Colonet and Camalu Flood Assessment

By jeff

On Sunday morning, we traveled back to San Vicente with over $1000 worth of propane gas, socks, blankets, water, antibiotics, peanut butter, bread, tortillas, tuna, and coffee.  On the way there we picked up a newspaper which had the story of the flood damage on the front page.  This was the first time that any news of the event made it up as far as Ensenada.  We were pretty excited that we had beat the press to the headline story.  When we got to the river, we were able to be pulled across in the Baja Missions van by a tractor while Matt drove across the river in a 4×4 truck.  Just before going across, a journalist with the national news grabbed the guy driving our tractor and interviewed him.
Here is a video of us crossing.

We went to church in San Vicente once we crossed and then headed south.  There weren’t many restaurants open so we had to improvise with what we could find at the local grocery store.
When we arrived in Colonet, we found the preacher (Antonio) and his family and they took us to see their house and the church.  The devastation was amazing.  The street was filled with mud and anything that had been sitting on the street was destroyed.
This is the inside of a truck that was on the road at the time of the flood.
The church was in terrible shape.  The water had risen more than 6 feet inside the building.  After it subsided, it left over a foot of mud.
To escape the rising waters, the children and adults inside the building huddled on the stage.  When they realized that they needed to get higher, they used this ladder to climb to the ledge above the baptistry.  This is Antonio, the preacher, showing me their handprints on the wall.
Antonio’s house was also in really bad shape.  He and his wife Dulce showed us what was left of it.
You can see how high the water got on their kitchen cabinets (above).  The kids were out front playing in their new front yard.
After touring their home and the church, we went back to their temporary shelter and distributed the food and supplies we brought.
After a prayer with the family, we headed south again to Camalu.  The damage there wasn’t quite as extensive but the road in front of the church was in really bad shape.
The preacher in Camalu took us to see the bridge to Vicente Gurrero which is the next town south.  It was even worse than the San Vicente bridge.  There was no propane gas coming into the city which is what people rely on for cooking and heating water.  So, many of the poor were collecting and bundling scrap wood that had washed down the river to use as fire wood.
In order to make it back across the San Vicente river before dark we decided to go back towards Ensenada.  On the drive back, we couldn’t believe the amount of snow these storms dumped in the mountains east of Camalu and Colonet.  The locals were all worried about the snow melting and its runoff causing additional flooding.
I was able to capture Matt on video as he attempted to take the truck back across the river.

To learn more about the relief efforts being planned, visit the Baja Missions homepage by clicking HERE.