In a California Town, Farmworkers Start From Scratch After Surprise Flood

“We came as immigrants, we started with nothing,” said Ms. Birrueta, 40, who was born in Mexico. “We bought a place of our own that we thought would be safe for our kids, and then we lost it. We lost everything.”

Nine miles east of Merced in California’s agricultural heartland, Planada’s wide streets are dotted with bungalows and lead to a central park shaded by towering spruce and elm trees. Less than two square miles, Planada was created in 1911 to be an idyllic, planned farming community — its name means “plain” in Spanish, a nod to its fertile, low-lying lands — but was eventually abandoned by its Los Angeles developers.

The quiet town, surrounded by almond orchards and corn fields, has since become a desirable place for farmworkers with families to settle. When California farmworkers marched through Planada last summer on their way to the State Capitol in Sacramento, hundreds of children lined the streets to cheer them on.

The recent floods dealt a painful blow to a community in which more than a third of households are impoverished. Planada is more than 90 percent Latino and overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking. Roughly a quarter of residents are estimated to be undocumented immigrants, making them ineligible for some forms of disaster relief.

Agricultural workers in California are often on the front lines of catastrophes. They worked during the early, uncertain days of the Covid-19 pandemic, have endured record heat waves and toiled in the smoke-choked air that gets trapped in the Central Valley during wildfires.

During the recent floods, tens of thousands of farmworkers most likely lost wages because of water damage to California’s crops, compounding their already precarious financial situations, said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesman for the United Farm Workers of America.

“The very workers who put food on our table are getting hot meals from the Salvation Army,” said Mr. De Loera-Brust. “Whether California is on fire or underwater, the farmworkers are always losing.”