Dan Selling and his wife Liz Taylor-Selling were sorting through the lower level of their home in Felton Grove last weekend. A couple inches of slippery silt was everywhere.
Three days earlier, on Feb., 7, their entire neighborhood – 53 homes – had been under fast-moving water. The San Lorenzo River, about 200 yards away, overflowed its banks at the Felton Covered Bridge and began to flow through Felton Grove.
In less than an hour, the water was four feet deep. In another hour, it began to slowly recede, leaving planters, shrubs, trash and other debris behind.
Dan was able to rescue his chickens.
His belongings in garage and storage on his lower level didn’t fare as well. Boxes, books, electronic equipment, family photo albums – all got hit by the muddy onslaught. He wore surgical gloves, to fend of the contamination in the silt.
“This was almost as bad as the flood we got in ’98,” he said with a shrug.
“It leaves all of this mud behind,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m really overwhelmed. I assumed that if everything was up on a table, it would be safe. But it went higher than that.”
“We’ve done this before, you know,” said Liz, a retired phlebotomist, former San Lorenzo Valley school trustee and emergency response trainer.
In 1998, Felton Grove was under about six feet of water, all homes were evacuated and many suffered serious structural damage. The owners were eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency grants to rebuild from the disaster, with two important strings attached:
They had to “raise” their homes on solid, flood-proof foundations, creating living areas in second stories above groundfloor garages and storage areas – in which they could not reside – and they had to buy flood insurance.
Over the next five years, all of the homes were raised.
This saved the day on Feb. 7. Lots of silt and debris, but no structural damage.
Dan had already taken three pickup truckloads of trash to one of two dumpsters deposited two days after the flood by Santa Cruz County. He and wife give credit for that quick response to 5th District Supervisor Bruce McPherson.
“We are really grateful for that,” Liz said.
