LOS ANGELES — As crews hustled to clear snow-covered roads in the San Bernardino Mountains, many residents remained stranded Monday, frustrated after being cut off for more than 10 days and running low on food and medicine.
The San Bernardino Mountains received more than 100 inches of snow over the past several days, stranding an unknown number of people.
State and local agencies are working to clear mounds of snow using heavy machinery, including road graders, front-end loaders, dump trucks, snowplows and snow blowers. Officials from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Office of Emergency Management, the California Highway Patrol and the California National Guard are in the mountain communities helping local agencies dig residents out of homes and clear roads, according to a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
Nearly 60 Caltrans employees had removed more than 7.2 million cubic yards of snow from state highways in San Bernardino County as of Saturday, according to the governor’s office. Private contractors have removed an additional 970,000 cubic yards from state Routes 18 and 330, the statement added.
Since Sunday, 51 miles of roads have been cleared — defined by the county as one lane cleared with less than 8 inches of snow remaining — out of a total of more than 400 miles that have been serviced. The county estimates that there are nearly 90 miles of road left to be cleared.
The California Department of Transportation is coordinating with local agencies to determine when it will be safe to reopen highways and roads.
The slow pace of clearing roads has become a source of growing anger in mountain communities. Making matters worse, residents have endured gas leaks, fires and roof cave-ins due to the snow, and authorities have struggled to give aid.
Firefighters have used snowmobiles they typically deploy for back-country rescues to respond to emergency calls in residential neighborhoods.
Volunteer crews on land and in the air have tried to help by dropping supplies by helicopter.
Private helicopter pilot Micah Muzio left his home in Lake Arrowhead early Friday morning to deliver supplies to mountain communities, taking off from a San Bernardino airport. Flying over communities, he saw the damage caused by the storms, including caved-in roofs.
But when he tried to drive home from the airport Saturday, he was stopped at a checkpoint. Roads were closed, and only emergency vehicles and heavy equipment were allowed to pass, he was told. That was not the case when he left home; locals had been allowed to drive up the highway with an emergency vehicle escort.
He parked his truck at the checkpoint Saturday and hiked about four miles on Highway 18 to an area where a friend could pick him up and drive him home.
“For me, leaving my wife and daughter alone on the mountain in an emergency was intolerable,” Muzio said Monday.
CHP stopped the escort service because the operation hindered efforts to get resources up the mountain, according to Officer Ramon Duran.
The intensity of the snow — which sparked rare blizzard warnings — caught emergency crews off guard.
Snowplows that usually clear mountain roads were ineffective, forcing crews to work around the clock using front-end loaders and hand shovels to clear berms to reach communities that were still snowed in as of Friday.
“When it comes to clearing the roads, I’d say we learned some valuable lessons,” San Bernardino County Fire Chief Dan Munsey said during a joint news conference with state and local officials. “Unfortunately, the snow came down so quickly and stacked up so quickly those front-end plows that we’re so used to using on a routine basis became ineffective.”
Fire crews have had to lug equipment through snow and dig to access fire hydrants, draining precious time to respond to emergencies, according to the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
At least two people were injured in a house fire Wednesday afternoon in the community of Blue Jay, about a mile from Lake Arrowhead Village. The cause of the fire is under investigation, and Southern California Gas Co. is working with emergency responders to address reports of gas leaks, said San Bernardino County Fire Battalion Chief Michael McClintock.
Newsom on Wednesday declared a state of emergency for San Bernardino and a dozen other counties hit by severe storms, freeing up state resources such as the National Guard to assist.
After being stranded for 11 days in her Lake Arrowhead home, Theresa Grant saw a snowplow roll up at around 1:30 a.m. Monday and move the remaining 3 to 5 feet of snow blocking her street.
Grant had her bags packed, and by 9:30 a.m. she was driving down to Yucaipa to see her mother, who’s in hospice care.
“When I was driving down the mountain this morning, I started tearing up when I saw emergency vehicles coming up the front of the mountain, and I looked down the side of the trucks, and they’re from places I didn’t even know about,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, how far are people coming to help us?’”
Grant, who has lived in Lake Arrowhead since the 1990s, had never experienced anything like the recent storms.
“We know that this is not normal,” she said. “If we get 2 feet of snow, that’s a huge storm for us at our elevation. To have an event of this magnitude happen, there’s only so much preparation you can do.”
Grant said she and her husband were among the “lucky ones” with running water, power and food to last through the week. After the couple ran out of fresh produce, a friend who lives near a road that had been plowed offered to get them groceries. The two hiked through snow 4 feet deep to pick up the produce, as well as eggs and dog food.
Grant knew of elderly and critical care patients who weren’t able to get out of their homes or get necessary medications and treatment.
“It’s people like that that I look at, and these were the people who needed to be addressed first,” she said. “Those of us who are able-bodied, we could hike out, we could shovel, we could do something. The elderly or those on oxygen without supplies, they cannot shovel themselves out. They literally could not get out, and that just breaks my heart.”
Maria Tapia, who owns the cafe Tapia’s Red Cabin in Running Springs, said her daughter and granddaughter were stuck at the bottom of the mountain after driving down to get medication. They were stopped behind the road block and don’t know when they will get home, she said.
“She’s been staying in hotels for the last three days. CHP stopped her and told her to go back,” Tapia said. “She needed to go down because her daughter needed insulin.”
Last week, Tapia was worried about locals who were stranded in their homes.
“The snow got so bad that it got to the doors. People were coming out of their windows,” she said. “A lot of people are in need.”
She and her husband make the 30-minute walk to open their cafe every day, because she doesn’t know what else to do for the community.
“I am grateful forever. We make the sacrifice every day to be here,” Tapia said. “But God is good. God is bringing people here.”
Crestline resident Max Strawn, 30, was among dozens of locals who offered to help their neighbors. He waded through waist-high snow to deliver boxes of groceries to seniors and people with disabilities, he said.
“These are only the ones we know about,” he said. “I know there’s people we’re missing.”
Dawn Diggle, 42, who lives in the Valley of Enchantment neighborhood of Crestline, said streets there were cleared Saturday of about 6 feet of snow that had piled up for more than a week.
She said about 1,000 people showed up at a store Friday for food boxes that never arrived.
“Everyone left empty-handed,” Diggle said. “All this bureaucracy is really slowing things down.”
The situation improved Saturday, when she and other volunteers handed out to about 500 people boxes of milk, pasta, beans, rice and canned goods that had arrived from the state. She said a restaurant delivered cheeses, fresh peppers and deli meats that she and other volunteers divided into freezer bags for residents.
“Everybody is desperate,” she said.
