Neighbors in Modesto mobile home park work together in race against water

Murdock Carson’s trailer at the Driftwood Mobile Home Park was high and dry Tuesday afternoon, but he was at times waist-deep in water.

“You can’t just walk out on folks,” he said after using a dolly to wheel a friend’s freezer to dry land at the flooded community on River Road along the Tuolumne River.

He soon was back in the water, clearing debris so a tow-truck crew could pull neighbor Pat Lewis’ fifth-wheel camper from the floodwater.

While his wife and dog are safe at the park’s highest point, he said, he has about 20 friends who weren’t so fortunate.

Carson is new and old to the park. He lived there 15 to 20 years ago and has been back three weeks, he said.

“I’m no saint,” Carson said, rattling off a history that includes time in Iraq and time in prison, at one point saying he’s a mechanic by trade, then calling himself an alcoholic by trade.

“I’m an old dope fiend,” the jovial Driftwood resident continued. “There’s a lot of heroin that goes through here, a lot of meth that goes through here.” He pointed to the home of a guy he did time with. Pointed to the homes of other people he’s known for decades. Then warmly greeted a guy he’s known only three days.

“You’ve got to be loyal ... you can’t just stand back,” he said. It’s nothing to have a beer with a friend when all’s going well, he said, but he called bull on people not getting wet to help neighbors in distress.

One of those in trouble was Raymond Lee. He lives in a fifth-wheel that was in the exact same spot in 1997 and flooded then, he said. On Tuesday afternoon, he was pulling belongings from it as the water was about a foot away from flooding it again, he estimated. Because come hell or higher water, he can’t move the trailer.

“I just got it to where it quit leaking, and if I pull it, it will leak again,” he said. Actually, “leak again” would be an understatement.

“The wheels haven’t turned in 20 years. The bearings would probably fall out and everything else disintegrate,” Lee said.

In 1997, the original owner didn’t want to move, he said, and simply disinfected the home with bleach after the floodwaters receded, then moved back in.

If it floods again, is that Lee’s plan? “If it’s too bad, I’ll just get a new trailer – I didn’t pay too much for it,” he said. And in the meantime, his grandmother-in-law, mother and brother all live in Driftwood, so there are places to stay.

“We were planning to move anyway, fixing to buy a house,” he said. “This just happened at a bad time.”

Lewis, the resident having his fifth-wheel towed to higher ground, has lived at Driftwood four years, he said. He’d scheduled a tow for his home earlier, but the truck never showed, he said, and the water got “too deep too fast.”

He hadn’t looked inside the trailer right after the tow, but saw the rear sink into deep water while it was being pulled out, so he figured he had some flooding inside.

The guys from Stanislaus Towing Services who did the job Tuesday said it was their fourth trailer pull since Friday. They didn’t know how many more they’d be able to do.

“It’s getting to the point where the water is high enough that we won’t be able to safely do it. We can’t risk our own equipment,” said Raymond Gomes. “I wish some of these folks would have called earlier.”

This story was originally published February 21, 2017 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Neighbors in Modesto mobile home park work together in race against water."