The California Flood that impressed me the most that I witnessed:1995

I heard one day that the bridge that Crossed the Carmel River in 1995 was in the ocean. I thought to myself "How is that possible! That bridge is over a mile or more from the ocean. And it's out into the ocean?" This was something I had to see for myself.

So, I drove to this location to see for myself what had happened and talked to locals about it. I could see people parking their cars on the other side where the bridge had been looking sort of forlorn because there wasn't an easy way out for them if they lived the other side of the bridge without driving about 4 hours or more on dirt roads that also could or might be washed out in many places. At one point, the whole Monterey Peninsula as well as everything south of the Carmel River through Carmel Highlands all the way down to Big Sur was an island because water crossed the Hiway 1 freeway near Castroville which became impassable and even hiway 68 became impassable near Salinas as well. So, there only was a way out of the area by helicopter or plane for awhile.

Next to where the bridge over the Carmel River had been washed into the ocean (a mile or more) (and by the way this bridge could take Semi Trucks that drive every day to Big Sur to supply hotels, stores and Gas stations there stood The Crossroads which is a shopping mall. One Restaurant I looked through the windows and saw at least a foot of mud on the floor from when the river had crested a few feet above the shopping mall parking lot which meant that the movie theater had about 4 to 5 feet of water in it which you could still see the water mark from that whenever people went to a movie there while it was still open.

Nearby a bank had an underground parking garage and this filled completely with water and it was reported that cars were floating down inside like Mercedes and other more expensive cars trunk up into the air because the engine is heavier in water.

Hundreds of homes along the Carmel River were flooded from way upstream all the way to the ocean. The Hiway one bridge over the Carmel River was replaced with a temporary bridge and a new bridge I believe was built within a month or two as a rush job to replace this necessary bridge for all the people who live south of the Carmel river in Carmel Highlands, Big Sur and points South.

On top of this the road (Hiway 1) had been taken out by a rock slide below Big Sur so the people had no way out without using 4 wheel drives over unsafe rocky dirt roads that might collapse from the flooding too.