‘Daylight and open road:’ How one Wilton family endured flood waters and rode out the storm
Ericka McDaniel and her family were safe and dry inside an Elk Grove evacuation shelter on New Year’s Day, Red Cross blankets over their laps, an hour after making a break from the floodwaters that surrounded their Wilton homes.
“We were just waiting for daylight and open road. Our greatest fear was to wake up to rushing water,” McDaniel said from inside the Wackford Community Center where Elk Grove and Cosumnes Community Services District officials opened a shelter for Wilton evacuees. Nearly a dozen people including the McDaniels and their neighbors sought shelter there Sunday.
By 10 a.m., the McDaniels took advantage of receding floodwaters to drive to the shelter at Bruceville Road. It was nearly a full day after an anxious Saturday of swamped cars and submerged roads left the family with no choice but to wait out the storm on their property at Dillard Road and Sunflower Road, hit hard by an “atmospheric river” storm that dropped significant rain on the capital region.
“The roads were already closed by the time of the shelter-in-place order, so we missed the evacuation window,” McDaniel said. “We have 1 to 2 feet of standing water in the house,” she said, showing photos of her home taken with her cellphone. “We have a stream that’s part of the ecosystem of that creek — we’re on the lower plain of that road.”
Still, they tried to make a run for it but floodwaters above Wilton made that impossible. Their cars were turned away by road crews.
“We tried to come up Grant Line Road to Jackson Road, but Caltrans wouldn’t let us go through because there was flooding at Sloughhouse. That was before 2 p.m. We were trying to get to a disabled family member. We had cars stuck on Sunflower, so we had to park on Dillard Road and walk through 3½, 4 feet of water,” McDaniel said.
All day Saturday, Sacramento County emergency officials had warned of the imminent danger to Wilton Road at Michigan Bar as the Cosumnes River spilled over banks at numerous junctions, first telling Wilton residents to flee before issuing the stay-home order to those who hadn’t yet left.
The McDaniels would have to stick it out as night fell.
“Being at night, that was a big point of the paranoia piece,” McDaniel said.
With nightfall came the fiercest part of the storm. Powerful winds threw a home already taking on water into isolated darkness.
“It was dark. It was country dark,” McDaniel said “It was blowing debris. The power went out. The WiFi was out. When you have no WiFi and the roads are closed, there’s not much you can do but wait it out.”
Now the McDaniels wait for next steps. Ericka talked with an Elk Grove emergency manager about hotel rooms to wait out the flooding as he took down their information. But new storms — and new anxieties — are on the horizon. Another atmospheric river packing yet more water is expected later this week.
“Our concern now is that they’re predicting another storm. That’s the fear,” McDaniel said. “There’s a system with more rain to come.”
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