Damage from the New Year's Eve storm, that pounded San Francisco with more than 5 inches of rain, was being assessed Sunday.
There were mudslides, road closures and people trying to deal with problems.
“The water started coming down from the mountain, which it connects to all of our houses,” said German Rivas or San Francisco.
He can’t stay at his Bayview home after torrential rains on New Year’s Eve.
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“One of the drains that we have in the back is blocked and I was trying to clean it there was so much debris coming down from the mountain the water was really saturated I nothing you can predict is going to happen like that,” he said.
Video shows the water rushing from the backyard near Leconte and Mead Avenues.
Four homes were damaged and red tagged.
Rivas described water rushing through.
“It went through the back yard through the kitchen, one of the bathrooms, living rooms, dining rooms everywhere and coming down the stairs and the garage it was like rain also like that,” he said.
Video shared by the fire department showed water rising against a glass door in another home on the block. They say neighbors were helping alongside firefighters.
“We came to a conclusion that if we allow the water to continue to come down and just back up to the backside of this homes it was going to fill up like a bathtub or swimming pool and that would definitely cause some structural issues and cause a lot of damage so we opened up the doors with the permission of the homeowners and flowed the water from the backyards into the upstairs down their stairway down to street level,” said Capitan Jonathan Baxter of the San Francisco Fire Department.
Near 15th and Folsom, neighbors were cleaning up after rain filled the streets. For Fritz Clay, water kept rising in his garage.
“I thought we were handled. We have gone through this before, we have sump pump and it hasn't happened until yesterday so everything now is wet and moldy and muddy. It’s sewage water, forget about it,” said Rivas.
For Rivas, the family is trying to see it this way.
“We are still alive, still healthy and I hope I can keep working to come up again. This is not going to stop us,” he said.
