The Sacramento area experienced multiple storms the past few weeks which caused flooding and power outages.
Heavy rains breached levees along the Cosumnes River and forced flooding in several southern Sacramento County areas. At least three people have been found dead near flood zones and more than 150,000 SMUD customers lost power on Dec. 31, according to an article published by CapRadio.
Director of Administrative Services/Facilities Chris Raines spoke about the recent storm’s impact on campus.
Raines said there was some storm related damage that happened on campus, such as the baseball facility and a large tree by the Southeast Office Complex.
“The background netting to keep foul balls from hitting people outside tore,” Raines said. “One of the original trees on campus was blown over due to high winds and saturated ground, the tree fell over.”
Raines added that there was also damage to the solar array on the top of the parking structure.
“One panel failed causing seven others to then sort of slide off and fall to the ground,” Raines said.
Raines said there have been over four power outages that have affected the district main servers. He also said there was five hours of power outages on campus.
“There’s equipment that’s in the library that the district’s IT (Information Technology) department maintains to make the servers talk to each other,” Raines said. “That equipment was impacted because they lost power and their battery backup went out.”
Raines said the campus is in good shape now after the recent storm.
“We have actually cleaned up any storm debris or the damage like that,” Raines said. “The very large one has been cleared. There’s a few smaller ones that they’re in the queue to be removed, but they’re not in a pathway or a danger to anybody, so they’re still sitting over there on the backside of the cafeteria.”
Cosumnes River College students shared their thoughts about the recent flooding.
“It was a bad impact on families, not just families, but of course students, kids and just everyone as a whole in the community,” said Tevin Tyler, a 21-year-old photography major. “It affected a lot of people going to work, a lot of people inside of their homes, a lot of people losing stuff and I believe a couple of people lost some relatives and friends. So I guess you could say it was something that was unexpected.”
Tyler said the power outage impacted him both positively and negatively.
“It was terrible because I work from home, so that kind of affected me being able to just work and me having to do online stuff and the power was out for almost half a day,” Tyler said. “It gave a positive thing on me because it made me realize how much I really didn’t need the Wi-Fi because it separated me from the distractions, like social media, so it took time for me to bond with my family.”
Huzaifa Wasiq, a 20-year-old fire technology major, said the recent flooding that happened in Sacramento was crazy. He also said that the rain is needed, but it wasn’t getting absorbed enough.
Wasiq said he was driving during the flooding.
“I was on the right side going south and on the left side was maybe like Elk Grove area and we were going 50 miles per hour and we couldn’t see the water,” Wasiq said. “We hit the water and it made a big noise like the car crashed into the water, which is bad and then we had to go to the other side.”
Wasiq said he tried to stay indoors because of how bad the flooding was.
“I remember on one of the days, I went to go get food and the drive-thru area was all flooded, so then I had to go home and I went back and then I went to my friend’s house,” Wasiq said. “There was a house literally chopped in half. I’ve never seen that.”
Twenty-seven-year-old Shapreet Kaur, a business major, said she felt bad for the animals and the damages that happened due to the flooding.
“I felt like with all the climate change and everything, I think we needed the rain,” Kaur said.
Eromonsele Ogbebor, 18, a computer science major, said the recent flooding was tragic.
“It was terrible to see people lose not only their lives, but their property and you know, find a new place to get shelter, I thought it was really devastating,” Ogbebor said.