The 2024 floods gutted the Lemon Grove sheriff’s substation. Deputies have finally moved back in.

It’s just an interior wall in the Sheriff’s Office substation in Lemon Grove. But on this day, it was a cascade of water from the roof.

“I can’t even describe it. It looked like a waterfall. The whole wall,” sheriff’s Lt. Joe Barry recalled. The wall was one of many drenched areas — nearly the whole bottom floor of the substation Barry commands was under more than 3 inches of water. It just poured in, from the ceiling, from the walls, even from under the exterior doors.

For roughly three hours on Jan. 22, 2024, an exceptionally explosive rain storm pounded San Diego County, dumping as much as 3 inches in spots as it became the fifth wettest day ever recorded in the region. Cars floated down flooded streets and people climbed onto their rooftops as rescue crews used boats to reach them

And as the deputies stationed in Lemon Grove were out in the deluge to help flooding victims, their own home base was under evacuation.

On Thursday, 19 months after flooding left the substation unusable, Sheriff Kelly Martinez, Lemon Grove Mayor Alysson Snow, and other dignitaries gathered to celebrate the reopening of the site following a repair and renovation project that ran roughly $1.1 million. The substation near City Hall now has a new roof and, well, lots of new things. Really, nothing was salvageable. (Barry says they caught a break, though. The evidence storage room was not hard hit.)

Snow told the gathered crowd that flooding that day had been “a devastating event to our community.”

“The epicenter came right over our town,” she said. “It was a wake of devastation. We had sinkholes open up all over our town. We had parts of streets that started just floating down what became a river on Federal Boulevard.”

She spoke of the community’s resilience and also thanked the deputies assigned to Lemon Grove “for never relenting, and giving us top quality service even when you were displaced.”

Deputies and professional staffers have been back at the office since July after spending the last year working out of several sites. Initially, the plan was to house everyone at the sheriff’s Rancho San Diego station. Barry says response times were not affected — deputies were still on patrol in the city — but still, the deputies pressed hard for a home base in Lemon Grove.

“The deputies here felt that wasn’t good enough for the community,” he said. “They were too far away.”

Enter Heartland Fire & Rescue Department, which carved out space at nearby Station 10 for the deputies to use. “They never skipped a beat,” Barry said of the deputies. “They provided the same services the entire time.”

As he walked through the renovated substation Thursday, Barry explained what he witnessed after pulling up to the substation during the torrent of rain. First thing he spotted: office staffers heartily trying to sweep water out of the building. “I knew we were in trouble.” He said he raced inside to assess.

“I knew the water was getting under the doors. I had no idea that it was coming through the roof,” he said.

In one area of the station, he pointed to the ceiling. “All this was caved in. … The tiles were falling, breaking. Water everywhere.”

He soon saw one of the office assistants standing in ankle-deep water trying to unplug electronics. The danger was too high. “That’s where it ended. We evacuated the station.”

Barry said deputies and professional staffers alike are glad to be back. “This is their home. This is their station.”

Several people and entities in the community helped put the station back together, including The Lagoon, a worship space run by a local church in Lemon Grove that provided a home base for sheriff’s volunteers. The Sheriff’s Office also says Seal Furniture donated $45,000 worth of furniture to the Honorary Deputy Sheriff’s Association to furnish the substation.