How a San Diego Spearfisherman Saved His Block from the Flood

Some superheroes wear wetsuits.  

Jesse Preciado is a spearfisherman who can hold his breath “long enough to get a lobster,” skills he employed on Monday when he dove beneath rising floodwaters to unclog a street drain and save his block from further peril.  

On Monday, an atmospheric river dropped more than three inches of rain in just a few hours on San Diego. Preciado’s community called Shelltown, an area that’s part of Southcrest neighborhood, got the worst of it.  

Preciado grew up on Birch Street. Interstate 5 runs behind his home, which is perched on its own hilltop like a sentry tower above street-level homes. Birch Street hooks north to join Beta Street, an area that now looks like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  

On Wednesday, Preciado showed me a pair of small stormwater drains at the intersection of Beta and Birch streets that empty into Chollas Creek, and eventually the San Diego Bay.  

“It always clogs up, “Preciado said. “And I or my friends would come and scrape out the trash.”  

On the day of the downpour, water filled the vegetation and trash-logged Chollas Creek so fast it breached the concrete channel, sending shoulder-high water, mud, branches and trash through Beta Street homes.  

But only half of Birch Street is wrecked. That’s in part because the road slopes toward higher ground. It’s also thanks to some quick thinking by Preciado, who spent all of his 37 years on this block — long enough to learn that if neighbors don’t take care of the streets, no one will.  

At 12:21 p.m. Monday, Preciado was in Old Town for a painting job. He got a text from his brother showing photos from home security cameras. Brown water had almost breached the iron gates of his driveway. He instantly thought of the drain. He knew it was probably clogged. 

Jumping in his car, Preciado said he sped down the I-5 and pulled over near his street.  

“I wasn’t thinking. I just started taking off my clothes,” Preciado said. “I spearfish so I was like, I can handle this.” 

A neighbor kid threw Preciado some trunks and he started running through the water.

But the water got deeper and deeper. Once he got to a fence near the drain, he began pulling debris away and he felt the water level drop a bit. Firefighters who arrived to evacuate people from their homes told Preciado to get out.  

He swam back up the street, stopping by the home of his friend’s father who couldn’t be reached by phone. That’s because 61-year-old Ignacio González was trapped on top of a table as the floodwaters rose inside his home a few houses from the drain.  

“I was worried because the water had reached my knees and it was so cold,” González said, recalling the event. “And then all of a sudden the water started to drop.”  

González safely retrieved, Preciado knew he needed to find an alternate route to the drains. The water was so cold, Preciado ran into his house, slickened his body with dish soap and slid into his spearfishing wetsuit and fins.  

He dove back into the water from the channel behind his house to swim undetected. When he got to the grate of the drain, Preciado said the water was at a level almost above his head. He found the drain hole with his foot, grabbed a floating two-by-four and began to scrape.   

Finally, he dunked below the waterline, pulling at wads of plastics clogging the drain hole with a vacuum-seal effect.  

“Once I removed that, the water did like a whirlpool and it instantly started going down,” Preciado said.  

The water line dropped to his neck. He kept pulling at the plastics until the water line made it to his hips. A neighbor still wearing his business suit offered a rake and the two worked on the second drain together.  

“I feel if the city had brought somebody here to keep an eye on the drain, none of this would have happened,” said Preciado.  

(The city of San Diego sent out crews later to help clean up the aftermath.) 

The whole process sounds swift, but Preciado said he was scraping out the drain for hours, almost until dusk.  

Ramon de la Mora, who lives a few blocks from the drain, recalled talking later with Preciado while he was still in his wetsuit.  

“He’s the hero of the neighborhood,” de la Mora said.  

Since the flood, the streets of Southcrest are full of small heroisms. Neighbors who never more than greeted each other in passing shared their first real conversations from the rooftops of cars and apartments, waiting to be rescued.  

By Thursday afternoon, the homes of Beta and Birch streets had been turned inside out on the curb. Piles of sodden, dirty furniture and belongings waited to be collected by garbage trucks.   

More rain is slated to drop on San Diego next week. Preciado is worried. He’s got an idea to rig up sensors used by hydroponic systems – which grow plants straight from water rather than soil – on two utility poles that could alert the community when water levels rise. 

 Until then, Preciado says he’ll be keeping watch over the neighborhood drains.  

“I’m gonna be here, standing with a shovel and a rake,” he said.