SoCal snow sows desperation as crews struggle to clear roads
LOS ANGELES — As crews hustled to clear snow-covered roads in the San Bernardino Mountains, many residents remained stranded Monday amid growing frustration over the dayslong delays to help locals who have been cut off for more than 10 days and are running low on food and medicine.
The San Bernardino Mountains received more than 100 inches of snow over the past several days, stranding an unknown number of residents in the mountain communities.
Now state and local agencies are working to clear out the mounds of snow using heavy machinery, including road graders, front-end loaders, dump trucks, snowplows and snow blowers. Officials from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Office of Emergency Management, the California Highway Patrol and the California National Guard are in the mountain communities helping local agencies dig residents out of their homes and clear the roads, according to the governor’s office.
Nearly 60 Caltrans employees had removed more than 7.2 million cubic yards of snow off state highways in San Bernardino County as of Saturday, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office. Private contractors have removed an additional 970,000 cubic yards of snow from State Routes 18 and 330, the statement added.
Since Sunday, 51 miles of roads have been cleared, out of a total of more than 400 miles of roads that have been serviced, according to the county. The county estimates that there are nearly 90 miles of roads left to be cleared.
The slow pace of clearing roads has become a source of growing anger in mountain communities. Making matters worse, residents have endured gas leaks, fires and roof cave-ins due to the snow, and authorities have struggled to give aid.
Firefighters have used snowmobiles they typically deploy for back-country rescues to respond to emergency calls in residential neighborhoods.
Volunteer crews on land and in the air have tried to help by dropping in supplies by helicopter.
The intensity of the snow — which sparked rare blizzard warnings — caught emergency crews off guard.
Snowplows that usually clear the mountain roads were ineffective, forcing crews to work around the clock using front-end loaders and hand shovels to clear snow berms to reach the communities that were still snowed in as of Friday.