A San Jose man tried to warn his neighbors that Coyote Creek was near flooding — even as San Jose’s anti-Donald Trump Mayor Sam Liccardo did nothing.
The San Jose Mercury News reports:
“I felt like Chicken Little,’’ said Jeff Hare, who saw his Naglee Park neighborhood flood two decades ago and had spent last weekend going door-to-door to warn his neighbors about the rising creek. He even stopped by a nearby fire station and called the water district to ask if they were truly prepared.
Liccardo was forced to admit that his administration’s “failure” to warn residents as the Creek overflowed its banks and sent water contaminated with fuel and sewage coursing through the streets. Emergency responders evacuated 14,000 residents — many of whom were still in their homes and faced a harrowing journey to safety.
Last June, Liccardo blamed Trump for a riot in the streets of San Jose in which left-wing activists targeted Trump supporters outside a rally. Rioters chased, beat and bloodied innocent people — in full view of the national media — across downtown. Others had their cars attacked in a nearby parking lot. Yet Liccardo insisted that Trump was to blame: “At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” he told the Associated Press at the time.
More recently, Liccardo was among several big-city Democrat mayors in California to vow to remain “sanctuary cities,” in opposition to Trump’s executive order warning that they could face federal funding cuts for defying federal immigration law.
Yet Liccardo could not protect the residents of his city, and some are furious. The Mercury News reports: “Not only did communication fail between the city and potential flood victims, it also broke down between the city and the water district, which was monitoring Coyote Creek for flooding risks.”
Liccardo has promised a hearing soon to explore the city’s failure. He was quoted by the Mercury News as saying: “The public deserves to know all of the facts about why there was not sufficient warning to residents. … I’ve been explicit from the very start of this that there were failures — and failures we should never repeat … I will take responsibility for ensuring that we do not put our residents in peril again.”
Meanwhile, Governor Jerry Brown has announced belated plans to spend $400 million on “flood control and emergency response,” Bay Area public radio station KQED reports.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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