe as it was decades prior.

Another notable El Niño induced flood event occurred in 1998, and in response the Federal Emergency Management Agency offered to finance 75% of the costs for homeowners to elevate their homes to help avoid future damage. The County of Santa Cruz was awarded $1,256,501 for the Felton Grove Structural Elevations/Retrofits Project. 

Being prepared in Felton Grove means residents need to consider the little things, like storing items in water-proof boxes, keeping extra batteries for power outages and during intense rain storms getting the car out of the neighborhood before the water rises too high. 

Felton Grove residents don’t typically include sandbags in their preparedness plans, since most of the houses are flow-through structures, which allows for water to flow through small cut outs in the foundation. 

For residents in other areas along the San Lorenzo River, sandbags and sand are available for free at various locations in the county. Valley Churches United in Ben Lomond is one of those spots. Operations Manager Linda Meyer said that people have already started filling up sandbags at the pantry parking lot.

“I think that in the valley, folks that have lived here for more than one season, one winter, know more than likely what will happen, what can happen. They know we’ve had our roads washed out. We’ve had landslides, mudslides, trees come down,” Meyer said. 

Valley Churches United is primarily a food pantry but in prior years they’ve operated as a disaster assistance location as well. 

“I’d say we can and do offer assistance on a case-by-case basis if one of the residents in our valley, in our service area, is affected by the storms in such a way that a tree went through their house, a tree came down, their basement flooded, or their house flooded,” Meyer said. 

The county has an intensified focus on preparing infrastructure. This means inspecting things like water drainage systems such as culverts and the San Lorenzo River levees, according to Santa Cruz County Supervisor Monica Martinez.

Melissa Foley, president of the Felton Grove Road Association, gives a tour of the Felton Grove neighborhood. (Amaya Edwards – Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Martinez, whose district includes Ben Lomond and Felton, is also working to inform residents about winter preparation action. She said she has focused a lot of her efforts on educating people in her district and working with partners like Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The county is expecting PG&E to start staging generators near telecommunication sites. If there are power outages, then these generators could help with keeping lines of communication open.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Communications Representative Stephanie Magallon stated in an interview that they have been accelerating tree inspections and working closely with local leaders to streamline the permitting process. When possible, jobs are also being bundled so that crews are able to conduct work more efficiently to finish ahead of winter storms.

“That type of work is really critical, especially in those highly vegetated communities, because the number one cause of storm-related outages are fallen branches taking down our wires,” Magallon said.

Martinez is also encouraging residents to keep extra emergency supplies as well as signing up for CruzAware. CruzAware is a county-wide community alert and warning system designed to keep residents informed about emergency and non-emergency events. It’s also important for people to reorient themselves to evacuation routes if a road is blocked by a tree or flooded.

Similarly, the City of Scotts Valley is also urging its residents to sign up for CruzAware. At an Oct. 7 Scotts Valley City Council meeting, Interim City Manager Stephanie Hill provided the council members with information on winter emergency preparedness. The Santa Cruz County Office of Response, Recovery & Resilience gave a presentation in partnership with the National Weather Service prior to the council meeting.

“They recommend making sure you are preparing. Don’t predict. Reinforce everything you can to start being ready for winter,” Hill said.

Scotts Valley Mayor Donna Lind speaks about the city’s weather preparedness during a council meeting on Oct. 9. (Amaya Edwards – Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

As natural disasters become more frequent, District 5 residents have expressed a need for places to charge their phones or stay warm when the power is out. The county has been working with the local library system to act as emergency centers. 

“District 5 is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters or severe weather events, and we have a high density population, a pretty small area, and they’re really dependent on county resources,” Martinez said. 

Martinez recently took a tour of Felton Grove to get a better understanding of the flooding they’ve previously dealt with and how to best prepare for this winter season. 

“On one hand, I’m incredibly impressed by the resilience of those neighbors. They just know that flooding is a part of life,” Martinez said. “It’s completely unavoidable, and also I’m doing everything that I can to make sure that the county resources are available to them ahead of time.” 

It’s impossible to predict how heavy the rains will be this winter, but Felton Grove residents and other mountain communities want to be ready.

“It sucks, but we knew what we were signing up for when we moved here and we are generally prepared,” Meyer said. “I try to remind people that we live next to a river and we try to be as prepared as we can be.”

Three rings of black tape on the stop sign in front of Melissa Foley’s house shows how high floodwaters got in previous flood years. (Amaya Edwards – Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

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