It was late in the evening on Jan. 9, and the waters were rising. Diega and Fernando, holed up in their house, were listening to the rain pound down on their leaky roof when their granddaughter arrived at the front door and ordered them to immediately collect what they could and follow her to safety.
The couple grabbed blankets, pillows and a handful of important documents they kept in a plastic bag and waded through the surging water to their car. The route north was impassable so they followed their granddaughter’s car south, slowly navigating the dark and swelling streets of Planada, a farmworker community in Merced County where a breached levee would trigger a mandatory evacuation order the following morning.
“We barely got out in time to save the car,” said Diega. Their old Toyota sedan was just about the only thing that was spared. When Diega and Fernando visited their tiny one-bedroom house after the waters had receded, they found their belongings ruined and their home uninhabitable. The floors were warped and caked in mud; the smell was putrid. They dragged their clothes and mattress to the street, where it joined the growing number of piles of household debris.
Planada is an unincorporated community of 4,000 people, the sort of sleepy place travelers can stop in to fill up their gas tanks en route to Yosemite and not even know they had passed through. Several weeks after the town’s streets were inundated with up to five feet of water, Diega and Fernando sat on chairs inside their temporary apartment, a housing complex for migrant farmworkers on Planada’s north side that was serving as an emergency shelter for 40 displaced families. Plastic bins of donated clothes and food were stacked in the living room, the sum of their possessions after 25 years in Planada. Diega said she’s not sure when their landlord will fix up their home, or if they’ll be able to return once he does.
“He said we needed to be patient,” she said. But they can only wait for so long: As it stands, they have to vacate the unit by the end of the month to make room for arriving farmworkers.
The flood hit during the winter storms that dumped historic levels of rainfall across the state, fueled by successive atmospheric rivers. It also arrived during a lean period for farmworkers like Diega. The 66-year-old pulled out her last pay stub from mid-November, when she earned minimum wage for harvesting sweet potatoes. She has been the household’s sole earner since 2009, when Fernando, who is 73, nearly died from pneumonia after falling sick while pruning almond trees. With some help from her children, Diega earned just enough to pay the $500-a-month rent and relied on food donations and the occasional gift card from local charities to stock her kitchen. In all their years, the couple has never opened up a bank account, or saw reason to. “The money we make is what we use to live,” said Fernando.
On Jan. 14 President Biden declared Merced County one of several major disaster areas in California, opening up funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help individuals and business owners. A FEMA center has been established at a Catholic church in Planada, staffed with employees eager to help people fill out applications. But when Diega visited the center she learned that she didn’t qualify for help because both she and her husband are undocumented. “They were nice, but they kept asking if someone at home has a social security number,” said Diega. She left empty-handed. (To protect their privacy, Capital & Main is using pseudonyms for the couple.)
Diega and Fernando are quietly experiencing a private crisis, but it is one that will become more pressing in the coming years as climate change makes floods and wildfires more fierce and frequent. And their quandary is especially relevant in California, a disaster-prone state with a significant undocumented population. How can Diega and Fernando — and entire communities like Planada — recover from disasters when they are barred from receiving the aid meant to help them do so?
Planada, which means plain in Spanish, is indeed flat, surrounded by fields of almond, pistachio and plum trees with majestic views to the east of the snow-capped Sierra. Spanish is the language of daily life, and schedules are determined by the harvest calendar. Like many farmworker communities in the Central Valley, the town faces its share of challenges: More than a third of the residents live below the poverty line and less than half of adults are high school graduates. Local leaders estimate that as many as half of the town’s population is undocumented.
Planada is also a place many people can’t imagine leaving. One January morning, an elderly farmworker who asked that his name not be used sat on a bench in front of his house on Broadway, the town’s main road. He had bought the beige two-bedroom in 1976 and paid it off long ago.
The floodwater had swept down Broadway, turning the wide thoroughfare into a river. Inside the house, his children had ripped out damaged floors and removed sections of drywall to reveal beams and soggy insulation. The furniture had all been removed but framed photos of his children and grandchildren still hung from the walls.
Since the flood he has been staying with his daughter in Winton, a 30-minute drive away. He came to visit his home most days, sitting on the bench and walking around the yard. There wasn’t really anything for him to do: He was too old to fix the house, and he wasn’t guarding it either, since, as he put it, “There’s nothing for anyone to take.” It was simply his home and so he came here to sit in his yard under the sun.
Across the street, longtime Planada activist Alicia Rodriguez handed out bottled water inside a vacant commercial building that she had converted into a resource center. Shelves were stacked with food and diapers; bags of donated clothes sat on the porch. After the flood, Rodriguez went door to door to offer assistance, and she remains worried that those most in need are still being missed. “People are falling between the cracks — the elderly, the undocumented,” she said. She has heard from many undocumented residents that they have been denied assistance from FEMA, so she hands out whatever aid she can get her hands on: gift cards for gas, bottles of baby formula, free hot meals.
The flood forced the temporary closure of the post office and fire department and damaged an estimated one in four homes. The elementary school is located near the site of the levee breach and suffered especially heavy damage. Speaking in his office beneath a Diego Rivera print of farmworkers, Planada Elementary School District Superintendent José González said that 29 rooms needed to be rebuilt and that half of the students have been forced to crowd into the middle school. Fortunately, the district had flood insurance, and González, a broad shouldered man with a salt-and-pepper goatee, hopes it will cover the cost of rebuilding, which he estimated to be $3.5 million-$5 million.
González praised the outpouring of support he has received from the state and neighboring school districts but worries about the families who are struggling to find help. “We’re the hub for the community and provide humanitarian services,” he said. This role increased during COVID and has continued after the flood. The school’s community liaison, Olivia Gomez, has been assisting families impacted by the flood and reported that about 120 children are living at the migrant housing complex. González said that he had recently asked Gomez how she was doing and in response she broke into tears. She had just visited a family whose rental home was severely damaged by the flood. They continued to live in the house, not having anywhere else to go. “It’s all that they have,” said González. “The landlord is telling them, ‘If you want to stay, then you fix it.’”
On the evening of Feb. 2, more than 200 Planada residents gathered at the middle school gymnasium for a town hall meeting. Diega and Fernando arrived early and sat towards the back. Representatives from the county, state and federal governments faced the angry crowd, whose mood darkened further when the Spanish translation equipment failed to work. A FEMA representative took the microphone. She listed the accomplishments of the agency. “Nosotros no estamos rechazando a nadie,” she said. We are not rejecting anyone. Her words were met with shouts of disbelief. (She clarified to the crowd that she meant FEMA wouldn’t prevent anyone from coming to the office and requesting help, not that they would necessarily receive it.)
When the forum was opened to the public, a man stepped forward and pointed at the FEMA representative. “I have gone to you three times and you’ve denied me every time,” he said. “Did the disaster come only for people who have social security numbers? Or was it a disaster for everyone? Did you come only to help people with social security numbers? Or did you come to help everyone?”
His words were met with thunderous applause. I had met the man, Rufino, on a previous reporting trip. (Because he is undocumented, he asked that only his first name be used.) He and his wife had worked in the fields for years before starting a business selling popsicles and ice cream. It wasn’t much more lucrative than fieldwork, but it allowed them to spend more time with their son, who was then in high school.
The flood wiped out their business, destroying five commercial freezers and ruining their truck. He estimated his losses at $23,000. Although their son is a U.S. citizen and could be eligible for FEMA relief, he had begun his first year at UC Berkeley and was no longer a member of the household. Rufino told me that he was worried they’d have to return to the fields they thought they had finally escaped.
The speakers that followed sounded similar notes of frustration with FEMA and the county. Homeowners spoke about being denied grants and residents accused county leaders of being slow to help unincorporated Planada. Diega and Fernando sat quietly, saying nothing. When it was over, they shuffled out of the gymnasium without having gained clarity about their fate.
The following morning Diega waited in a line of more than 30 cars to pick up donated food at the community center. She was worried about her husband. Though he seemed well, she knew that the disruption wasn’t good for his health. After contracting pneumonia in 2009, Fernando had been flown to Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, where he remained in a medically induced coma for a month. In 2020, recovered and back in Planada, he suffered a heart attack and was again flown to Stanford. His health had stabilized with a pacemaker, but Diega was concerned that the stress brought on by the flood could trigger a setback.
After picking up a box of Clif Bars and chips, Diega passed by their old house. It looked as it had the day they tossed their ruined belongings into the street. A side window was covered with black plastic, paint was peeling from the walls, and sandbags were piled at the front door.
She continued on to the FEMA office. Though she had already been rejected, she had heard earlier in the day from a neighbor at the migrant complex that FEMA had a new grant that she could qualify for. What did she have to lose? Inside, she spoke with a representative. She was passed along to another worker, then a third. She emerged from the office 10 minutes later.
“They can’t do anything for me,” she said. She headed back to her temporary home at the migrant complex, passing rows of almond trees and fields of alfalfa, to tell her waiting husband the news.
