The first time Hannah Sprinkle experienced flooding in her college home was in early January 2023, when she woke up to the sound of water pouring into her room. The parks and tourism senior resides in the basement of her four-bedroom rental with one other roommate.
“We woke up and were like, ‘Oh, my God’ – obviously we just picked everything up off the floor that we could and then called my landlord right away,” Sprinkle said. “And [the landlord] was like, ‘Oh my gosh, okay, I’ll call someone’ – didn’t hear from her for like two hours.”
The two roommates attempted to call for help to get water out of their room, but felt they reached a “dead end,” according to Sprinkle. Finally, Sprinkle and her roommate ended up moving all their items upstairs as the water in their room rose to ankle height. It took a week after the women called their landlord for a contractor to show up.
“They said they fixed the problem, but we were kind of in the dark, like the whole time,” Sprinkle said. “When the contractor was here, we would go down and try to talk to him. And he would just like kind of give us a rundown. But it was super shady.”
Their room ended up flooding four more times between January and March of 2023.
Almost a year since SLO experienced its heaviest rains in 25 years, Mustang News decided to check back in with the city and see what they’re doing to prepare infrastructure and how residents can protect their homes.
It all started on Jan. 9, 2023, when SLO City officials issued a local state of emergency and residents were directed to shelter-in-place. On March 10, the White House approved California for a state of emergency and sent federal aid through Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide disaster relief to 34 counties, including San Luis Obispo.
Since the extreme flooding of January and March 2023, the City of SLO engaged in millions of dollars in storm repairs. A map of areas under construction includes several major projects the city will be engaging over the next couple of years.
Meteorologists are expecting a repeat of last year’s torrential rains – the California Coastal Commission provides ample information on patterns during El Niño weather events, which occur in pairs. Winter 2024 is expected to have strong weather patterns, including rain and high winds mirroring Winter 2023’s conditions.
On Dec.13, 2023, Mustang News spoke with Los Osos based meteorologist John Lindsey, who said that while there is evidence that this winter’s rains could produce flooding, they’re not shaping up to be quite as heavy as last year’s.
“Looking at all the models [it] doesn’t look quite as strong as January [2023] but it is going to be a very significant rainfall event,” Lindsey said. “No doubt there.”
According to the city’s 2023 Storm Response Projects page, 90% of the damage was already repaired. There are 12 remaining major projects under various stages of construction. The current projects include Prefumo Creek, San Luis Drive and the SLO Creek bank – the final few projects will be completed by Summer 2025.
In a city news release, Public Works director Matt Horn said SLO experienced $35 million in repairs due to the flooding.
A walk past SLO High School into the San Luis Drive neighborhood used to reveal a dramatic 50-foot landslide into the San Luis Creek Bed. A wall of concrete was sprayed onto the street’s supporting wall to reinforce the fallen foundation – an effort that will last the city an expected 100 years.
On such construction sites, a team of construction workers, city engineers, biologists and archeologists team together to attack the repairs necessary in the aftermath of January’s storm damage, while simultaneously protecting surrounding natural environments. Public Works Supervising Civil Engineer Wyatt Banker-Hix oversees these sites and helps plan the designs needed to reinforce damaged areas – not only to address repairs, but to protect local infrastructure for future weather.
Banker-Hix said the city originally identified 200 areas of damage around the city. Many were simple, including mud on streets or minor hill-slides. Banker-Hix steps in for the big projects, which he manages and helps keep on track as the city prepares for the next rain.
“Right now, we’re focusing on protecting city infrastructure as well as private residences, like homes and businesses,” he said.
At San Luis Drive, Banker-Hix led Mustang News through the construction site and talked about the ways the city structures its projects to maximize the protection of natural environments.
James Blattler just happened to be headed into work extra early on the morning of Jan.9. At 6 a.m. he exited HWY 101 at the Madonna offramp and instantly noticed the water pooling on the side of the road. As the SLO City emergency manager, Blattler instantly realized this meant water was reaching the bank of the creek. Driving away from the exit, Blattler saw the creek flowing across Madonna Road toward the Caltrans District 5 facility, as the flooding surged into a steady stream making its way toward South Higuera Street.
“It was pretty impressive – I don’t know if that’s the best word for it,” Blattler told Mustang News. “Pretty incredible to see that happen in the middle of the city that abruptly.”
Following the initial cleanup of SLO’s watershed, Blattler said the city is “confident that our creek system is looking better than it has in 20 or 30 years on the ability to convey water.”
“That first week in January, we escaped significant impacts, but it heavily saturated the ground,” Blattler said. “And so it allowed the following storm on Jan. 9 to really quickly exceed the capabilities of the creek to flow the water.”
Blattler told Mustang News that one of the biggest learning moments for the city was having to close the Marsh Street bridge to divert flooding back to the creek. Having witnessed the creek “peaking” past the point of barriers being effective, Blattler said the city will implement barriers around flooding prior to water getting too high in future storm events.
On Nov. 2, 2023, Battler and fellow city and county officials hosted the Community Flood Readiness Night, coinciding with the weekly Farmer’s Market in Downtown SLO. Agencies in attendance included County and City of SLO Public Works, Emergency Services, SLO Fire and the American Red Cross, among others.
Attendees were able to walk around booths and learn about how the city is preparing for the anticipated storm season. In addition to face-to-face time with city and county officials, the organizers prepared a practice sandbagging activity where anyone could practice shoveling their own sandbags.
“People are going to need to purchase their own sandbags,” Blattler said. “We’lll likely have a reserve stock in case those stores start to run low. Because we saw that in January, all the stores ran out of sandbags because of the high demand.”
When asked how residents can best help prepare their homes ahead of winter storms, Blatter says the biggest to-do is understanding what one’s main “hazards” are.
“It’s a great opportunity to get prepared by understanding if you live near a flood zone or in a flood zone,” Blattler said, referencing the Flood Readiness Night. “If you learn you are in a flood zone, you can learn the different mitigation stuff you can do.”
The city has a flood preparedness guide available through their website that links to the city’s Interactive Flood Prep Map, which requires a login to enter.
SLO community members can also look up where flood zones are using the MyHazard tool through the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and find out if their homes are at risk.
In addition to packing sand bags, Blatter suggests people check the sealings around doors and their windows to ensure they are well maintained, in addition to checking drainage systems.
“It’s also important to know if you need to evacuate because of flooding, how you’re going to do that,” Blatter said. “Roadways could be cut off because of flooding. And we saw that in January.”
On Tuesday – one year since the original heavy rains hit SLO – the city hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony to showcase the completed construction of the San Luis Drive riverbed project.
“City staff has been working hard over the last year to restore San Luis Obispo to pre-storm conditions and to prepare the community for more rainy weather this winter and spring,” according to the release.
A few blocks away from Sprinkle, Jake Brown woke up the same morning to find his feet submerged in six inches of water.
“I had like all my school stuff laying on the ground for, you know, the first day of school,” Brown said. “And like, [his laptop] just got fried by the flood. I tried opening it up and it was just burnt.”
His landlord quickly came to the aid of Brown and his fellow tenants once Brown saw that his room and the lower backyard of the Grand Street property were flooding. Plumbers showed up to the house and drained initial flooding and within days Brown’s landlord had the bedroom flooring stripped and the soggy drywall was removed.
Unfortunately, Brown had to sleep on a futon outside his room for a month as construction was completed.
Brown said he’s simply planning to remove his belongings from his bedroom in the event of a flooding emergency. For his ruined laptop, Brown was able to receive funding from ReadySLO.org. Individual cases are considered through an online questionnaire.
Looking at the potential of the storm season in the coming months, Brown admitted that he is nervous.
“Because like, if the rain is that bad again, I don’t think there’s much I can do,” Brown said. “I’m just trying not to stress about it.”