‘Like a nightmare’: images show storm’s toll on California homeless community

Photojournalist Alekz Londos warned residents of the impending deluge, then returned to document the flooding aftermath

Devastating images and video captured by a photojournalist in California have documented the toll that an intense rainstorm - one of the most powerful to hit the state this year - took on a homeless community in the city of Santa Cruz this week. The damage caused by the downpour highlighted the risks that unhoused people face during increasingly extreme weather events.

As dark clouds gathered over the weekend, photojournalist Alekz Londos said he raced out with a megaphone to warn hundreds of people living on the embankment of a river he feared was at risk of flooding. I was worried they were going to get hypothermia," he says. He spent the weekend doling out black trash bags meant to serve as makeshift raincoats.