Storms caused $639 million in damage to the state’s roads
From Siskiyou County at the north to San Diego County at the south, the entirety of California has felt the wrath of this winter’s intense and incessant rain and snowstorms.
The state’s highways and roads have borne the brunt of the damage inflicted by the storms. Some have been partially swept toward the Pacific, covered in water, mud and boulders, had their underpinnings ripped away or been turned into potholepocked obstacle courses.
As of Monday, the storms caused an estimated $638.7 million in damage to the state’s highways since the first downpour in late December, according to Caltrans. The agency hopes to get some of the repair costs reimbursed by the federal government — and it expects those costs to climb.
On Friday, during a break between storms, Caltrans reported 47 closures due to storm damage, flooding and snow, down from a high of 94 during the February and March storms, and 62 in January’s deluges.
To deal with the damage and keep highways open when possible, Caltrans has deployed 4,000 workers pulling 12-hour shifts around-the-clock.
Some of the most intense battering took place on the Central Coast in a Caltrans district that includes Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties, all hit hard this winter. Slides have closed stretches of Highway 9 in Ben Lomond in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Highway 41 between Morro Bay and Atascadero and, most dramatically, Highway 1 on the Central California Coast.
Slides have the biggest impact, burying highways in rocks, mud, water and debris, and cause the longest closures and costliest repairs of all storm damage, said Edward Barrera, a Caltrans spokesperson in Sacramento.
A 46-mile stretch of the famously curvaceous scenic highway between Ragged Point in San Luis Obispo County and Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn remains closed to traffic because of multiple mudslides.
The biggest slide, at a spot known as Paul’s Slide, near Limekiln State Park, will take several months to repair, said Kevin Drabinski, a Caltrans spokesperson in San Luis Obispo. Construction crews will have to remove an estimated 500,000 cubic yards of muck, rock and dirt, resculpt and stabilize the hillside, and restore the roadway. Repairs are estimated to cost $88 million, Barrera said.
Farther south on Highway 1, a slide-prone slope will need to be stabilized to prevent a rock the size of a shipping container from plummeting onto the highway, Drabinski said.
While some of the work will be completed before summer, Highway 1 won’t be available for the classic Big Sur drive this season.
“The Monterey-toCambria road trip, you won’t be able to drive that through,” Drabinski said.
But 50- to 60-mile stretches of Highway 1 will be open for driving this summer, he said, “and that would still be a wonderful experience. It is such a magnificent place.”
Slides may be to blame for the most severe damage, but heavy rains can also wash out roadways, scouring away the dirt and gravel beneath pavement and causing the pavement to collapse. Washouts have closed lanes or entire roads all over the state, particularly in hilly areas, and repairing them can take months.
The most common storm damage, however, seems the most minor. The lowly pothole — caused when water from rain or melted snow seeps into cracks in the pavement and disintegrates the pavement — occurs all over the state in mountainous areas and flatlands and on interstate highways or rural roads.
In South Lake Tahoe, the seemingly endless series of rain and snowstorms has opened fissures in the pavement of Highway 50 and created such an abundance of potholes that it’s like driving across a washboard combined with a cheese grater.
Steve Nelson, a Caltrans spokesperson for the district that includes Lake Tahoe, said that workers equipped with trucks filled with packages of quick-repair asphalt known as “cold mix” were working with the California Highway Patrol to temporarily fill potholes during the break between storms.