Santa Rosa Neighbors Blame City After Creek Overflows, Flooding Homes, Forcing Evacuations
SANTA ROSA (KPIX) -- After the weekend's record-setting rainstorm, neighbors in a Santa Rosa community are furious about flood damage they feel the city could have avoided.
Severe flooding forced evacuations. With the amount of rain Santa Rosa experienced, water started spilling out of a creek, onto the roadway and crept up to people's homes.
Matt Carlson, a resident says, "We call it 'Lake Carlson.'"
Carlson is referring to his backyard, which is one soggy mess. The trampoline and play structure are sitting on quite a bit of standing water.
His wife, Bethany Carlson adds, "We've never seen anything like that and the rushing rapids down Neotomas Avenue."
It all happened on Sunday as a nearby creek overflowed. The Santa Rosa Fire Department quickly responded to evacuate residents. Everyone got out safely but 4 homes have been red-tagged and some are saying this could've been prevented.
"I'm livid because we went through emotional despair yesterday here because we know this situation," says Deborah, another resident.
She claims the City of Santa Rosa didn't do enough to clean out the debris clogging the creek.
The city released a statement saying, "To prevent flooding during storm events, the city performs routine maintenance on over 100 miles of city-owned creeks and 346 miles of storm drain pipe to keep waterways clear."
These residents had their bags packed, worried about the next big fire. They never imagined it would be a flood forcing a major clean up of their neighborhood.
"In a way I'll take a flood over a fire because I'm not worried about losing the home in a flood. Just some damage," says Carlson.
The City of Santa Rosa says it is looking into what caused the creek to overflow. But it says there was significant run-off from the Glass Fire burn scar which heavily impacted the flow into Santa Rosa creek.