In January 2023, and continuing throughout the spring, rain swelled many of California’s reservoirs and creeks, engulfing homes and businesses and killing 21 people. One federal estimate says it cost the state nearly $5 billion.

Now, nearly two years later, it’s Alexis Ramirez’s job to help pick up the pieces, clearing debris from a damaged park. For him, and hundreds of others across the state, the disaster isn’t just about loss — it’s also an opportunity for temporary work. But these cleanup jobs are precarious and difficult, often requiring physical, back-breaking labor in remote areas under extreme conditions. Some government agencies struggle to manage these workers because of administrative hurdles, shifts in the weather that complicate disaster relief, and delays in the grant awards that make this cleanup possible, according to a CalMatters analysis of eight federal grants and interviews with agencies across the state.

Ramirez is part of one federal program, known as the National Dislocated Worker Grants, that has pumped over $210 million into California since 2015 to provide temporary, disaster-relief jobs to low-income and unemployed workers. The money came from 12 grants, each one in response to drought, floods, wildfires, or the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of these disaster-relief grants, the state failed to use about 20% of the money available, according to a CalMatters analysis of public records. That’s in part because of “bureaucratic hoops,” such as delays in receiving grant money, said Michael Cross, executive director of the Northern Rural Training and Employment Consortium. He said his 11-county program in Northern California has sometimes had to delay or “stop work” on relief projects related to the wildfires and floods because the money was slow to arrive.

Around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ramirez said he got sick and was unable to find steady work that could support himself and his 4-year old daughter. “I was really in need of a job.”

Now, he said he’s making about $21 an hour, almost twice what he made picking blueberries and grapes before the pandemic. But his current job, which began in September, ends in the next few weeks, and he said he has yet to find other work.

California’s Central Valley saw some of the worst flooding during the 2023 winter storms, and small agricultural towns were hard hit. In Tulare County, a local river overflowed its banks in March 2023, washing over homes, roads, and parks near the town of Porterville, population 62,000.

Two months later the county received money to hire temporary relief workers, but it was too early, said Priscilla Gonzales-Gray, a career services coordinator with the Tulare County Workforce Investment Board. The initial proposal was to clear debris from Porterville’s waterways, but by the time the money had arrived, winter snowmelt had filled the sloughs with fast-running, deep water. “It was not a safe working environment for employees,” said Gonzales-Gray.

The county decided to send workers to a Porterville park instead, which had flooded around the same time as the waterway, leaving a playground completely submerged.

It was September 2023 before the waters had receded enough to allow workers to begin clearing out the park. Since work began, Gonzales-Gray said the county has hired 23 people, including Ramirez, all for temporary jobs.

Ramirez said he arrives at the park at 6 a.m. and works until 2:30 p.m., four days a week, using hand-tools like shovels and rakes to gather broken branches, tree trunks, and rocks. “It’s not a ton of hours,” he said in Spanish, “but it’s helping me start over.”

The program’s insurance doesn’t allow workers like Ramirez to use power tools, said Gonzales-Gray, so the county puts workers on a team with the parks department, which is authorized to to use wood-chippers and chainsaws. “That does make the work go a little slower,” she said. “However, it does provide longer opportunities for these temporary employments.”

The park is scheduled to open in January, and the county is preparing to hire a new round of temporary workers to repair another park. By the time both parks are complete and open to the public, Gonzales-Gray said the county will have hired about 60 workers from a roughly $1.5 million grant.

Like Porterville, the town of Planada in Merced County revolves around agriculture and most residents are Latino. Many are undocumented.

In January 2023, floods tore through the town, and Anastacio Rosales, who has lived in Planada for 60 years, was one of many residents whose homes were destroyed.

“I have lost all of my most valuable possessions, including family photos and precious keepsakes from my parents,” he wrote in an Op-Ed to CalMatters a few months after the storm. “Sadly, the same can be said for many of my neighbors.”