Who got hit hardest in 2023's epic floods? The people who grow your food
PLANADA, Calif. — It's been nearly a year since Erica Lopez Bedolla and her children fled their home as dangerous floodwaters rose around them, washing through neighborhood houses, drowning family pets and rendering much of her town of 4,000 uninhabitable.
The Lopez family is back home now, albeit living amid a construction zone, showering at a neighbor's house and having anxiety attacks at the thought of rain. Up and down the streets of their close-knit community, where more than 80% of residents experienced losses in the floods, the story is the same: houses in various states of disrepair and residents trying to go about their lives without basic comforts such as hot water, drywall or insulation.
The flooding that ravaged Planada, a farm town in eastern Merced County, was a stark example in a broader pattern that played out across California during the epic rains of 2023: Atmospheric rivers pounded areas rich and poor with equal ferocity, but poor rural communities, often unincorporated, sustained crippling, widespread damage and bore the lasting brunt. Planada flooded in January after a creek near town burst its banks. Pajaro, a farmworker community of about 3,000 residents in Monterey County, flooded in March after a levee failed. In Tulare County, levee breaks and overwhelmed irrigation channels caused flooding in and around farm towns including Allensworth, Cutler and Alpaugh.
In many of these places, inadequate maintenance or lagging improvements by local districts, counties and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers made flooding worse. In Planada, for example, it
