SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Forecasters predict another storm to reach us late next week. In the meantime, community members told ABC 10News they're frustrated with what they claim is a lack of preparation by the city for Monday's storm.
In a press conference Thursday, city officials say you can't plan for what they're calling a once-in-a-thousand-year storm
"Even a storm-water system designed to the golden standard of today would have failed in that situation," said Kris McFadden, Deputy Chief Operating Officer for the City of San Diego.
A key next step? Clearing out storm-water channels, which could take weeks.
"But what that entails is going in, starting in Beta Street, putting in heavy equipment and removing any and all vegetation that we can," said McFadden. "Anything that got washed into the storm drain channel. I was there myself, I've seen what was washed into there, it's everything."
According to the city, officials are permitting and planning new projects to make the storm-water system stronger. But those long-lasting changes may take longer.
"The real solution here are capital improvement projects. I cannot stress that enough," said McFadden. "You can improve this system all day ... If we get another storm event like that, it will happen again."
Ahead of next week's storm, the city is preparing more resources for hard-hit Southeastern San Diego.
"We have an incident command localized just to this area," said McFadden. "This is police, firefighters, lifeguards, everyone."
The National Weather Service says it's unlikely the next storm will bring nearly as much damage as the one we saw on Monday.
"What we saw was two inches of rain. Not in a day, but in an hour," said Alex Tardy, Forecaster for the National Weather Service. "When we looked at the data, that's about a 200-year return interval. Maybe even close to a 300-year return interval. So it's very low probability."
If you want to see the city's complete storm briefing, you can find it here.
