The beginning of 2023 brought a lot of rain to California.
It rained so much that acres and acres of farmland in the Central Valley flooded, including outside the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison at Corcoran, California
I first heard about the floods in Merced, California, on the news. Merced is a city about 100 miles away from where I am incarcerated in Corcoran. One or two weeks later I started to hear from other prisoners about the floodwaters right outside of our own prison compounds.
This wasn’t the first time I have experienced flooding and heavy rains. In 2015, flood waters reached inside our housing units at Mule Creek State Prison, leaving 2 to 3 inches of water.
Here in Corcoran, I didn’t think the flood was that big of a deal until one of my friends, Shawn Jackson, told me that his wife had problems finding a road to come to SATF to visit him.
“It’s crazy, man,” he said. “My wife spent hours going through all of the detours before she was able to get here to visit.”
Another friend of mine, Alcide Walker, told me that his wife had also taken detours while looking for open roads on the GPS system. It also took hours for her to make it inside to visit him. Walker told me that many visitors had been having this same problem with the roads.
I also asked Walker if he heard anything about the weather affecting the staff at our prison at all. He told me that the staff at SATF are having problems coming to work just like the visitors.