Rain from storm after storm saturated the soil. When on Jan. 9, 2023, an atmospheric river dumped several more inches of rain on the city of San Luis Obispo, Calif., rushing water swelled creeks and submerged streets. Floodwaters piled debris and sediment in some areas and cut away stream banks in other locations. The once-in-25-year storm also shoved trees onto roads and power lines. Another severe storm on March 9-10 aggravated the Jan. 9 damage.

Advance planning, hard work and collaboration have been key to the city’s recovery, officials said.

“I’m really proud of how our staff responded to the five months of doing their normal work on top of emergency response work,” said Matt Horn, San Luis Obispo’s director of public works. Calling the staff “amazing,” he added, “They all came with a sense of purpose. They knew what they were doing and why it was important. And they were just right there the whole way.”

Readiness

San Luis Obispo typically experiences a rainy season during winter, Horn said. Mountains around the city wring water from clouds. The water falls on mountain slopes and then can rush down to the city, which is about 190 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

James Blattler, San Luis Obispo’s emergency manager, noted that the city has emergency operations plans for potential emergencies and disasters, such as flooding. City staff know what roles they have when a disaster strikes. The advance work also includes basic plans for recovery.

Each year as winter approaches, the city reminds residents how to protect themselves and their properties from floods, Blattler and Horn said. Residents also can click on the city’s website, www.slocity.org, for answers to common questions, such as how to use sandbags and how to erect wooden barriers to redirect floodwaters.

Before the Jan. 9 storm hit, the city warned residents about its potential severity and offered tips on how to prepare and stay safe, Blattler and Horn said. Residents’ cooperation allowed city staff to focus on managing the emergency.

“So instead of throwing up traffic control or coming up with traffic delineations to address a car accident or someone who got into flowing water, you don’t have to deal with that,” Horn explained. “You can focus on making sure our drainage system works well.”

Before severe weather, Horn explained the city also assembles a response team, including city maintenance and engineering staff and private companies, specializing in traffic control and tree work.

“Then we use our staff to do a kind of quick triaging assessments and to get the right people and the right equipment to the right spot,” he said.

Recovery

The Jan. 9 storm caused an estimated $9.5 million in damages, Horn said. The March 9-10 storm added $500,000 more in damages.

Work by public works staff included removing fallen trees from roads and scooping debris and displaced sediment from creeks, Horn said.

“I guess probably erosion of some of our creek channels, and then secondarily, sediment deposits in some of our creek channels are our largest, most costly issues,” he said. “They’re usually kind of adjacent to bridge structures or a lake system we have in the city.”

At one location, for example, erosion along a creek threatened the only road to and from a 200-home neighborhood next to the city’s high school. The city is now building a concrete wall to protect the road from future erosion.

San Luis Obispo supplements its staff resources with crews from private contractors.

“We’ll use our engineering staff to either be project managers or design engineers for some of the repairs that need to occur,” Horn said. “Some of our rangers and open-space staff are doing repairs in the park system or the open-space system. But a lot of the kind of roadway repairs and utility work that we need to do, we’re either bringing in contractors through a standard kind of design, bid and build system. And then some of them, it’s basically been on time and materials based on verbal direction from our design teams because of the time frame required to address the issue.”

Horn added, “It works well. We have good relationships with our contracting community around here.”

When needed, the city also can seek aid from local and regional partners, Blattler said.

Community organizations, for example, may work more closely with some residents than the city does. Forging relationships with those organizations beforehand allows the city — during an emergency — to rely on the groups’ input to respond more effectively to the residents they serve.

If an emergency exceeds the city’s resources, it can appeal for help from regional partners, such as San Luis Obispo County, according to Blattler. If the county can’t arrange for the needed aid, it will contact the state. Finally, if the state is overwhelmed, it will ask the federal government.

“Having those relationships ahead of time really, I think, helped us throughout the whole process,” Blattler said. “I would say that’s my No. 1 piece of advice — develop those relationships and lean on them because they are incredibly valuable when the time comes.”

Document it

San Luis Obispo worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and California Office of Emergency Services to obtain reimbursement for repairing storm damage on public property, Horn said. Applying for reimbursement requires detailed information about the damage and repairs.

The city created a documentation system that leverages geographic information system capabilities to track damage locations and update them with photos, detailed notes and the status of repair work, he said. Officials also met weekly with a FEMA representative.

If city officials do everything correctly, reimbursements through FEMA and Cal OES will cover 93% of the city’s costs for storm cleanup and repair, Horn said.

Lessons learned

Horn said his biggest eye-opener from this winter’s storms has been the need to have a plan for when staff must work 24 hours a day for multiple days. He recommends bringing in other workers to boost staffing capacity and planning that it will take longer than expected to mitigate storm damage. In addition, he suggests placing a staff member in the emergency operations center. “Not so much to direct operations, but I think you also need someone there who can think strategically about what they’re seeing, what’s happening and what are some things that we can do in advance of the storm and in advance of the events to try to mitigate some of those issues.”

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