Imagine a map of San Diego County riven through with a series of crooked, twisting capillaries, all headed toward 7 o’clock, combining into bigger and bigger veins, until, nearly to the coast, they gather into two thick arteries that, after passing under Interstate 5, merge into a single waterway north of Naval Base San Diego.
Just before that southern digit dives under the Five to carry away all of the water in the 16,000-acre Chollas Creek Watershed, though, is Chollas Creek itself, an approximately 30- to 40-foot wide concrete-sided trough that, on Jan. 22, 2024, pulsed with millions and millions of gallons of water, rain that fell on Spring Valley and Lemon Grove, both of which experienced torrential flooding; that fell on sections of I-15 and I-805; that fell on National City, where scores of people were displaced by flooding; and that fell on the San Diego neighborhoods of Encanto, Rolando and Mountain View.
All that water finally collected and pooled in, under and around the communities of Southcrest and Shelltown, where it sought any egress it could, whether that was the creek itself or an alley running behind Beta Street, and flowed into and through 400-500 homes, many occupied by immigrants or families from underserved populations, many of them, if not most, among the poorest people living in San Diego…