Flooding: In Guerneville, troubles grow as river rises
There was no letup for the water-saturated Bay Area as the heavens opened again Tuesday, unloading heavy rains, powerful winds and thunderstorms that turned some streets into streams and made other roadways impassable.
Among the hardest hit was the Sonoma County town of Guerneville, where the Russian River gushed over its banks and covered neighborhoods in waist-high water, causing residents to abandon cars and get around by canoe. Parts of Marin
County also were inundated, with flood alarms and evacuations ordered briefly in San Anselmo.
Forecasters said the Russian River at Guerneville was expected to hit 38.4 feet Wednesday night, more than 6 feet above flood stage. That would send the river to its highest level since the New Year’s Day flood of 2006, when the water level hit 44.2 feet and flooded roads, resorts and rental cabins. The record height for the river was 49.7 feet on Dec. 23, 1955.
By Tuesday night, voluntary evacuation orders were put into place for people living along the river’s swollen banks.
Earlier Tuesday, the river gushed into residential areas. Neighbors were helping neighbors by fetching medicine, using makeshift safety lines to pull stuck cars out of harm’s way and providing rides in rowboats and canoes.
“It’s gonna get worse,” declared Mike Collins, 34, who managed to get his truck across a lake that had formed on Neely Road and was helping others whose homes were isolated by the floodwaters.
Collins, who has missed two days of work trying to avert disaster, helped several people cross the high water Tuesday. By nightfall, he said, it would be impossible to ford the muddy waters, and anyone on the other side would be marooned.
“I’ve dealt with this before, so I’m helping my neighbors,” Collins said after crossing the floodwaters in his pickup truck one last time to get medication left behind by a couple whose son suffered from seizures. “It’s something you’ve got to take as it comes and just battle through it.”
Frank Walter was using a 200-foot line to pull cars across the water covering Neely and Drake Road, just across Highway 116.
“There are a lot of people stuck back there,” he said, pointing across to homes on Neely. “People get desperate and try to drive through the water and get stuck. My house is starting to flood, so it’s going to affect me tonight. All you can do is make sure you have provisions and ride the storm out.”
The low-lying areas weren’t the only places in Guerneville harmed by the storm. A mudslide cascaded through redwoods and between two houses on a steep hillside on Santa Rosa Avenue on Monday, forcing county officials to red-tag the homes. The entire street, off Duncan Road and Old Monte Rio Road, was a watery quagmire, with mud, branches and debris covering the road.
As is standard when the Russian River floods, the Play Land Pee Wee Golf & Arcade was in the middle of a large brown lake of water. The miniature golf course features a purple dinosaur, red mushroom, green alligator and a happy whale jutting out as if on a jaunty swim. A sign stood in the middle of the water, needlessly informing visitors that the place was closed.
For the next two days, the National Weather Service has issued no fewer than five kinds of cautions for the Russian River area — a flood warning, a coastal flood advisory, a wind advisory, a flash flood watch and a hazardous-weather outlook.
Things are expected to dry out Thursday and Friday and into the weekend, with the sun expected to poke through the clouds. But before that
“High winds will likely bring a lot more trees down.” Steve Anderson, meteorologist with the Weather Service
can happen, a lot of water will flow under the bridge in Guerneville. About 45,000 cubic feet of it per second, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Elsewhere in the North Bay, flooding forced the closure of Highway 128 in Napa County, possibly until the weekend. Heavy wind and rain prompted park rangers to close Muir Woods National Monument, Stinson Beach, Tennessee Valley and Point Bonita.
Small crowds in Ross and San Anselmo watched the roiling waters of Corte Madera Creek as it came within 6 inches of jumping into the street during the day Tuesday.
“It’s as close as it can get without flooding,” said Rich Gutierrez, 53, the owner of a bike shop in Ross, who was watching the water dance around the bottom of the Lagunitas Avenue Bridge, which had been raised in recent years to prevent flooding.
By evening, the creek rose more than a foot above its usual flood stage of 13 feet and threatened the businesses that had lined up their sandbags in preparation.
Flood alarms were sounded at 6:45 p.m. and though evacuation orders were issued for downtown San Anselmo, crowds still gathered to watch the waters rise. While they pooled in the streets and lapped at lines of sandbags set up to keep them out, they appeared to leave most homes and businesses untouched.
As the rains stopped, the floodwaters receded and the evacuation orders were lifted about 9 p.m. Authorities planned to keep watch, but said they believed the danger had passed.
In San Francisco, morning king tides rose to 7 feet around 9 a.m., spilling water onto the Embarcadero and other low-lying areas and prompting the Weather Service to issue a coastal-flood advisory. In the afternoon, the rain loosened rocks that tumbled onto busy O’Shaugnessy Boulevard in the Glen Park neighborhood, shutting the thoroughfare.
BART service between the Balboa Park and Colma stations was halted for about four hours after two trains struck a storm-tossed tree on the tracks.
Late Tuesday, a mudslide closed State Route 84 between Fremont and Sunol in southern Alameda County.
The entire region stretching south into Monterey County was under a high-wind warning, a particularly troubling concern for emergency crews rushing from call to call across the already waterlogged region.
“High winds will likely bring a lot more trees down,” said Steve Anderson, a meteorologist with the Weather Service.
In the Sierra, a blizzard warning was in effect until noon Wednesday, followed by a winter storm warning through 10 a.m. Thursday. Driving will be fraught with delays and dangers, and road closures are likely, authorities said.
Squaw, Alpine and Boreal ski resorts were closed Tuesday, and Northstar was operating only five of its 20 lifts. At the south end of Lake Tahoe, Heavenly ski resort managed to operate four of its 29 lifts in ski conditions that were not for the faint of heart.
At Yosemite National Park, rangers reopened Yosemite Valley to day-use visitors Tuesday morning, although Highway 140, the El Portal Road, remained closed at the park boundary because of a rock slide blocking lanes in both directions.