At least 100 SLO County residents cut off after key road washes away during storm
At least 100 San Luis Obispo County residents were cut off from the rest of the region Sunday after the latest atmospheric river to hit the Central Coast caused floodwaters to completely wipe out a key road.
Floodwaters took away a section of Chimney Rock Road just south of Lake Nacimiento during heavy rains on Friday.
Residents of Running Deer Ranch, CAL-Shasta and Tri-Counties neighborhoods have no way to travel out of their rural area by car.
Instead, they must commute to the grocery store, work or school by boat via the Lake Nacimiento Marina.
Christine Ruda said that she cannot access her mail or make it to a doctor’s appointment in Templeton due to the road closure.
“Right now we’re just all a little tense,” Ruda said, adding that she’s never before seen weather like this in her 60 years of living in San Luis Obispo County. “There’s a lot of people that have jobs out here that can’t get to their jobs.”
The San Luis Obispo County Office of Emergency Services is coordinating with Cal Fire and the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office to transport residents who need to get out of the area and provide any needed emergency services, said Rachel Dion, county emergency services coordinator.
“The residents are communicating with us to let us know what they need,” Dion said. “It’s a lot of neighbor-helping-neighbor at this point, but we’re ready if they need us.”
The county has set up an email and text messaging system with the residents to quickly communicate, Dion added.
Just how long residents will be isolated is yet to be determined.
The San Luis Obispo County Public Works Department is planning on a temporary fix to the road while a permanent solution is figured out, public information officer Paula McCambridge wrote in an email to The Tribune.
“For safety reasons, we’ll need to wait until after the second big storm expected on Tuesday,” McCambridge wrote.
After the next rainstorm heading toward San Luis Obispo County clears, then the public works department will head out there to better assess the damage, according to McCambridge.
Ruda is hoping that the county will place a temporary bridge across the chasm for people to cross.
Something needs to happen soon, she added, “because they can’t leave 400 people out here like this.”
Residents of the rural neighborhoods were in a similar situation in early January, when a severe winter storm caused floodwaters to wash out the bottom of Chimney Rock Road in the same place.
The thoroughfare previously had culverts that allowed water to flow under it. But the severe storms caused what is usually a trickling stream to turn into a roaring river that eroded away the road.
“The recent washout is much worse because it looks like the culverts are gone,” area resident Phillip Klein said. “The chasm is bigger than it was before, so it should be interesting to see what they propose for a temporary fix.”
Klein said he has seen the community respond positively to help people in need.
“It’s very comforting to know that people care for each other out here and check on each other and there’s literally nothing they won’t do in the way of food, supplies, time,” Klein said. “It’s pretty great to experience.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2023 at 2:52 PM.
