As epic snow melts, a California community braces for floods

LEMOORE, Calif. — Ron Caetano is packed and ready to go. His family photos and valuables are in the trailer and he’s put food in carry totes. He moved the rabbits and chickens and their automatic feeders to higher ground.

He and his family and dogs could get out in less than an hour, they figure, should more heavy rain or hot weather melt so much mountain snow that gushing water overwhelms the rivers and channel that surround their tight-knit, rural Central California community and give it its name, the Island District.

“The water is coming this way,” said Caetano, who started a Facebook group to help organize his neighbors. “I am preparing for the worst and praying for the best and that’s all we can do.”

After more than a dozen atmospheric rivers dumped epic rain and snowfall on California, a reservoir that stores water upstream is expected to receive three times its capacity in coming months. Caetano and his neighbors in the tree-lined Island District, could soon be marooned by rising rivers or flooded out.

Water managers are concerned that the spring snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada will be so massive that the north fork of the Kings River won’t be able to contain it and carry it toward the Pacific Ocean. Much of the water also is being channeled into the river’s south fork, which winds through the area near the city of Lemoore to fill a vast basin.

More than a century ago, that basin was a huge body of freshwater known as Tulare Lake. It would grow in winter as snowmelt streamed down from the mountains. But over time, settlers dammed and diverted waterways to irrigate crops, and the lake went dry. Now, Tulare Lake reappears only during the rainiest years, like this one, covering what is now a vast swath of farmland with water.

Island District residents have revived a decades-old network of neighbors for the first time since 1983 to assist each other during a crisis. The last time the Island Property Protection Association activated, there were no text messages or emails to spread the word, said Tony Oliveira, a former county supervisor and the network’s administrator.

“It’s going to be four months of holding our breath,” he said.

What will determine how communities fare now is how quickly the weather heats up. If temperatures remain cool, snow will melt slowly, but a hot spell could send massive amounts of water into rivers that could potentially overflow.

It isn’t the first time Kings County has faced such challenges.

Oliveira said he remembers moving cattle and horses when the rains came in 1983, and will do the same this time, if needed.

“We’re farmers. We have bulldozers and backhoes, we have trailers. We can bring things to bear sometimes faster than the public agencies can,” he said. “The people who live in the Island are just kind of those neighbors taking care of neighbors.”