Like so many in the fertile Pajaro Valley where livelihoods are linked to the rhythms of the growing season, Fabiola Alcaraz is anxiously eyeing the calendar as fields and equipment that deliver a bounty of beautiful red strawberries and raspberries sit under several feet of muddy floodwater.
She manages a cold storage unit in Pajaro that keeps the freshly picked berries cool as they await shipment to grocers throughout the Bay Area and beyond. But a breach longer than a football field that severed a levee upstream during Saturday rainstorms spilled floodwater through the town and into the nearby farms.
A breach in the Pajaro River Levee floods the town