Schools closed, roads closed, heavy debris
Experts are calling it “the storm of the century,” social media groups hashtagged it #stormageddon, but for residents in Windsor, last Thursday’s heavy rains that damaged surrounding cities left the Town fairly unscathed.
The strong winter storm, which began late Wednesday evening, Dec. 10, produced significant rain overnight and continued throughout Thursday and Friday, causing flooded roadways, power outages and roaring winds across Sonoma County. While neighboring Healdsburg was under water, the Town of Windsor weathered the storm with nothing more than a few closed roads.
“There was a lot of debris that we cleaned up. We pretty much did a lot of cleaning and unclogging of drains even though we cleaned them prior to the storm, but during the storm, the flows were high and moved even more debris,” said Public Works Director and Town Engineer Toni Bertolero.
Several roads were closed around Town, including Windsor Road at Shiloh and Old Redwood Highway at Dawn Way. CalTrans was also in the area, closing Arata Lane for a period of time in the early morning as well as the 101 northbound onramp. Precautionary measures were taken to keep residents off roadways, including closing Windsor Unified School District School sites for the day.
Rainfall was calculated at 6.39 inches between Wednesday and Friday. Thursday was the heaviest day of rain with 4.66 inches reported. Several storm related calls came in to Windsor Fire Department in the early morning warning of hazardous conditions on roadways and residents reached out to public works for assistance.
“Our entire crews were out and about, our street crews and water crews, they worked really hard. They were out and about since three in the morning getting things prepared. By the end of the day they were beat. They did really well working amongst each other responding to residents’ calls,” said Bertolero.
The National Weather Service also reported that the heavy rains associated with the storm caused the Russian River levels to rise and reach flood stage (32 feet) peaking at 37.5 feet on Friday afternoon.
The County Administrator and Emergency Operations Center Director Veronica Ferguson proclaimed a local emergency at 10 a.m. on Thursday morning, opening the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to shelter residents in areas at risk of flood.
At a special meeting on Dec. 16, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors ratified the proclamation announced by the County Administrator on Thursday, estimating damages at $17 million.
The board’s action included authorization for the county to request that Governor Brown provide resources under the California Disaster Assistance Act. At the meeting, the board thanked the county’s state delegation, Senators McGuire and Wolk, and Assemblymembers Dodd, Levine and Wood, for joining the county in requesting disaster assistance from the governor.
The ratification will continue the local emergency for 30 days, and make available to the county and its cities state and local mutual aid, as well as allow for any state emergency funding that is made available.
For more information, including information on shelters, power outages, school and road closures, safety information, rainfall totals and damage reporting, visit sonomacounty.ca.gov.
