A Principal on Monday’s Storm: ‘This Ended Up Being the Safest Place for Our Kiddos’

Three days after torrential rains brought devastating floods to the community of Southcrest, the recovery is still just beginning. The streets remained caked in mud, wood and waterlogged belongings were piled high on sidewalks next to cars sitting askew.

On Thursday morning, workers struggled to tow a battered red SUV up the embankment of Chollas Creek. It’s just one of nearly a half dozen cars still littering the creek bed. Bits of people’s lives were scattered about or caught up in the buckled chain link fence lining the creek: a car bumper, a blue backpack, a stained pillow. 

Across the street from the creek, on a slight incline, sits Cesar Chavez Elementary.

Much to the relief of Principal Francisco Santos, the school was largely spared from the waters that ravaged the rest of the neighborhood. The roofs of some classrooms sprung leaks and the playground and field flooded, but by Thursday morning workers had already removed most of the mud the water left behind.  

I met Santos during a tour of the school three days after the storm. He detailed how everything unfolded while students were in school.

As the water rose around them on Monday and residents tried to park their cars in Chavez’s cramped lot, Santos wondered if the school would be inundated next. 

“This ended up being the safest place for our kiddos,” he told me as he strolled through the campus. 

Ensuring the safety of students was their number one priority. During the floods, he said teachers wanted to shield students from what was happening and keep them calm. They tried to convey that “it’s a normal day at school, the trauma is outside the fence,” he said, motioning to the neighborhood. 

Bright yellow flyers in both English and Spanish advertising a food and clothing drive for victims of the floods dot buildings we pass. But they also have other basic items of need, like toilet paper. Santos said they’ve compiled a list of families who have been most deeply impacted and have already collected nearly half a classroom of clothes and food that they plan to distribute on Saturday. 

But even as they try to support students and families, Santos said the road to recovery will be long. 

“The community is still processing. If you drive around, you’ll still see families trying to deal with this,” Santos said. “So, our focus right now is to make sure that they get whatever they need that we have.” 

A couple of miles away at Lincoln High, the Red Cross has commandeered the gym and turned it into a temporary shelter. Lincoln, like every San Diego Unified high school, is a pre-identified shelter site, so if the need pops up, shelter can be set up quickly. 

Beyond a line of caution tape separating the campus from the gym, fruit, coffee, bags of chips and cookies and water bottles line folding tables set up in the gym’s foyer. Twenty-six people stayed at the shelter on Wednesday night, but that’s likely only a fraction of those impacted by the flooding. More are being helped with other resources, like some medical and mental health services being offered, but have chosen not to stay in the shelter.

Richard Morris has worked for the Red Cross for five years, mostly responding to wildfires in Northern and Southern California, but also to some floods, like one in Arkansas. While that flood was more predictable, giving people time to evacuate in advance, Morris has spoken to people who had only minutes to get their families out of the rising water.

“The suddenness of this and the extent of damage, I think makes this flood a different beast,” Morris said. “You just start to talk to people and you see the tears … People are just barely holding on,” he said.