ACAMPO, Calif. — Jose Fernandez, like many Acampo residents, was stunned by the flood waters that suddenly appeared in the dark early Monday morning.
"I have my backyard, my little shed - everything is flooded, everything. I don't know what happened," said Fernandez.
Just over 24 hours later as the rain stopped and the sun peeked through the clouds, home after home is still surrounded by water.
"It didn't get into my house. It got in the neighbor's house here and the neighbor's in the back," said Acampo homeowner Bruce Lemos.
A few years ago, the San Joaquin Public Works Department put in a brand new pump system to protect Acampo from flood waters. But, some people say it didn't work.
"They should have let all the water go to the underpass. Let it fill up there. Divert the traffic. People wouldn't have got flooded," said Lemos, who has lived at his home 34 years.
In 2019, the San Joaquin County Public Works Department installed a nearly $2.5 million drainage, pump system. Complete with an underground storage sump pump facility, it collected water into drains along roads in neighborhoods that was meant to be diverted away from town.
"Starting New Year's Eve, we had a big storm and it caused a surge of water into Acampo New Years Day," said San Joaquin County Public Works Director Fritz Buchman.
He said power knocked out the pump system for hours on New Year's Eve before a generator restarted the system. That, coupled with the series of relentless storms and a huge surge of water into Acampo Monday morning, made the decision on where to pump the excess water difficult.
"Because of the downstream flooding conditions, we had turn off the pumps for awhile because we were starting to threaten the freeway. And then at one point, Caltrans said a couple hours later... 'You know what, go ahead and continue pumping, and we're going to close the freeway.' And that happened sometime late yesterday," said Buchman.
As of noon Tuesday, Buchman said the pumps were shut off again due to the threats of structures downstream.
"We knew this wasn't going to be a silver bullet that would totally solve the flooding out there. But I tell you because we had the system in place, it's a lot better than it would have been if we didn't have it," he said.
Making the system better can't come soon enough for those who are living through this nightmare disaster.
"Overall, I think it was overwhelming, too much water...," said Lemos.
Buchman said there is "more work to do."
"We intend to reach out to the community about future phases of flood control improvements that can be done. We also learned more with this event. This event was arguably bigger than the 2017 (event)," said Buchman, referring to flooding that year."
"We learned more about the limitations of our ability to convey drainage down stream of this project," he added.
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