Major flood would hit Los Angeles Black communities disproportionately hard, study finds
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LOS ANGELES — Four years after the devastating wildfires, drought and floods ravaged California, the state is preparing for a much larger disaster.
The state will host the 2014 California flood conference this weekend, held in San Diego.
The region is already facing the worst of the worst.
The National Weather Service has issued a flood emergency for the lower San Joaquin River in eastern San Joaquin County because of sustained rains last week.
A report released by the Weather Service this week showed that a major flood is also expected to hit southern Sacramento County.
An estimated 15 to 20 inches of rain fell in the past week in those areas.
The state’s largest river, the North and Middle Rivers, are already flowing above their banks.
There’s no way to predict how big this next flood will be or when it will hit.
But as the California flood briefing panel concluded this week in San Franciso, officials were hopeful that they would be “ready” when it hits.
“We have good people here who know how to lead and do the right things,” said Jerry Brown, California’s governor. “But you’ve got to know how to prepare, and you have to know how to do it right.”
There are no doubt uncertainties in these predictions. That’s one reason officials are urging people to prepare.
“In many parts of the state, we will need much higher floodwater management efforts to mitigate flooding,” Department of Water Resources Executive Officer Mike Dannenberg said.
Gov. Brown and others have been warning that the state has to act quickly to prevent a second disaster like the catastrophic wildfires that devastated the state in September 2008.
“We don’t have the luxury of waiting for a natural disaster to hit and then trying to address it,” Brown said.
