Pajaro residents confront 'heartbreaking' damage to their community
PAJARO -- Crews continue to repair the Pajaro River levee after a breach almost a week ago flooded the nearby Monterey County town.
While many residents of Pajaro evacuated, some, like Marcos Perez, stayed put. He and his family chose not to evacuate because their home didn't suffer great damage. They struggled with the idea of staying in a shelter for an undetermined time. For their family, an extended stay at a hotel was not an option.
"I can't be paying rent here and then at a hotel that's $200 and something a day. Imagine a week! We're talking about $1,000 something," he said.
Most of the floodwater had receded by Thursday afternoon. However, emotionally, it wasn't easy for Perez to walk through the community he's called home for nearly 20 years because it looked and felt like a ghost town.
"It's really sad to see our community like this," he said. "Now all I see? Look! It's nothing. All I hear is birds right now. It's kind of heartbreaking to see the community like this."
Those who left have not been allowed back into the community yet and likely won't be for several more days, according to a Monterey County spokesperson.
There are cleanup crews and Cal Fire damage assessment teams working throughout Pajaro -- an important safety step before allowing evacuees to re-enter the community.
Perez hopes that happens sooner than later.
"Once we can all come back in, we're going to fix this and it's going to be a whole different story," he said.
Perez says the people of Pajaro are resilient and he has faith his community will return to the vibrancy it once had.
"Things are going to get better, eventually," he said. "With the hard-working families, we're going to fix this some way or another."
A disaster service center is being set up at the foot of the Pajaro Bridge to help provide more services to those who need them, according to a county spokesperson.
