We begin this hour in california. significant flood threat is intensifying. powerful drenching storms hitting the northern and central parts of of the state. brought on by an atmospheric river. governor newsom declared a state of emergency. a levy breach forcing evacuations in monterey county. the california national guard is now on the scene in santa cruz to support emergency services. around 15 million people are under flood watches across california and nevada. for some residents, the rising water is simply too much to bear. can t live like this. how do you live like this? how do i have my kids here? how do i have my elderly mother live here where i carry her out of her had house? snowfall is also causing significant problems blocking roads and trapping some people in their homes. several feet of snow have fallen in parts of the sierra nevada
Ground search and rescue around 4:15 this morning. with air search and rescue we got up around 6:15. really we worked in 14 parishes, concentrated in southeast louisiana. and primarily the 200 plus that were able to evacuate out were in saint charles, st. john parishes and we rescued 27 pits. but i would say concurrently with the search and rescue missions, we have ongoing missions with the police department. our engineer assessment teams have been out in those 14 parishes, looking at the damage that s there. coming up with a plan how best the issue is that were caused by hurricane ida. and our engineered work teams have been working. we have some sent down to address a levy breach that
Some damage assessment. that s going to be a long process. you really can t tell the extent of the damage until the water has receded and that could take weeks if not months. in the long term, the farmers here are concerned. there are a lot of crops in the distance, completely ruined by the floodwaters. we are talking corn, soybeans, rice. we took a look at all of this overhead in a helicopter tour over the weekend. these farmer, people in the industry, tell me they could be financially impacted for years to come. the governor said last week because of the disruption to the navigation system, arkansas is losing $23 million a day. this will be a long-term challenge for people here in dardanelle. there was a levy breach but they have stabilized the situation and hope for the best. more rain is set to head that
Gives you a sense of the scale of this natural disaster we had here in the arkansas river valley. reporter: we took a helicopter tour earlier to take a look at that levy breach. that opening was larger than it was a day ago and right now the water is covering the farm fields. a lot of farmers are looking at their financial future with a lot of concern. people are helping each other out here, but a lot of folks have also voluntarily evacuated their homes. there are hundreds of homes threatened not just by flooding but some of them are inaccessible because of road closure closures. this water could take weeks to recede. natasha chen, cnn. natasha on the ground. derek van damme here to tell us about what s going on and what s to come. there are 70 river gauges
Thing these folks need right now. this is the amount of rain that s already fallen. the bright pink color you see on the screen, that s in excess of 10 inches of rain. some spots are localized in there when you see the white, they ve picked up over 20 inches of rain. fun again, now when we start talking about adding more systems into the mix, this is the last thing they need. we have 300 river gauges, those are the dots you see here, that are above the flood stage. here you can see the water rising due to the floods. then you see this quick drop-off, due to that levy breach. at that point that water has elsewhere to go, flowing into the communities and lowering the river. now it s starting to go back up because the water upstream is flowing into it. now we also have more water to add into the mix. here is a look across that same region, widespread amounts of two to four inches. boris, today is june 1st,