Watch: San Jose officials declare local emergency due to storm

good evening I'm Matt Mayan that's mat a m a an mayor of San Jose I'll introduce my colleagues here in just a moment we have ASL for our de residents hello everyone thank you for being here for this important storm update at City Hall we have storm watch teams who are monitoring the weather by the minute and in constant communication with the National Weather Service as well as our partners at Valley water in the county of Santa Clara what we're hearing from the National Weather Service is that this storm has shifted a bit we're now expecting more rain in the Santa Cruz mountains than we were this morning which means that we may see flooding in some areas along the Guadalupe potentially other waterways so we're going to continue to monitor very closely but we want to make sure the community had that important update now so the city of San Jose given this news and this update from the national weather service has issued a proclamation of local emergency which allows us to now evacuate our waterways we will be out here we are out here now along the Guadalupe River making sure our homeless neighbors understand the danger and that they have places to go we have opened up the Roosevelt Community Center and have the Camden Community Center on standby if it is needed uh you know if you live along the Guadalupe River in particular it's possible you will have some street level flooding please do not be anywhere near the Waterway and be aware we driving or parking Vehicles you know in times of danger neighbors across San Jose come together to support each other it's when we see our greatest moments of community I saw that last year when we had a series of atmospheric rivers that threatened our unhoused neighbors and some of our flood prone neighborhoods and we all work together to to make sure that our neighbors were safe I know we're going to do that again I want to encourage folks to get updates is very important alert SCC is your best place to go Google alert SCC you can sign up for text phone or email updates once you have that information you can be a good friend and neighbor by sharing it with others in the community sharing that on social media other basic tips avoid unnecessary travel out of home today and tomorrow again we may see flooding it's best to stay home if you are out there and you see down trees or telephone polls you can call 311 never approach a down telephone poll and uh you'll get some more updates in a moment from my colleagues I think that was the primarily what I wanted to share so please stay safe out there take care of each other I want to uh next introduce our assistant city manager who is the head of our emergency Operation Center and then I'll introduce our partners at Valley Water who we are coordinating very closely with as we monitor this storm so I'll turn it over to Lee Wilcox assistant city manager now thanks mayor uh Lee Wilcox Le W L Cox and as the mayor said I'm the assistant city manager um as the mayor said the city manager did approve a local emergency Proclamation for the city of San Jose this morning or I'm sorry this afternoon specifically around evacuations around the Guadalupe River Waterway the pro the proclamation provides us emergency powers to respond to the storm event including the evacuation orders for people living within and along the Guadalupe Riverway the order seeks to protect our unhoused community along the Waterway the proclamation also gives us the ability to reassign Personnel within the city and request Mutual Aid if anything is needed later on tomorrow our priority through this event is to save lives as such our emergency Operation Center opened a few hours ago we will be running through the night and again into the morning with various shifts to go ahead and monitor the storm and its activity along all waterways within the city of San Jose in concert with Valley water while we do expect this event to impact our unhoused community the most the city uh City staff volunteers will be walking and knocking along Elma Avenue Minnesota Avenue to alert residents face Toof face of possible danger and to keep an eye out for Rising River levels along those corridors as always San Jose fire department is here ready to respond if needed and as the mayor mentioned our expanded owls our overnight warming locations which have been open uh as expanded all week long um at Roosevelt is open and then the set later tonight uh through a flash Report with the city we will be giving the timing of when the Camden Community Center will be opening for shelter as well we'll be communicating throughout the night with long range acoustical devices with the police department and giving updates via social media if anyone uh if any conditions change with that I'll hand it back to the mayor thank you Lee I really appreciate Lee and the team at City Hall jumping into action as we got this update today now I want to turn it over to our partners at Valley Water we have really strengthened our working relationship and recent years to make sure that San Jose is Storm ready you're going to hear in just a moment from Valley Water CEO Rick cender but I also want to thank Valley Water director Richard Santos for coming down here and making Mak sure that we're helping to spread the word and keep our neighbors safe thank you Richard for being here now I'll turn it over to Rick calender CEO of valley water thank you Rick thank you Mr Mayor Rick calender r i c k c a l l n d r uh CEO of Valley Water first of all I I do want to thank the city for such strong coordination during the storms we would not be able to achieve the goals without them and so they've really stepped up and I do want to thank them for their leadership there as well as thank the mayor for his leadership uh as you've heard the national weather service has issued a flood advisory we're definitely paying attention we're making sure that the folks that are near the or excuse me what we're making sure of is that hopefully folks are paying attention and looking for sandbags I'd encourage you to go to valleywater.org for sandbags particularly if you're in the alma area along the Guadalupe that's where we have the most amount of concern our crews are are definitely prepared they're going to be out and about at 4:00 a.m. trying to make sure that we're clearing any and all obstructions in The Creeks our EOC will be opening and fully staffed at 4:00 a.m. as well what we're hoping is that everyone stay safe stay warm and listen to the listen to the warnings from the city of San Jose and ID like to see if my vice chair would like to say anything briefly uh Richard Santos hi I'm Vice chair Richard Santos Santa Clair Valley water district and S an to and when the miror calls we come out but our crew's been out there 7:24 we're prepared we're ready to help and I hope everybody is safe and thank you media for learning people appreciate it thank you Richard appreciate that all right so again please Google alert sec to get upto-date information about how this storm is evolving where flood risk is avoid unnecessary trips out of home tonight and tomorrow morning until we have more information about the situation really appreciate the teamwork here from our leadership at City Hall through the city manager's office and our colleagues at Valley water with that why don't we open it up to questions so can you tell us specifically what areas along the Guadalupe River you're most concerned about and are there homes along those areas that will you'll be going door too well we we do have historical hotpots I don't know if we're prepared at this time to share what those are do we want to give a couple indications pleas because of uh and and Valley water should please add here but because of the way the storm's coming in and the primary impact is going to be the Santa Cruz mountains we're primarily concerned at this point with the Guadalupe River um and we do have uh historic trends of flooding at the Elma area right here um because it does narrow and become shallow other questions okay so I'm going to go out with our First Responders and colleagues to alert Neighbors near the Guadalupe in particular our unhoused neighbors will be back out early tomorrow morning as we're monitoring water levels primary focus right now is getting every homeless resident who lives along the Guadalupe River out of there and into a safe location at one of our community centers thank you all very much and please stay stay posted for further updates thank you

Channel: NBC Bay Area

Views: 21,961

Keywords: San Jose, Weather, Bay Area news, Bay Area weather, Bay Area storm, rain

Id: eafCECvxO5M

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2024