PLANADA, Calif. — When Rudy Moreno first saw the texts from his relatives two weeks ago asking about the mandatory evacuation order in Planada, he didn’t even know that one had been issued. Much of the small town, made up of about 4,000 people east of Merced, had been flooded due to a breached levee during the storms that deluged the state at the start of the year.
But instead of joining the fleeing residents, the majority of whom had already left, Moreno headed straight to his childhood home on Amistad Street, where his older sister, Sylvia, still lived. They didn’t have flood insurance, and the rain was coming down hard.
Together, they worked on digging a trench from their backyard, which was already brimming with more than 2 feet of water, to their front yard to keep the house from flooding. They used an electric pump and managed to keep the water at bay.
