Devan Beard, age 13, of Brentwood, rides his off-road motorcycle around his flooded home on Bixler Road in Brentwood, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 15, 2023. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
The nine-county Bay Area can look forward to drying out over the next week following a stream of lethal atmospheric rivers that killed 20 people statewide and drenched the region in a historic start to its rainy winter season.
After weeks of rain, one last storm Sunday night had residents waking up to more floods and mudslides Monday morning.
Ryan Orosco found himself in 3-foot-deep floodwaters at his mobile home along Bixler Road in Bryon shortly after daybreak. He carried his wife and young son separately out of the home. Thanks to the home standing on a raised platform, none of the water managed to make it inside. However, 3 to 4 inches of water seeped inside his parents’ home next door.
“It’s really stressful to deal with it,” said Orosco, 35. “It just baffles me how much water came down.”
In Berkeley, a mudslide slammed into Marjorie Cruz’s home on Middlefield Road about 6:30 a.m. Authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders to more than a half-dozen properties in the area.
“It’s completely shocking – I don’t have words to describe what I’m looking at,” she said. “Who expects to wake up in the morning and see an entire hillside in their dining room?”
For now, however, evacuees and weathered residents across Northern California can refocus on clearing the mounds of dirt and detritus thrust into their homes and draining lingering rainwater as the National Weather Service lifts flood advisories and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state’s Office of Emergency Services deploy aid.