In January 1982, several students and around 10 teachers had to stay overnight in the library due to severe rainstorms and flooding on Sir Francis Drake Blvd. and Magnolia Ave. According to Sue Chelini, former assistant principal, 11 inches of rain fell in four hours that day.
Since the school opened in 1958, the parking lots have flooded regularly in the wake of severe storms. Only recently
has the problem been fixed—students in 1982 weren’t so lucky.
“I didn’t stay overnight… I had as many kids as I could fit in my car
to drive home,” she said. “I went over Camino Alto and an hour after I went
up there, there was a landslide and that road was closed for a year.”
The next year, in 1983, the floods rushed through the parking lots and surrounding
roads again, but students and faculty were not trapped. Students took
to rubber rafts and scuba gear to wade through the parking lot floodwaters.
Chelini said that even in recent years before she retired, that students would jump into “Lake Redwood”
and attempt to swim around — only to find that the water was only a few feet
deep.
Since the front parking lot was repaved last summer, the Lake has yet to return. Before modernization, however,
in both of the back and front lots, the Lake was a yearly and sometimes daily occurrence.
“[Floods] will come if you have a combination of extremely high tides, heavy rain, and winds coming off of
the bay that push up the tide,” Chelini said. “If the tide is predicted to be 7.2, it might be an effective real tide of
about 8.2.”
For the 30 years that Chelini worked at Redwood, such severe flooding only occurred in 1982, but parking
lot floods happened annually. She said that at the time, he storm was so severe that students and teachers who
couldn’t get home had no choice but to stay at school. After years of winter storms and floods, weather conditions
have not been the only culprits of parking lot flooding.
Aside from harsh weather conditions, some past students
may have noticed a large puddle gathering in the parking lot on some occasions — even in the absence of
rain. According to Chelini, the school was built on top of a knoll, so the parking lots sit on either sides and have sunk
throughout the years.
“When the tide is high enough that it floods over, water comes down Doherty Drive and fills the parking lot
from the main entrance,” she said. while the parking lot flooded with
every rainstorm, the land under the lot sunk as well and will continue to sink
in years to come.
The six foot ledge in the back parking lot near the Kreps Lounge used to
be a small curb, but in the last 50 years, the land under the pavement has sunk
and has created a six-foot drop off.
Since 1990, the back parking lot has
been repaved three times, mainly due to
salt-water ruins, according to Chelini.
Salt water from the creek crumbled the
asphalt and marked the pavement.
After modernization in 2006, a drainage system was built underneath
both parking lots so there is a low probability of flooding in the future. The only possibility for
a repeat of 1982 is if the creek overflows in the wake of a near monsoon like the one 26 years ago, according to
Chelini.
So far, so good — the front and back lots have not flooded this year. But according to Chelini, the future may
not be so bright for student drivers. In 100 years you will not be able to park at Redwood,”
she said. “People have talked about global warming and tide going up… If in 50 years it’s sunk this much, what
will it do in another 100?”
