San Jose mayor admits failures in flood evacuation order
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The mayor of San Jose acknowledged that the city failed to properly notify residents to evacuate during a flood emergency early Wednesday when some people said they got their first notice by seeing firefighters in boats in the neighbourhood.
City officials ordered more than 14,000 residents to evacuate as water from swollen Coyote Creek flooded homes and temporarily shut down a portion of a major freeway. Another 22,000 people near the creek had been encouraged but not required to evacuate.
“If the first time a resident is aware that they need to get out of their home is when they see a firefighter in a boat, that’s a failure,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said at a news conference. “We are assessing what happened in that failure.”
Liccardo declined to go into detail, saying there would be time for reflection after the emergency was over.