Facing The Deepest Risk

Adriana Figueroa loves the mound of flowers that rises toward her front yard fountain in a crescendo of pink, purple and red. For Nancy Her, it's the peacefulness of her street, and the step-down family room that offers a welcome bit of space in a house jammed with six kids and two parents.
Like hundreds of thousands of others in the Sacramento region, the Figueroas and the Hers have made their homes behind levees, putting up family photos, raising children and chasing dreams where water could someday flow.

Unlike others, though, they live in a tidy corner of North Sacramento that boasts an unfortunate distinction.

It is the place where water could run deepest under levee-break scenarios modeled by the city and county of Sacramento to help plan evacuations.

"We're in the dead zone, you could say," said Pang Her, 23, as she sized up where her parents' house lies on city flood maps.

If levees gave way, murky floodwater would engulf the Hers' backyard chicken pen and pour through front and back doors. Water would top the wrought iron fence, the white-trimmed windows and even the shingled roof, reaching 25 feet in just three days, according to one scenario.

No other levee break in Sacramento would heap more water onto a single community during the hypothetical "hundred-year" storm that the city and county use to model how best to respond if various levees give way.

Other agencies use different maps, some hypothesizing larger storms or multiple levee breaks. But patterns remain roughly the same. Sooner or later, more water flows to lower-lying ground, where it is likely to stay longer and pose greater hazards.

"The more the water comes up, the fewer options you have," said Jerry Colivas, the city of Sacramento's emergency manager. In a pinch, people can wade through 3 feet of water. They can scramble onto a rooftop to escape 10-foot floodwaters. By 17 to 20 feet, even the peaks of roofs on one-story homes are submerged, he said.

"If I know my house is going to get that deep, I want to be one of those people who evacuate early," Colivas said.

Sacramento's deep water "hot spot" runs through a neighborhood of single-story homes from the 1950s and before, where the park community center is booked for tutoring and quinceañeras, kids are pressed into translating for their parents, and the rumble and clatter of passing trains plays counterpoint to after-school music lessons.

Some residents know it could flood, but pressed to guess, think the water might reach a foot or two. Even when they look at the high ridge of levees that loom nearby, several said, they don't brood much on what would happen in a break.

"Putting food in this house, keeping PG&E on, keeping SMUD going, that's what worries me right now," said Angel Salazar, who has raised three kids and taken in a half-dozen of their friends in her white stucco home at the aptly named corner of Bay and Edgewater.

In a region protected by mile after mile of levees, the portrait of Sacramento's deepest spot illustrates not just a place, but broader truths about flood risks.

One of the most striking comes from its location. It's not in one of the better-known spots for potential trouble, such as the Pocket or Natomas, which in the city-county models top out at 17 and 15 feet of water, respectively.

Instead, the deepest water would flow into twin bands of land a little north of El Camino Avenue and west of Norwood Avenue, reaching up to 25 feet, with much of the surrounding neighborhood running at 17 to 21 feet, the models anticipate.

That underscores how widely scattered and how idiosyncratic flooding could be.

Around the region, some levee breaches could take out rail lines or interstates. Some could submerge major distribution centers for grocery stores or swamp government buildings.

In North Sacramento, the flood would shut down a key natural gas storage facility, making it tougher for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to cope with a cold snap.

At the storage area, a bare field surrounded by chain link fence, dozens of fat, buried pipes hold supplies to be tapped when demand surges, more than a day's worth of natural gas for a community of about 25,000.

PG&E can close off the pipes remotely, so that during a flood the gas would remain bottled underground. If water soaked in long enough, though, the pipes could pop upward through liquefied dirt, and the utility might need to send out divers to let the gas escape safely, according to Todd Hogenson, a PG&E manager of pipeline engineering.

From the PG&E field and nearby Harmon Johnson Elementary School, it's hard to miss the closest set of levees protecting North Sacramento. They rise just beyond the school playground, holding back Steelhead Creek, also known as the Natomas East Main Drainage Canal.

"Ever since I became principal of this school, I've noticed, 'Wow, we're awful close to that levee,' " said Ken Kolster, who expects that he and his teachers would march more than 400 kids, ages 4-13, to another school on higher ground if a levee broke nearby.

Steelhead Creek is only one of North Sacramento's worries. A little to the north, another high wall contains Arcade Creek. To the south and southeast, more distant levees bracket the American River.

Depending on what gives way, city-county scenarios show as little as 12 minutes or as long as 23 hours before water would reach a foot deep, the level generally considered unsafe to drive through in an ordinary car.

The more distant breaks along the American River ultimately could deliver the most water, so deep that Kolster figures little would show above the flood but his school cafeteria's roof. Far below would lie the faded blue-and-gold school banner, along with the snippets of red plastic woven though a cyclone fence to spell "Respect Yourself" in giant block letters.

At nearby Johnston Park, already a detention basin where runoff can pool in the winter, not even the top of the baseball backstop would show in a 25-foot flood, although a half dozen light standards would poke out above the waters.

If a flood came fast to their little corner of Bay Drive, the Hers would distribute dogs and kids and chickens among their five cars - one for every driver in their family of eight. Saving the cars would mean the most, said father Lue Her, because their rented house doesn't hold anything else as valuable.

If it were a daytime flood, Figueroa would sweep up her 2-year-old daughter, try to get the older kids from school and call a friend to drive them to safety, because her husband, Jesus, takes the family's only car to work.

With more warning, the Figueroas would be sure to take the papers that show they're here legally, some clothing, and their children's beds and bedcovers.

That would be especially important, Figueroa said, because her three children have slept in those same secure spots since they were born.