It was the year of El Niño, and storms had been rolling through the Bay Area all week. The drain that carries creek water under Michaels Drive was plugged up.

The creek bed was maybe 25 feet deep, and the pump sat about 10 feet down the embankment. That way the hose could reach the bottom of the creek and keep the water level down.

No matter what the time or the weather, the job of Saratoga's street maintenance crew is to keep the city's streets clear, safe and well marked, which also means keeping 2,600 storm drains open. That night, the crew was running around Saratoga unplugging storm drains and clearing fallen trees and mudslides, but the pump up on Michaels needed to be monitored. The rain subsided some as the night waned.

In the morning, when crew member Jesus Villalobos—who has been with the street crew for 12 years—was on pump watch, the skies opened up and a pelting rain deluged Saratoga. Even though the pump was sucking out 2,000 gallons of water per minute and a smaller pump was drawing out another 400 gallons, the creek began to rise. In a short time, the water reached the bottom of the pump.

A woman trudged down her driveway to tell Villalobos that swimming pools were overflowing, too. The water was pouring down the hillsides and into the creek. Tree branches, twigs, lawn chairs and other items tumbled through the creek.

"Will that pump still work if the water covers the exhaust pipe?" the woman asked.

"The water reached halfway up the pump in three or four minutes," Villalobos says, and he ran to his truck radio, calling, "Mayday, Mayday" to his supervisor.

Before the crew at the corporate yard could even load another pump on a trailer, Villalobos says, the 6-foot-tall pump at Michaels was completely submerged. "It was the Titanic," crew member Alfonso Serrano says, laughing. And no, the pump didn't work after that.

"Our job that day was to keep the water from flooding the street," says Rick Torres, supervisor for Saratoga's five-man crew. They started up the new pump and opened a couple of manholes to help drain as much of the water off the street as possible. The screen attachment on the new pump's hose kept clogging, and the crew had to pull it out over and over to clean it.

"Basically, we just watched the creek overflow," Torres says. "We did all we could."

A couple of days later, the West Valley Sanitation District brought heavy equipment to Michaels Drive and broke through what turned out to be a solid wall of mud blocking the drain, then rebuilt the drain.

Saratoga's street maintenance crew of five plus a half-timer never know what to expect on any given day. "That's what I love about this job," Torres says.

Photograph by George Sakkestad Tony Fagiano has been with the Saratoga street maintenance crew two years.

And sometimes strange things happen on their streets.

One day, for instance, a garbage truck unwittingly picked up a load of smoldering trash that burst into flames. The driver dumped his load on Saratoga Avenue (between Cox and McFarland) and called the fire department.

"We brought our tractor to spread the burning refuse so the fire department could get it all out," Torres says. And because the crew didn't want the garbage-contaminated water to go down the storm drains, they contained it on the road. Torres says the sanitation crew came out with its big vacuum truck and sucked up all the water. When the garbage company came out with a new truck, the street crew used a backhoe to reload the garbage.

"Our main function during emergencies," Torres says, "is putting out cones and detour barricades." But often the crew does a lot more.

Photograph by George Sakkestad Saratoga's street crew is responsible for keeping all of Saratoga's 137 miles of roadways clear, marked and safe. Rick Amaro drives the steamroller over newly laid asphalt.

That cleanup job was on flat land, but Saratoga's 137 miles of roads include many hilly, winding, tree-lined streets, presenting this crew with quite a challenge.

Bohlman Road, a narrow street that snakes up the hill behind Saratoga village, is especially difficult. "It's beautiful," Torres says, driving his truck along Bohlman, "but I wouldn't live up here."

Torres, who has been with street maintenance for 18 years, explains that in a heavy rain the water flows so quickly downhill it washes out the road. "We can't keep up with the damage," he says. He points to roots sticking out of the hillside. "That may look ugly, but those roots actually hold the hillside up," he says. He notices places along the road's edge that need patching. "That kind of job is always at the back of my mind," he says.

Torres knows every street in Saratoga. "I keep the map in my head," he says.

Morgan Kessler, assistant engineer for the Saratoga Public Works Department, says, "Nobody knows more about Saratoga streets than Rick." He says that Torres is on call 24 hours a day by cell phone. "The sheriff calls Rick after hours, when all the city people have gone home. Even PG&E calls Rick." And when they can't get Torres, they telephone the next crew member on call. "That's our job," Torres says.

Torres also knows all the streets with spectacular views and one that he calls an "optical illusion." When it rains on that street, the water appears to flow uphill. Torres likes to take new crew members up to see the optical illusion on a rainy day. "They can't believe it," he says.

When Torres sends men out to fix a street problem, he sends two men for traffic control. "That's for safety," he says. He explains that people drive pretty fast around Saratoga, and the crew is sometimes working on blind hills or curves.

But traffic control also presents a problem for Torres. "If I send two men to do traffic control, plus someone who's working on the job, then I only have two workers left for other jobs." This slows them from getting to other jobs.

Torres sometimes gets calls from residents asking why it takes so long to get service. "People think we have 10 or 20 guys," he says. Torres, a mild-mannered guy, says he listens to their complaints and then explains about his small crew. "They usually understand," he says.

The crew runs into all kinds of personalities in Saratoga. "Some people are very nice, and they thank us for what we do," he says. "They bring us coffee and sodas."

"Some expect us to be there immediately," Torres says. "Where have you been?" they'll say. "We've been waiting all day."

Alfonso Serrano, who has been with Saratoga's street crew for 5¹/2 years and who lives in Tracy, remembers doing traffic control up on Bohlman. "This lady yelled at me," Serrano says, adding, "We get a lot of verbal abuse and some hand signals."

Still, he says, he loves his job.

Photograph by George Sakkestad Alfonso Serrano drives all the way from Tracy to his job on the Saratoga street maintenance crew.

"It's like clockwork," Torres says. "People drive as if the street is dry, but the oil is still sitting on the street." When a sign is knocked down, the crew has to put out temporary signs and portable barricades. Power outages mean they have to put up temporary stop signs.

When things get a little desperate, the crew reaches out for help. The different public works crews in Saratoga help each other, and so do crews from neighboring cities.

"We even borrow equipment from each other," Torres says. This is important because there's a lot of overlapping territory. Prospect Road, for instance, is divided right down the middle between San Jose and Saratoga. And simply riding down Quito Road, where the creek that marks Saratoga's border switches back and forth over the road, means riding in and out of Saratoga and Los Gatos several times.

And there are the things the crew doesn't expect to happen. For awhile, when the city was responsible for picking up roadkill, it was the street crew that got the job. "We had to put the animals in a refrigerator," Torres says. "That was strange."

The crew has done traffic control while a couple of dead bodies were being recovered—one a suicide, the other an accident. And when the crew used to maintain Saratoga's horse trails (before the budget cuts in the mid-1990s), they'd run into rattlesnakes.

Whether responding to expected or unexpected events, the small crew has a lot of work to keep up with in Saratoga.

Weather forecasters are predicting another El Niño this year. For Torres and his crew, this could mean some long, dark and stormy nights. But the rebuilt storm drain up at the Michaels Drive creek bed should be just fine.