Wind gusts topple Cambria trees, power poles

Bright sun, blue skies and puffy white clouds Tuesday, March 8, belied the continuing effects of a strong wind-and-rain storm Sunday night into Monday morning. The storm dashed many trees to the ground, which blocked roads, damaged or dropped numerous power poles and cut electricity and other services to multiple neighborhoods in Cambria, San Simeon and outlying areas of the North Coast.

Work Tuesday continued in various neighborhoods. Busy Burton Drive remained closed from Rodeo Grounds Road and the creek bridge to near the Village Lane turnoff, as did a section of upper Pineridge Drive, Buckley Road and part of the Shamel Park parking lot. County road and utility crews went from area to area to get things back to normal.

Midafternoon Tuesday, PG&E meteorologist John Lindsey said electrical service was still out for 51 people in Cambria (with a line down across a canyon in the upper Santa Rosa Creek Road area). Internet access and cable TV service was also still out in several areas.

However, damage apparently was minor and no injuries were reported to emergency services.

“We’re so lucky nobody’s gotten hurt,” Emily Torlano, Cambria Fire Department captain, said Tuesday afternoon.

But storm-related danger still can lurk, especially in the forest. Cambria’s landmark Monterey pine forest has many dead or dying trees, and even live, healthy trees can fall long after the storm stops. Monterey pines and eucalyptus are shallow rooted, top-heavy trees, and when soil is saturated, the sheer weight of drenched branches, foliage and trunk can cause a tree to uproot with no apparent provocation.

“Everything’s still heavy and wet, so look up,” Torlano advised.

The storm

The fierce-punch storm arrived on the North Coast about 2:50 a.m. Monday, with a fast-moving “wall of wind” at its frontal edge, Lindsey said.

As Cambria resident Martha Goodwin posted on Facebook early Sunday, “Living in a pine forest sure is Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in a storm like that!”

Lindsey reported gusts as high as 61 mph at Diablo Canyon. He said Tuesday that gusts in Cambria may have been even stronger. “A lower-level jet came down and energized it a bit,” he said. “That was just amazing, some of the strongest winds I’ve seen.”

Showers punctuated by squalls of heavy rain and wind and even reports of hail at the higher elevations marked the storm’s progress across the Central Coast.

Monday’s siege of rain and wind came on the heels of a weekend storm. Lindsey said rainfall for the three-day wave of storms (Saturday through Monday) was 3.39 inches in Cambria, 5.79 inches at Rocky Butte (northeast of San Simeon) and 6.67 inches at the Walter Ranch east of Cambria.

Michele Oksen reported that the back-country rain gauge in the Santa Lucia Mountains read 33 inches for the season.

More rain is due starting Friday, March 11, Lindsey said, with rainfall that could top 1.5 inches in Cambria. He said he expects “a few showers” on Saturday, more rain Sunday. He estimated that a storm “Monday will hit us pretty decently, with from 1 to 2 inches” of rain on the North Coast, and that there’ll be “plenty of showers on Tuesday.”

Outages and storm incidents

During Monday, more than 1,200 people on the North Coast were without power, according to reports from PG&E and others. Crews worked into the night to restore electricity, other services and access.

More than 15 storm-related incidents were reported to Cambria Fire Department between midnight and noon Monday.

Karen Snow reported that six trees fell on her property at Chiswick Way and Charing Lane, and across the street, another tree fell on a neighbor’s roof.

In all, at least five homes were hit by trees, but they reportedly sustained only minor structural damage.

One tree damaged a gas line when it was uprooted near Ardath and Haddon drives. A live, downed power line was nearby, so a variety of utility and emergency crews responded to that incident.

Lindsey said people should assume that any downed or dropped power line is “energized. Keep people and pets away. If a line is down on or near your car, stay inside, because your tires act as insulators.” And if a line goes down, call 911, and “then call us, just in case,” at (800) 743-5002.

Schools were in session, despite a brief power outage. But there was no Internet service, which threw a temporary monkey wrench into technology-based lesson plans.

Strong wind blew a shed from the corner of the Burton Inn parking lot down to the creek, according to inn manager Aubrey Pullford. Burton Drive, where power went out about 11 a.m. Monday, was closed between Cambria Pines Lodge and the former Brambles restaurant. Trees were down at Shamel Park and the parking lot of the Coast Unified School District offices (Old Cambria Grammar School), in front of the pickleball courts.

Buckley Drive was closed near Charing Lane after a tree fell across the roadway, an area Bonnie Nelson described Wednesday morning as looking like “a war zone.”

“It’s still a disaster zone, even though they’ve cleared up enough room for cars to go down Buckley,” she said.

World War II veteran Ed Berney, who lives on Buckley, managed to get out and prop up his American flagpole after it was blown over, Nelson said, but his house was nearly inaccessible. “He’s got 120-foot trees across his driveway, and he can barely get out his front door,” she said. “He still has to climb over logs to get out of the house.”

Down the street, she said, resident Greg Hunter had “14 120-foot trees just ripped up and lying in the valley below the house. One tree went through the garage roof.” Still, she said, he was up at 1:30 a.m., going “through live wires” and checking on other neighborhood residents to make sure they were OK.

Kathy Unger said five trees from different properties fell on Buckley at Charing, and another tree fell at the end of Buckley. A “massive” tre fell in the Ungers’ backyard, crunching their fence and horse corral.

CCSD

On San Simeon Creek, where raging floodwaters swept debris down into a huge pile during a previous storm, the Cambria Community Services District was able to avert further problems because that debris had been cleared away by the time the most recent rains hit. CCSD General Manager Jerry Gruber said the creek’s waters were high again, but because the district was prepared for the storm’s impact, the well field was unaffected. There were no sanitary sewer overflows and no issues at the wastewater treatment plant, he added.

Similarly, no problems beyond a downed palm tree were reported at Hearst Castle, which remained open with tour buses running on schedule.

After the storm

After the sun came out Sunday morning, a double rainbow arched over the ocean for about seven minutes, according to some who saw it and reported it to The Cambrian. Photographer Michele Sherman said both ends of the rainbows “dipped down into the ocean. I couldn’t back up far enough to get the entire rainbow in one shot.”

This story was originally published March 7, 2016 at 10:47 AM with the headline "Wind gusts topple Cambria trees, power poles."