LOS ANGELES — The pounding rains of New Year’s Eve had ceased, but the pastures, freeways and neighborhoods surrounding the tiny community of Wilton continued to disappear beneath a vast, growing ocean of muddy water that left only the roofs of sunken vehicles visible to rescue helicopters.
It was a chilling vision of just how vulnerable California’s network of rural levees has become in an age of climate extremes. By Wednesday, nearly a dozen earthen embankments along the Cosumnes River near Sacramento had been breached, and three people had been found dead inside or next to submerged vehicles.
Experts say such failures are all but inevitable as California’s aging levee system whipsaws between desiccating drought and intense downpours. Storm water has a nasty way of finding errors in infrastructure planning and design, said Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
