Flood victims on the Peninsula, battered by the last two storms, are returning home Wednesday night to assess the damage — and there's a lot of it.
But for some families at a flooded mobile home park in Belmont, help is on the way. Generosity no one ever imagined would appear weeks before Christmas.
The flood waters took a big hit on everybody at the Belmont mobile home park, especially the ones with children. But because of the kindness of the community and one local elementary school principal in particular, things are about to get much better.
Elena Barriga lost all her food when flood waters knocked out power at her home for five days. Her family also lost everything that they had stored under their home.
For those five nights away, Barriga stayed at an emergency shelter with her husband and three frightened children.
“It was raining really hard — it was at night so when I slept I was still worried … I had nightmares,” one of her children said.
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The Red Cross provided a hotel room for Barriga's parents because her father Jesus is on dialysis, and her mother Maria is battling breast cancer. They live at the mobile home park too.
But before the storms had even ended Robin Maganaris, the principal at Nesbit elementary in Belmont, where Barriga’s children go to school, had learned that a total of 11 families with children at Nesbit had also been flooded out.
“When you are principal of the school you love the teachers, the parents, the community — you love the children — you're like the mom,” Maganaris said.
Maganaris reached out to school district parents for help, hoping to raise maybe $500.
“In six hours we were up to $4,000 and by the next morning it was $8,000 and now we sit at a little over $19,000,” she said. “Children have brought in their allowances, their tooth fairy money, their presents from their grandparents.”
For the Barriga family, there really is a Santa Claus, in fact hundreds of them, all over the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District.
You can help Belmont flood victims by donating here.
How a Bay Area school district saved Christmas for flood victims - at 11 @nbcbayarea pic.twitter.com/tZl5uhC0bS — TerryMcSweeney (@TerryMcSweeney) December 18, 2014
