Fresno County sets up shelter ahead of major storm. Kings River expected to ‘reach its top’

Update: The county announced Thursday that it was relocating its emergency shelter from Reedley College to the Sanger Community Center, 700 Recreation Ave. The new shelter was set to open at 3 p.m. Thursday.

Original story: Fresno County is opening an emergency shelter Thursday in Reedley to serve as an evacuation center for people seeking to avoid potential danger from a major rainstorm and expected flooding.

Terri Mejorado, emergency services manager for the county, said in a media briefing Wednesday that the American Red Cross will open the shelter at 9 a.m. in the Reedley College gymnasium 995 N. Reed Ave.

The shelter will have the capacity to serve 200 residents, and evacuees should only bring essential items such as medication, clothes and toiletries. Pets such as dogs and cats that can be kenneled will also be allowed, Mejorado said.

The American Red Cross is providing cots, blankets, pillows and some meals, and the gymnasium has restrooms and shower facilities that are complaint with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

On Tuesday, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office issued an evacuation warning for much of eastern Fresno County in and near the Sierra Nevada foothills – an area encompassing an estimated 17,000 people, Mejorado said. While that advisory is a warning, and not an evacuation order, Mejorado said nine additional sites have been identified to serve as shelter sites if more people need them.

Either way, county officials are encouraging people to be prepared for a storm event that is expected to swell rivers, streams and tributaries with “dangerously high water flow beyond historic levels.”

“Now is the time to go ahead and pack up if you think you need to leave, or if you want to ride it out, make sure you have the supplies in your home to get you through at least the next four to five days,” Mejorado said. “We’re not looking to get a break from this weather until Sunday, maybe into Monday. And then right after that we’ll have another atmospheric river coming in.”

Atmospheric river will deliver ‘tremendous’ amount of rain

“We’ll have a tremendous amount of rain coming down. They’re predicting three inches between Thursday evening and Saturday morning in downtown Fresno,” Mejorado said. “Fresno normally doesn’t see that type of rain coming down at one time.”

This weekend’s storm is going to be considerably warmer than those that have dumped heavy snow on the Sierra Nevada range over the past couple of weeks – a situation that carries the prospect of not only abundant rainfall, but also snowmelt at lower elevations of the mountains.

“We can expect over the weekend to get close to 70 degrees in Fresno. … It’s going to melt the snow, and on top of that, we’ll have warm water on top of the snow,” Mejorado said. “So you can definitely expect anything 3,000 feet (elevation) and below that has snow right now, by the end of this storm that snow will be gone.”

Much of the snowpack at elevations between 3,000 and 5,000 feet is also expected to melt, with that water flowing downhill.

“When you have that much water, plus the snowmelt, it’s got to go somewhere,” Mejorado said. “It’s always going to go to the path of least resistance. … We’re fully expecting the Kings River to reach its top, and once it starts to spill over, it could go into homes, it could go into animal areas.”

Fresno County urges use of emergency alerts system

The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office had its helicopter aloft on Wednesday to take photos and video of the entire Kings River, Mejorado said, “so we have a good idea of what it looks like now” before the rain arrives.

“There are people who sometimes live outside, and we wanted to make sure that any of the unhoused community, if they are down in the river bottom, that we are notifying them and getting them out,” she added.

The photos and video also offered surveillance of bridges and roads near the river. “We don’t want to wait until the storm gets here before we start doing things like that,” Mejorado said.

Crews from Cal Fire were also busy Wednesday filling sandbags and trying to shore up the banks of the Kings River near a mobile home park that has a history of flooding.

Mejorado and Sonja Dosti, a spokesperson for the county, encouraged residents to sign up for emergency alerts from the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office through its Everbright app. Fresno County is also providing updates on its emergency page, fresnocountyemergency.org, which includes links for road closures, maps of road closures and evacuation warning areas, requests for animal assistance, and locations where sand bags are available for residents.