California Conservation Corps Groups Train For Possible Delta Flooding
The crews who will protect your homes from flooding this winter visited the delta -- to demonstrate how they'll respond to floods, especially if the promise of El Niño brings continuous rain.
The California Conservation Corps (CCC) brought in more than 200 teams from across the state to run through emergency flood controls.
How do they plan to protect the levees?
It's a team effort to stop a force of nature. The CCC demonstrates how it will battle El Niño rains on the levees.
"I want to be shoulder-to-shoulder with Eddie like this. Little body movement as possible," said Barbara Fink, a CCC member.
Because moving a sandbag solo down a levee will wear out the entire crew trying to stop a flood.
Stopping a flood is not as simple as throwing down a sandbag. There's actually a lot of strategy involved, say CCC workers. There are four scenarios these crews from around the state plan for.
"A boil is when you have water seeping through the levee through the water side, coming up through the land side either on the slope or flat ground," said Ray Garcia, a CCC incident commander.
"Water coming up on this hillside would slowly wash away or erode the hillside, then this whole levee would be breached. Then the water on the other side would all combine and create a mess," said CCC director Bruce Saito
There's a lot at stake, which is why the corps trains both in classrooms and in the field.
"It takes one year to graduate," said Fink.
And many hope to turn this training into a career with the state.
"I would really like to be a forest ranger down the line," she said.
For Fink and her team, their future with the state begins with protecting it.
So, what is the CCC? Team members are all young adults between 18-25, they make minimum wage and spend their year fighting wildfires, running earthquake response, and controlling pests.