SAN JOSE — City officials early Wednesday morning expanded the area for mandatory evacuations to the full 100-year flood zone along Coyote Creek, which includes about 14,000 residents.
The evacuation includes homes within 250 feet of Coyote Creek, from the southwest side of Highway 101 to north of Interstate 280.
Water also flooded a small portion of Highway 101 in San Jose, prompting officials to close the freeway in both directions between the Interstate 280/680 interchange and Interstate 880 as the morning commute began. At about 8:30 a.m., three northbound lanes reopened, according to CHP Officer Ross Lee. The southbound lanes are expected to remain closed until at least 10:30 a.m., Lee said.
Meanwhile northbound 101 in Morgan Hill reopened at 4:24 a.m. Wednesday.
Although the rain has stopped, releases from Anderson Reservoir remain elevated as runoff from the upper Coyote Creek watershed moves down the system, according to the National Weather Service. The runoff peak has been reached at Edenvale and water levels have begun to recede there, but they remain above flood level.
Tuesday night, water levels near Edenvale reached 13.6 feet, the highest recorded level in 100 years, according to the National Weather Service. Wednesday at 6 a.m., water levels near Edenvale had dropped to 10.8 feet, which is still above the flood level of 10 feet.
San Jose police have officers patrolling areas affected by evacuation.
The city has opened two evacuation centers residents, intended as drop-in centers with water and snacks available, open 24/7. The locations are the Mayfair Community Center, 2039 Kammerer Ave. and the Shirakawa Community Center, 2072 Lucretia Ave.
Overnight shelters, operated by the Red Cross and city Parks, Recreation & Neighborhood Services, are open at Evergreen Valley High School, 3300 Quimby Rd. and James Lick High School, 57 N. White Rd. Students at both high schools are on break this week, as are students at all public schools within the evacuation area. Franklin-McKinley School District has closed Shirakawa and McKinley elementary schools.
At the overnight shelter set up at Evergreen Valley High School, 111 evacuees stayed the night, with most coming through in the late hours, said Stephanie Charles, who is administering the shelter for the Red Cross.The shelters cannot accept pets, but residents can take their pets to the San Jose Animal Shelter, 2750 Monterey Rd, for safekeeping.
Charles added that the facility has the capacity for 260 additional people. The Evergreen setup was established Monday in anticipation of the storms and was nearly shuttered for lack of usage until the Tuesday evacuations were ordered.
Among those who sought refuge there were 62-year-old Lien Tran and 70-year-old Tho Pham, who were flushed from their unit by knee-high waters at the South Bay Mobile Home Park off Oakland Road in North San Jose.
Tran said around 2 p.m. Tuesday, anticipated flooding prompted the lot manager to tell residents to move their cars to safer ground. But a couple of hours later, the water was faster and higher than anyone expected.
“Suddenly the water came,” said Tran, who has lived at the site for 13 years. “We haven’t had anything like this before.”
Tran and Pham fled essentially with the clothes on their backs when police came to evacuate residents and get them on a bus to the shelter. Both are wondering when they’ll be able to go home.
“Not yet,” Tran said, when asked about whether she has been given any estimate.
It was an especially challenging escape for Yuni Rho, who runs a pair of group homes for mentally disabled residents along Coyote Creek east of downtown San Jose. Rho had been keeping up with news reports and waited nervously about whether they would need to evacuate.
She and her staff prepared for the possibility, gather medications and other supplies for the 30 people they serve. By 8 p.m., the evacuation order for her region was still voluntary; by 10 p.m., it wasn’t a choice anymore.
“The water kept rising,” Rho said.
Rho lauded San Jose police for being responsive to the special needs of her residents and commissioning a bus to pick them up. Amid all the commotion, she worked to keep everyone calm.
“It was really scary, and not all of our clients were understanding what was happening,” she said. “We just kept saying ‘It’s okay. Everybody is safe.'”
San Jose city officials declared a local emergency Tuesday, while Mayor Sam Liccardo expressed frustration that the rescued residents — from nearly 500 houses and apartments near Senter Road and Phelan Avenue — were caught by surprise. He called the flood the result of a “unique breach” of Coyote Creek that the water district would pinpoint.
“As I sit here today and look at a neighborhood that is completely inundated with water where we have fire crews doing whatever they can to get people out, there’s no question in my mind there was a failure of some kind,” Liccardo said. “We’ll have plenty of time for ‘Monday morning quarterbacking’ in the days ahead. Right now, we’ve got to do whatever we can to get people out.”
Tuesday night, residents of Naglee Park, a tight-knit neighborhood of historic homes near downtown, were already angry that they weren’t given better notice about the potential of severe flooding. Sandy Moll, whose house on South 16th Street near William Street Park flooded, said she had prepared for about a foot of water, but no more. The force of the water from the creek that runs behind her house broke down her back door.
“My furniture is floating in the garden. The sandbags were three feet high and the water bowled those over,” Moll said as she stood with neighbors on the street looking at the rising waters at 9:30 p.m. “If anyone said two or three days ago that this could be as bad or worse than 20 years ago — I’m seething. It’s the lack of information and forewarning when they had to have known. They never even said you need to prepare for a major flood.”
San Jose Fire Capt. Mitch Matlow said that multiple agencies, including county emergency services, created an “incident action plan” a week ago to prepare for the impacts of the storm, including flooding. Emergency crews doubled the number of employees on duty, he said, and homeless encampments were forewarned about the potential for rising waters.
“The piece that wasn’t clear,” Matlow said, “was where exactly is this going to happen.”
Once on dry land, residents were sprayed down with clean water. Firefighters have been decontaminating anyone with significant exposure to waters from Coyote Creek because it was filled with debris from nearby homeless encampments and other unknowns.
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