‘Dangerous’ and ‘Harmful’: Mayor’s Office Responds to Our Story of Distrust Among Flood Survivors

On Friday morning, I woke up to quite a few messages from the mayor’s office. The mayor’s staffers thought my story the previous day on pervasive distrust among flood survivors in southeastern San Diego was “dangerous” and “harmful.”

The story, “Trust Between Southeastern San Diego Flood Survivors and Local Government Is Dead,” detailed a prevailing narrative among flood survivors. It goes like this: City leaders knew about clogged flood canals and did not clean them. (City leaders have admitted this is true.) That knowledge has led the survivors to draw one of two conclusions. Either, city leaders don’t care what happens to them or they actively want them pushed from their neighborhoods.

This idea — that city leaders intentionally allowed parts of southeastern San Diego to flood — is extremely common among flood survivors. I felt it was vitally important to document, so that city leaders might try to heal the broken trust.

Rachel Laing, the mayor’s chief spokeswoman, thought it was irresponsible — or worse. She acknowledged a “trust deficit,” but argued I had left crucial context out of the story. I should have done a better job sharing all that the Mayor’s Office had done to help people recover. And I certainly should not have given a platform to people’s fears that the city might have intentionally allowed flooding to happen, Laing wrote in an email.

“It is downright dangerous to give credence to the suspicion that, when we urge people to take themselves and their kids out of their mold-infested homes and accept our offers [of] hotel rooms or alternative accommodations, we’re doing it to further a nefarious plot to take their homes,” she wrote.

The mayor’s people were mad, in particular, at an anecdote I used to begin last week’s story. In the scene, I read the second sentence of an email out loud to several flood survivors. It said Gloria’s team had been on the ground “since day one.” The survivors laughed when I read it.

Kinsee Morlan, another communications staffer for the mayor, took exception to this.

“Your story makes it seem as if the fact we have been on the ground helping since day one is false. That’s not accurate,” Morlan wrote. “I get the fact that these people perceive it to be untrue for them, but the fact is that our teams have been out connecting people to resources and services. 3,000 doors knocked. 498 completed surveys. We provided hotel rooms to temporarily house 765 adults, 394 children and their 255 pets.”

City leaders have spent tens of millions — they estimate it could be as high as $60 million — on disaster response, Laing wrote. That number includes money for police and fire response, debris removal, emergency channel clearing and other expenses.  The city has “deployed operations teams at a level never seen before,” Laing wrote.

The flood survivors I’ve spoken with aren’t suggesting local politicians have done nothing. They’re suggesting that what has been done has been wildly inadequate — so much so that it triggers them when they hear city officials talking about their accomplishments in disaster relief.

Patty Alvarez was one of the people I spoke to for last week’s story, although I didn’t quote her. I showed her Laing’s email.

“I’m not gonna say [my councilmember’s] staff has not been by. They’ve stepped in, but it was a week too late,” Alvarez said. “The majority of support we had from day one as a community was from the manpower of loved ones and friends.”

Alvarez also pointed out that homegrown nonprofits — none of which specialized in disaster response — led the disaster response in the early weeks after the flood. Those nonprofits ran a makeshift control center out of the Jackie Robinson YMCA.

Laing suggested I should have corrected what she called misperceptions among the survivors.

“Your story could have been every bit as effective in informing San Diegans that some communities simply feel ignored and as though their government doesn’t care with the context that their perceptions don’t square up with reality,” she wrote. “In fact, it might even have been stronger if you noted that, despite the work actually being done to help people recover, the distrust is so deep that they simply cannot believe their government would try to help them and even believe we’re actively trying to harm them.”

She also put it another way: “We believe reporting on people’s perceptions without context is harmful to them and the broader community.”

People would be less likely to call 911 or less likely to accept city services after reading my story, she wrote.

In other words, the city didn’t break the community’s trust through years of neglect. I was breaking it by amplifying people’s fears. 

I put this — the idea that flood survivors might be harmed by the initial story or that their perceptions need correcting — to Clarissa Marin, a resident I quoted in the initial story.

“Offensive is the word for it. The people in the community have brains; we’re not dummies,” Marin said. “It’s insulting to my intelligence.” 

The Mayor’s Office seemed to be in reputation-management, rather than listening, mode, Marin said.

In last week’s story, City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera apologized to the flood survivors and acknowledged they have gotten far less than their fair share. Marin pointed to that as an example of what might help people begin to heal.

“At least [Elo-Rivera] is acknowledging it’s an issue — not just pretending there’s not an issue,” Marin said. “He’s acknowledging that at some point trust can be dead forever. It’s unfortunate that the mayor and others are deflecting.”

My story wasn’t just about the mayor. It was about the City Council, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and any other government institution from the local to the national level that seeks to serve its citizens. The flood survivors’ trust is frayed to the point that it might snap. It can be fixed — but only with truth and reconciliation.