Waters rose 2-3 feet on Coronado Island, some places seeing more than 5 feet on Jan. 22 when forecasted rain turned into an unexpected storm.
Streets submerged, homes and businesses flooded, cars were ruined.
Coronado’s City Council voted on extending a local emergency declaration made by City Manager Tina Friend for the next 60 days due to the severe rain and flooding at a special city council meeting held on Jan. 29.
This will allow the city to get their hands more quickly on needed equipment and resources, and opens up a channel of reimbursement and support from the government, said Friend.
But this isn’t the first time Coronado has flooded.
The end of 2018 saw a storm turn the city into a river when water entered the electrical system of the Parker Pump Station and shorted out the plant, rendering the pumps useless, according to Friend.
Last week, Coronado received 4 ¼ inches of rain during the course of the storm, according to Friend, so why were people’s homes being flooded up to 5 feet of rain this time?
What happened?
The 2018 storm
The special city council meeting on Jan. 29 saw a few members of the community come with their questions and the city came prepared to answer.
“What did we not learn from 2018? What prevented the pump from being turned on?” Coronado resident Scott Seggerman said during public comment, citing rumors that had been floating around since the storm.
The first component was the sewer pumps at Parker Pump Station – which has been going through a replacement project since Jan. 6 and will cost $26 million.
The replacement project is in place to completely rebuild the aging Parker Pump Station, as it is critical for collecting and routing stormwater and sanitary sewer flows in the Country Club area of the city.
Friend quickly went into the history of the sewer pumps, the events of 2018 and an explanation for last week’s storm.
She addressed that no one was at the pump station in 2018 when the electrical system shorted and since then, said that in rain events, the city has people on site in order to be prepared if something like that happened again.
Councilmember Mike Donovan said there were a lot of lessons they learned from the 2018 storm. He also said that timing is everything.
The Parker Pump Station is currently about halfway through its replacement project and the timing of last week’s storm was unfortunate because if it had happened later, the pump station would have been up and running, Donovan said.
The Jan. 22 storm
But what happened with the flooding on Jan. 22 was very different, Friend said.
What we had was a catastrophic failure inside the plant and flooding internally.
City Manager Tina Friend
“What we had was a catastrophic failure inside the plant and flooding internally,” she said.
The plant itself is around three stories, or 35 feet deep, according to Friend. It houses large stormwater pumps, two wastewater pumps and electrical panels all around the room.
“We had 35 feet of water in there,” Friend explained.
When the water started rising and they were seeing internal damage, the city had to power down the pump station, otherwise the electrical controls would’ve been submerged and shorted out, breaking even more.
Since the pumps weren’t on, the city called in pumper trucks to pull out the water. That work went on until 2 a.m. on Jan. 23.
The city also set up a pump system to pull water from the storm water pipes under the roads and discharge them in order to free the stormwater system so that the streets could drain.
Once the water was drained, the city had their electrical contractor on site to test and replace what was needed.
“I know what you’re experiencing is so incredible, but we had to move mountains to get these steps done and work very, very hard on the community’s behalf,” Friend said.
Sewer pumps down
What followed was people working around the clock for the next week watching the sewer pumps and working on repairing them. Both pumps have to be operating in order for the system to work normally.
One of the pump’s motors was changed and the other had to go through several diagnostic correction processes in order to figure out what was wrong.
I want you to know we did not cease or let up for a moment. We were working very hard.
City Manager Tina Friend
“We were able to get it working,” Friend said. “I want you to know we did not cease or let up for a moment. We were working very hard.”
Councilmember Casey Tanaka also shared that the city has put in at least $26 million for the replacement of Parker Pump Station so that it doesn’t go 35-feet down, but that it goes up, avoiding a catastrophe like this from happening in the future.
“It’s heartbreaking that multiple councils have identified this problem, but we weren’t able to get it built quite fast enough,” Tanaka said.
Stormwater pumps down
The second component Friend discussed were the stormwater pumps.
“We were diagnosing, looking at the stormwater pumps. What we found is, of the four pumps, three of them failed inspection.” Friend continued.
Those three pumps were taken out immediately and brought to a factory to be rehabilitated in order to be sent back to Coronado.
In the meantime, Friend acknowledged the storm occurring this weekend and how the stormwater system is supposed to work without stormwater pumps.
“We authorized the contractor that is working on the replacement pump station to develop and build a temporary, fully functional stormwater pump system,” Friend said.
The stormwater system will run adjacent to Parker Pump Station and will have the same capacity as Parker Pump Station, according to Friend.
We were not going to go into the storm on Thursday and not have a solution for your neighborhood.
City Manager Tina Friend
“We were not going to go into the storm on Thursday and not have a solution for your neighborhood,” she said, noting that there have been several temporary pumps deployed all over town.
“We are actively taking those to areas of concern where we know we’ve had flooding,” Friend said.
Friend noted that another pump station, Bandel Storm Pump Station, did not have any problems, so any flooding that happened near Alameda Blvd and 10th St. near Triangle Park would be due to geography or the effects from Parker Pump Station, she said.
“We’ve done full inspections of our pump stations: Cays, Bandel, Transbay and Glorietta Bay as well,” Friend said, noting that the Glorietta Bay Pump Station is having some issues resolved.
The upcoming storm
Friend also addressed a community member’s question about the use of barriers and sandbags to avoid water flowing through, acknowledging that they had put out barricades and cones around the flooded area but not until the evening; and people with bigger vehicles that could make it through the storm were driving through a couple feet of water and creating waves.
“It’s important that I heard about this at your time, too, because we will build that into our operational plans as going forward,” Friend said, referencing putting out barricades and cones sooner rather than later.
As for the sandbags, Friend references a webpage that the city had put up educating residents on storm preparedness and how to set up sandbags provided by the city.
And for the upcoming storm, the city has already put out sandbags and there will be more coming in the next day or two, according to Friend.
The city has developed a FAQ page since they have received a lot of questions on the 2018 storm and last week’s storm, and also regularly send out notifications for the Jan. 22 storm and the upcoming storm.
