LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – County residents impacted by the windstorm that hit Thursday night and Friday morning spent Friday cleaning up, making repairs and, in some cases, waiting for their electricity to be restored.
The fierce overnight storm left firefighters and road crews struggling to keep up with the 911 calls reporting lines and trees down, damaged homes and power outages that flooded Central Dispatch.
In the aftermath of the storm, emergency personnel continued to move from call to call on Friday, with the county warning local schools and Lake Transit that delays due to roadway conditions were likely, according to Jill Ruzicka, public information officer for the county of Lake.
With the power still out in much of Upper Lake, Ruzicka said Upper Lake schools were closed on Friday.
“It's the Northshore and Clearlake that took the worst of the hit,” Ruzicka said.
Northshore Fire Protection District Deputy Chief Pat Brown said that on the Northshore, the Nice area appeared to have the most damage.
“We had a lot of torn off roofs,” with a fire district storage building being among them, he said.
The biggest issue, said Brown, was the power outage, which on Friday was continuing to impact several thousand county residents.
“People are not really set up for the power being off,” he said, with issues arising for people needing to have medications refrigerated and oxygen supplies.
County, fire and law enforcement officials, along with Pacific Gas and Electric, held meetings on Friday to try to assess the damage, but Ruzicka said in many cases emergency personnel weren't able to offer damage estimates because they were still involved in the process of responding to incidents.
A key action taken on Friday was County Administrative Officer Matt Perry's declaration of a local emergency in response to the storm, with the Board of Supervisors calling a special meeting for next Tuesday, Nov. 26, to confirm the action.
Ruzicka said PG&E dedicated an incident command team to Lake County, with a goal of having power restored to all residents by the middle of the day Saturday.
Crews made their way around the county on Friday, working to restore power to thousands of residents whose electricity had gone out on Thursday, and also picking up fallen power lines, a major safety concern for county officials.
Brown said there were so many cases of downed lines that they had to simply put up tape and cones to cordon them off, with firefighters unable to wait until power crews arrived. “We had to keep on moving.”
Removing those lines was crucial to ensuring the safety of road crews, who Ruzicka said were standing by to continue cleanup.
Residents around the county – particularly the hard-hit Clearlake and Nice areas – reported differing kinds of damage, including lack of power and phone services, trees on houses and vehicles, destroyed fences, carports lifted off their footings, broken windows, peeled off roofs, stray animals in the street, and debris around homes and in the streets.
One resident described the Nice area as looking like a “war zone.”
In the Lakeside Heights subdivision in north Lakeport, which earlier this year was impacted by a landslide, about five acres of plastic tarping put down on the slide area by a county-hired contractor last month – and effort meant to protect the soil from rain – was pulled up and shredded by the winds. As a result, large areas of the soil once again are exposed to future rain, according to homeowners association President Randall Fitzgerald.
In addition to damage to homes and businesses, there were reports of falling trees damaging some buildings at county parks, and the county-owned Holiday Harbor marina in Nice sustained serious damage, with the storm breaking docks and crumpling boat slip covers.
The Kelseyville, Middletown and Cobb areas appeared to have sustained no major damage, according to residents, although there were power outages reported by PG&E in those areas.
The city of Lakeport also sustained relatively little damage, with Councilman Martin Scheel noting that the city looked as if there had been hardly any wind.
Lake County Fire Protection District firefighters continued to respond to reports of downed trees and damaged lines through the day on Friday, as Clearlake residents dealt with damage to homes and neighborhoods.
Similarly, Northshore Fire Protection District dealt with a very high call volume, according to Brown.
In 24 hours, the agency responded to 100 calls, one of the highest call quotas the district has had, Brown said.
“It just hasn't stopped,” he said Friday evening.
He said all personnel were called in, with volunteers putting in a lot of time.
On Friday they had the additional challenge of dealing with several small wildland fires, including one at Bruner Drive at the Kono Tayee subdivision near Lucerne, a fire near Paradise Cove and a smaller fire in the Clover Valley area.
The combination of the power outages and so much wind created a situation unlike any that Brown has seen in recent years with the agency.
The National Weather Service's wind advisory for Lake County is due to expire at 4 a.m. Saturday.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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