Road crews work to clear rockslides in Santa Cruz Mountains
SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) -- On Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the CHP and a tow truck were helping one driver who slid off the road. Utility teams and road crews were also busy clearing rockslides and downed power lines.
The rainy day triggered a number of problems for South Bay mountain communities. Caltrans trucks mobilized throughout the area to clear certain spots along the roads from rockslides.
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In Aptos, crews had no other choice than to cordon off one area because the landslide was too much to be easily plowed off the road by a single truck. Crews with backhoes may have to return later this weekend to clear the lane.
Ben Lomond resident Christopher Ring arrived at his house to find a telephone company crew prepping a utility pole for what looked like an installation further up the mountain.
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"My phone has been out for a while, but I don't know whether it's connected to this event or not," said Ring.
A couple miles away on Highway 9 crews had been blocking a neighborhood side street for hours. A tree came down in the storm taking out a phone line on one side of the road and power lines on the other.
Some residents used gas-fueled generators for the evening because of this outage. But even with the power out and phone line problems, Ring said he was not complaining about the rains.
"It's been steady, it's been [coming down] fairly heavily. It's been great. It's been great to have it, that's for sure. I mean, we need it," Ring said.
He says he has seen much worse than Friday's storm.
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