When the levees broke: lessons from '97

Rain-soaked farmers patrolled their levees in the middle of the night. Families waited for the floodwaters to spit up their ruined homes. And when they did, the search was on for pets missing in the mud.

The floods of January 1997 are one decade past. But the lessens learned have not aged one day.

"I tell people, sometimes you go through something that was so intense that you measure your life before and your life after," said Ron Baldwin, who heads San Joaquin County's Office of Emergency Services. "For me, that was the flood. It was just so intense."

Warm rains that New Year's had melted much of the Sierra snowpack, sending torrents of water down the San Joaquin River and other streams throughout the state.

First the levees boiled. Then they broke. Over a period of weeks, more than 600 homes were damaged or destroyed in the San Joaquin County area alone. At least 4,500 people were evacuated. Thousands of acres of farmland were submerged. It was a "countywide crisis from Thornton to Vernalis," Baldwin said.

from the Stockton Record