STOCKTON, Calif. — Emergency officials in San Joaquin County are breathing a sigh of relief Thursday, hours after a destructive 'bomb cyclone' fueled by an atmospheric river made landfall in Northern California.
According to the county's top emergency official, Tiffany Heyer, neither levee breaches nor storm-related deaths have been reported in the county so far.
"We got lucky," Heyer told ABC10 Thursday. "The storm kind of changed its path last minute, and we didn't see the results of that 'bomb cyclone' that everybody had been talking about."
After watching the storm radars throughout Wednesday night, Heyer said walking into the Office of Emergency Service's Stockton command center and headquarters Thursday morning came with a feeling of relief.
"We've been activated since Saturday, and we kind of picked up to a full level overnight just to make sure that we were ready for anything that could happen," Heyer said as a small mid-day shower dropped rain at the office on Earhart Avenue. "We were ready for it and we expected it, but we just didn't see it. So it was a bit of a relief this morning to come in and know that everybody was still safe."
While the storm's path changed last-minute sparing San Joaquin County from the worst, Heyer also credits the county's preparedness and coordination for the lack of significant flood events.
"The reclamation districts in our county have worked hard for several years to make sure that their systems are able to handle those increased capacities. A lot of them have built them up more than what the minimum standards are," Heyer said. "We just kind of coordinate with everybody on that to make sure that when the water gets down to us, that we are in the appropriate channels. We don't want to exceed anyone's banks, we don't want to cause any issues."
Now, she hopes that people will prepare again as more rain is expected to fall over the weekend and into the second week of 2023. The county announced Thursday the opening of new sandbag locations ahead of the incoming rain.
"We still do have the localized flooding. We're working with all of our partners on that-- fire departments, police departments, sheriff's departments, water districts," said Heyer. "Everybody is out there trying to make sure that the issues that we've seen from the last storm get resolved before we see any major issues for the next storm."
Click HERE to find local sandbag locations.
Watch more San Joaquin County news from ABC10: San Joaquin County residents still recovering from NYE rain storm
