Downpour causes problems in Mariposa and thousands in damage

MARIPOSA COUNTY (KFSN) -- Already full, clogged, and overflowing drains and culverts had portions of Mariposa County drowning in water Tuesday.

Officials said a flash flood over the weekend caused about a million dollars in damages; not including the destruction from the latest storm.

"The problem that we're seeing right now is a result of tree mortality and so there's a lot of debris. Broken limbs, and there's cut tree trunks that are on private property that is flowing into the channels and the creeks; and this is what is causing the damage here," said Gary Brown, Mariposa County Engineer.

The losses are widespread, mostly from floodwaters that continue to rise. At Ace Hardware the parking lot looked more like a river. The water ruined thousands of dollars in merchandise in a storage shed.

"We do have warehousing up above on the hill, and while we don't know the damage of that as of this moment, we can suspect it's going to be probably in the tens of thousands of dollars in product loss alone," said Troy Foster, Hardware Store Owner.

Constant and steady rain for so many days has left sports fields at Mariposa County High School looking more like small ponding basins-- winter soccer is on a hiatus for now.

"We did have a bank of water flow over into our JV baseball and soccer fields and ended up-- some of the other water from the other banks actually went down into our learning center and flooded multiple classrooms there," said Celeste Azevedo, Mariposa County High School Principal.

Heavy downpours forced the closure of several roads in the area. Saturated hillsides are more of a concern with each raindrop that falls, mud and rockslides could lead to a more dangerous and serious problem.

Mariposa County deputies have been policing to make sure that people stay away from the fast-moving water.

Some residents who have lived here for 35 years say they've never seen anything like this.