Jones Street in Santa Maria punished by flooding rain

Major flooding closed Jones Street at Bradley Road in Santa Maria. Just next door there’s a large neighborhood that’s being protected from flooding by “Muscle Walls” that were installed last month.

Just down Jones on Marian these muscle walls were doing their job – keeping the water away from hundreds of homes at risk.

“We’ve been praying for rain and then we got it and now we got it and we got it and we still have it, it’s just going on and on,” Eloise Linini said.

Eloise Linini has lived in this neighborhood for years.

“I haven’t seen anything like this in well over 10 years,” Linini said.

She was a little skeptical about these Muscle Walls at first, but now believes if it weren’t for these walls, her home could be at risk for flooding.

“They put them up before we had all this rain and we just had to do all this extra driving, but now that we see what they’re for, we’re really happy,” Linini said.

Nearby high winds knocked down a tree and the overflowing ag fields next door were pushing strawberries into the flooding road. Drainage ditches could barely handle the thousands of gallons of water that was punishing the street.

Several truck drivers weren’t shy about plowing through the flooded stretch of Jones Street.

“It was pretty bad, like really bad honestly,” truck driver Jose Gonzalez said.

We caught up with Jose Gonzalez after he passed the road closure sign and trekked through the high water.

“I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless you have a big truck,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said he probably wouldn’t do it again.

“You have to go really slow, you can’t go at regular speed,” Gonzalez said.

“We wanted rain but this is too much,” Linini said.

People who live here tell us this is a pretty common occurrence here but this might be the most flooding they’ve ever seen on Jones Street.