Windy, rainy storm makes a mess
Downed trees, flooded streets and many a home without power: a serious winter storm leaves its mark on West Sac
Copyright News-Ledger, Jan. 9, 2008
Postal carrier NIKKI SEID steps around a downed tree and through a flooded gutter as rains fall on Friday along Alabama Avenue (News-Ledger photo)
By Steve Marschke
News-Ledger Editor
It was a storm West Sacramento will remember – and probably no one will remember it better than the city’s firefighters, who logged their busiest day ever on Friday (Jan. 4, 2008).
“It came out to be about 90 calls,” said Captain Adrian Martinez of the West Sacramento Fire Department. “They ranged from some roofs leaking, causing water damage, to downed trees. One house in the Rivers (an upscale subdivision on a northern levee) was totally damaged when a large oak tree branch came down on it, and opened it up to water.”
“Various vehicle accidents were responded to,” he continued, “mostly just losing control and fender-benders. It was the most calls we have ever had in one 24-hour shift.”
West Sacramento firefighters were stretched so thin they called in 20 off-duty personnel. They also asked for staffing help from neighboring departments in Davis and Sacramento – with whom West Sacramento has a “mutual aid” agreement.
“They didn’t have any resources available to help us,” Martinez said. “They were calling us, as well.”
A roof on a small apartment complex on the 800-block of Jefferson Boulevard (south of Park Boulevard) fell victim to the wind. The local Red Cross offered emergency shelter to the displaced tenants. And four “minor” structure fires were reported.
Through all the action, only one firefighter was hurt – in a minor incident while being dispatched on a call.
Winds reportedly hit 69 miles per hour during their peak on Friday, and some sources reported that the storms dropped over two inches of rain. Soggy soil and heavy winds helped push trees over, often cutting power on power lines.
The fire department’s dispatch center and some fire stations were among the electrical customers without power. Although firefighters’ radios continued to work fine, the dispatch center couldn’t dispatch by radio. So they sent instructions by phone lines – and those, said Martinez, worked fine.
Jennifer Ramp, a PG&E spokesperson, reported that 2.3 million of the company’s power customers were without power at some point.
“This storm blew in pretty much like a hurricane, wreaking havoc through northern and central California,” Ramp said. “We saw a lot of outages in Yolo County, including 20-30,000 people in Davis. West Sacramento and Woodland were also hit pretty hard. The problems weren’t just trees falling onto our wires – we actually had transformer poles sheared in two. We had seven transmission poles and wires go down in the Woodland area.”
Altogether, said Ramp, PG&E lost about 600 poles and 500 miles of line.
Many West Sacramentans saw their power go out for lengthy periods of time. As of Monday, power was still out for residents of Arlington Oaks near Jefferson Boulevard in the south area.
PG&E’s Nicole Tam told the News-Ledger a large number of West Sacramentans suffered outages as the milder storms followed the Friday “monster” event.
“In total, 4,700 customers (in West Sacramento) have been affected by this storm,” she said, citing statistics covering Friday through Tuesday morning. “That was more than 39 different, unrelated power outages. The National Weather Service has ranked this as a ‘9 out of 10’ on the Bay Area storm index. This is only one of three ‘9s’ since 1996.”
A tree escapes the confines of Westmore Oaks Elementary School along Fallbrook Avenue on Friday (News-Ledger photo)
Yesterday, PG&E’s Jennifer Ramp said service was close to normal.
“In Yolo County, we’re down to about 800 customers (without power) right now,” she said on Tuesday morning. “Those are pretty scattered. Monday, we had workers who had driven up from Fresno working at Arlington Oaks, putting poles up.”
The company is getting help from “mutual aid” utility providers in southern California (the same ones who needed PG&E’s help after the recent brushfires) and has called in electrical contractors from throughout the western states.
The governor declared a state of emergency during the event, and Yolo County opened its emergency operations center as county officials declared a local state of emergency. Emergency shelter was offered at the county fairgrounds in Woodland as well as in Davis and Esparto. They also offered “warming centers.” After a scare about the quality of drinking water in rural communities that lost power, the county also offered potable water to locals who needed. By Sunday, county officials reported that many affected rural areas had their power back but some West Sacramentans would be without electricity until Tuesday. The county did not report any heavy, non-localized flooding problems.
Hardly anyone, it seems, is without a story about a power outage or property damage. But the damage to people and property from last week’s storms, though widespread, did not turn deadly in West Sacramento.