Devastating flood hits California—again.

By Eva Mihelich News editor

There is no break when it comes to California dealing with natural disasters—it seems like one after the other keeps hitting the state’s residents.

This time, California is dealing with a massive flood. This flood has been caused by a levee failing. Levees are natural or man-made walls that block water from where it should not go.

They typically run the course of a river, but sometimes they fail when there is an excessive amount of rain, which is what happened in this case in California.

Sirens were wailing in the town of Pajaro as the Pajaro River escaped its levees and began covering the town with enormous amounts of water.

This flood is the latest disaster in a weather-caused wave of catastrophes that has been hitting California since last December.

This past Monday, March 13, emergency response teams hit the streets and began assisting those still trapped in their homes, along with the many pets that people left stranded in a moment of panic.

The town of Pajaro has a goal to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, but this is going to be a difficult task.

Three water systems are potentially contaminated, which is devastating to the town of Pajaro.

Hundreds of people are being housed in shelters, 11 schools have closed and officials are already bracing for the next big rainstorm that could potentially bring more floods.

Officials say that this levee failure was a long time coming due to its age. In the 1990s, there were three massive floods in the town of Pajaro. However, repairs have never been done to the levee.

This has caused a massive outcry from the citizens of Pajaro who are demanding that more work be done to the levee.

However, Pajaro is a low-income area that does not have the money to make those repairs anytime soon, so the threat of more flooding is daunting.

Residents are reflecting on the irony that, a year ago, the town of Pajaro was begging for access to clean water.

There was a severe wa- ter shortage, and now they are further devastated by an overflow of water. With the economic difficulties that Pajaro has faced and the many floods that seem to reoccur there, officials are worried about what lasting damage this current flood will have on the town. Because of this incident, other counties in California that have levees for rivers are beginning to consider their effectiveness and wondering what they should do to either repair or update them.