Big Sur fights floods, landslides just months after ferocious fire
BIG SUR — When they’re not under threat from wildfire, those who live in the ramshackle cabins, hillside homes and resorts in Big Sur have to watch out for other perils: toppling trees, landslides and flooding.
And the threat of disaster came again along the picturesque landscape south of the Monterey Peninsula when heavy rains and strong winds slammed the California coast over the weekend.
“Living here, it’s floods and fires,” said Laura Brannon, who lives in an unsteady logand-lumber home perched over a creek in a canyon along Palo Colorado Road north of Big Sur. “It’s thrilling, but at the same time you have to be intelligent and alert.”
It’s been less than six months since the devastating Soberanes Fire tore through houses on a ridge above Brannon’s cabin as it spread to 132,127 acres and wiped out 57 homes in its path.
When the fire was ultimately snuffed out a full three months
later, it was estimated to have exceeded $235 million in damage — the state’s most expensive wildfire in recent memory.
But now the threat of landslides looms around the barren and scorched earth left by the fire. And several days of rain were already leading to local flooding and slides along Highway 1.
State officials closed all of Big Sur’s recreation areas over the weekend — including Pfeiffer Beach and Andrew Molera, Pfeiffer Big Sur and Julia Pfeiffer Burns state parks — as heavy bands of rain swept through and residents and visitors took shelter.
Power intermittently flickered on and off at Big Sur’s lodges, restaurants and spas as the rain and wind intensified Sunday. Two massive redwood trees toppled over the Big Sur River behind St. Francis of the Redwoods church on Highway 1. The brown river water surged by, spilling over the riverbanks and flooding many campgrounds between Fernwood and the Big Sur River Inn.
Racing water gushed through the Riverview campground and cabins, destroying everything in its path. Even the fallen redwoods behind St. Francis church collapsed under the river’s unrelenting pressure.
Farther south, the river threatened to spill onto Highway 1 south of the Fernwood resort near Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park shortly before 5 p.m. as the heaviest rains came through.
The road to Pfeiffer Beach State Park was completely washed out as small streams and other drainage converged in a swift current of water near the ocean.
“I’ve got my backup plan in place,” Brannon said Saturday as she and two friends shoveled out a culvert on Palo Colorado to allow the rain to drain in the forest of redwoods and other trees. “I have a B and C plan in place, too.”
Brannon, 45, teaches second grade at a private elementary school in Carmel. The rain, she said, was “mellow” overnight Saturday, but she didn’t want to take any chances of missing work, and headed into town to stay with friends on Sunday night.
She lives among 11 other storied cabins known as the Palo Colorado Association that have survived for more than 100 years in the remote canyon.
Her cabin is made partially of whole logs, reclaimed wood and other materials sealed with mud in places. The pitch of her roof is supported by a cracked and bowing, unusually sized 3-by-8-inch beam.
Diffused light from the forest glows through three polycarbonate bubbled skylights. She often awakens to the sound of cracking trees as they topple over with a thud in the canyon.
Just out her bedroom window, a creek flows steadily by, making for the kind of serene off-the-grid lifestyle that’s so attractive to residents in and around Big Sur, and has kept Brannon there for 19 years.
But when things aren’t serene, they can be downright frightening. Brannon knows families who are still recovering after losing their homes in the Soberanes Fire.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “But it’s an amazing place to live. We all live on the ridges, and all over, and when there’s a disaster, we all come together.”
At the Henry Miller Memorial Library, farther south on Highway 1, caretakers nervously watched the rain cascade down on Sunday afternoon.
The small arts center and bookstore is a popular stop for travelers and is a cultural hub for full-time residents and seasonal visitors.
Workers dug a trench around the building to protect it after water spilled through the kitchen during a rainstorm earlier in the week.
“It will be fine. It might get a little muddy, but everybody’s safe here,” said Abbey Plosaj, 23, a volunteer at the library. “It’s just messy.”
Less than a mile down the road, Caltrans crews used heavy equipment to shovel mud off Highway 1 that gave way Sunday morning — one of several small and medium landslides that periodically closed the road.
“We’re worried about the next few days,” said Tim Bills, who operates an information center at Big Sur Station. “The rain can be a mixed blessing. After the Soberanes Fire, a lot of people here were looking for a time-out.”
Sunday’s rain was forecast to taper off Monday before heavy rain returns on Tuesday night.
And despite warnings from the National Weather Service and an ever-swelling river, most people in Big Sur expected things to be worse. Should things deteriorate further, residents here will be ready.
“It’s a resilient natural area and a resilient community,” Bills said.