Fights over food, bathrooms at snowed-in Sierra restaurant.
As snowstorms battered parts of the Sierra last week, causing dangerous conditions along Interstate 80 and Highway 50, many Tahoe travelers found themselves stranded in the El Dorado County mountain town of Pollock Pines, waiting hours for conditions to improve.
To one local business owner in the town of 7,000 residents, Friday felt like “Armageddon.” Tempers flared in bumper-tobumper traffic as drivers fought in the street and people relieved themselves on public property.
Traffic began backing up on Highway 50 Friday morning, said Kim McCarthy, co-owner of 50 Grand restaurant and bar in Pollock Pines, a 75-yearold business within shouting distance of the highway. By Friday night, 50 Grand was the only place for hot meals and bathroom access along the roadway.
Over the course of the day, McCarthy said she saw a man
is “They just five say civilization hot meals from cannibalism and murder. That was the case on Friday.” Kim McCarthy, restaurant owner
exit his vehicle and punch the driver of the car behind him because the driver blew his horn while they were both stuck in traffic.
“They say civilization is just five hot meals from cannibalism and murder. That was the case on Friday. It was amazing how rapidly it devolved,” she said. “It was the weirdest, most unruly night of my life.”
And 50 Grand was already playing catch-up headed into Friday night. The restaurant lost power for about five days two weeks ago. A significant portion of its food inventory had to be tossed out only days ahead of Valentine’s Day, one of its busiest days of the year. By Friday morning, the snowfall cut its staff from a normal 12 to just six, as employees were stranded at home.
At the restaurant, tensions started boiling over early in the day when McCarthy had to make the restrooms at 50 Grand available only to customers. The small business runs on a septic tank, she said, and was being pushed to capacity, due to the large volume of customers — up to 150 diners during a twohour dinner window.
“It killed me to have to do that,” she said. “I get what it’s like traveling with kids and having to use the bathroom. But there was nothing we could do about the septic tank.”
The intensity culminated a few hours after the restaurant finally closed. McCarthy said it was around midnight or 1 a.m. when she heard a man aggressively banging on the front door of the building, demanding to be let in.
Based on the tensions of the day, McCarthy said she worried for her staff ’s safety. So, arming herself with a shovel, she quietly walked around toward the front of the building to see if the man was there.
“We had been closed for a few hours, and because it was dark, he couldn’t see inside, but he was yelling ‘I hear you in there. Open up the goddamn door. I need to use the bathroom and you need to give me food, now,’ ” McCarthy said. “He was gone when I got there, but before he left, he defecated right there at my front door. I saw it and was just like, ‘Oh, my God.’ ”
The entire night was a byproduct of, among other factors, the week’s unprecedented snowfall. Up to Saturday, more than 9 feet of snow had been dumped in the Tahoe region over a span of seven days, according to reports.
Chains were required for about 50 miles on Highway 50 Saturday afternoon between Placerville and Meyers in El Dorado County, according to Caltrans officials. Traffic was also stopped in both directions multiple times on Highway 50 from Echo Summit to Meyers due to avalanche-control work that day.
The decision was made to close the restaurant on Saturday. Sunday was relegated mostly to McCarthy and her husband assessing the restaurant’s inventory. On Monday, they served burgers and fries to a small crowd, with hopes of opening for full service later in the week.
“We’re on survival mode right now,” McCarthy said on Monday. “It’s character-building. Honestly, I think we have enough at this point.”
As of Tuesday, the restaurant was still struggling to function. McCarthy said it can’t do high-volume service and is capable of making food for about eight people every 20 minutes or so.
But, she said, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The restaurant is slowly recovering, and the town’s residents are reflecting on what happened over the weekend, with hopes of staving off similar situations in the future.
Other businesses and homes in Pollock Pines probably had to clean feces from their property, she said.
“We accept and encourage the influx of people coming up to get away from it all, but they need to understand that getting away from it all means services are not going to be like they are where they came from,” she said, adding: “We’re moving forward at this point. That’s all we can do.”