SAN DIEGO — Southcrest neighbors affected by Monday’s downpours gathered in frustration Wednesday on Beta Street. Residents there said the damage to their homes could've been prevented.
“My house is ruined, it's completely destroyed, the inside is destroyed, my garage is destroyed, my other garage I have antiques that I work on,” Southcrest resident Greg Montoya said.
Southcrest homes flooded
This isn't the first time Greg Montoya has seen his home destroyed like this. He filed a lawsuit in 2019, along with some of his neighbors when their homes got flooded.
“People could've died," Montoya said. "The City of San Diego they are so neglectful, you know, thank God nobody died,” Montoya said.
They reached a settlement with the City of San Diego. Now, with Monday’s heavy downpours, Montoya’s home is one of many that became flooded again. At the moment, he is looking for an attorney to file another lawsuit.
City of San Diego's Storm Water Transportation and Public Utilities Deputy Chief Operating Officer Kris McFadden told CBS 8 he acknowledges that Monday’s storm is a huge community impact.
“Today's storm water systems are designed to, at most, manage a 100 year storm, so that's a standard. So even systems that are engineered, and you saw this throughout, you know, a National City, Caltrans have a lot of issues and throughout the state, even those that are engineered to today's standards, are going to flood, there's nothing quite frankly, outside of designing 1000 year system, which nobody does, that would have prevented something as catastrophic as this from happening,” McFadden said.
Montoya said he reached out to the city several times to get the storm channel near his home fixed.
“If they would've followed up with all the emails that I sent them about cleaning the storm drains, cleaning the channel … if they would've followed up with that like I asked them to do then we wouldn't be in this situation,” Montoya said.
Attorney Evan Walker represented Montoya and other people affected in the suit filed in 2019. He was in the neighborhood to check out the damage and answer questions. He recommends people affected to do several steps.
“If a person has insurance, that's gonna cover some of the damage absolutely make the insurance claim, document the damage and secondly if you think that the city is responsible for what happened understand that you can file a government tort claim, it just has to be filed in a certain period of time,” Walker said.
For people like Mayra Lopez, her flood insurance won't cover Monday's storm damage in her home.
“Water has to be coming in through the roof, so a leak flooding through a leak or it has to be like a broken pipe where there's flooding, any groundwater doesn't cover,” Lopez said.
District eight Councilmember Vivian Moreno represents the district. She spoke with people to see what resources they need.
“Things that we've heard that residents need help with are big dumpsters, man power, people to come out to help clean up and also boxes, boxes for people to be able to put away their salvageable items,” Moreno said.
Moving forward, McFadden said that the city has secured more than $700 million dollars in funding from EPA that's going to help address flood conditions as well as water quality.
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