Monday, February 27, 2017

The biggest problem of all the rains this year is roads and bridges giving way here in California

For example, some of the worst problems are in the Santa Cruz mountains above Santa Cruz and Hiway 1 down on the way to Big Sur. I have driven down to Big Sur many times now because I love Pfeiffer Beach to walk there with family and friends because it is very scenic and wonderful to walk along. Well, at Hurricane point there is not only a slide but the road is giving way and a little further down a large bridge is starting to collapse to the point where they won't even let you walk across it because it is now so dangerous with one of the two main cement pillars the bridge rests on having moved from a slide that took out it's base so the bridge is going to eventually collapse it is just unknown whether it will collapse first or have to be demolished first at this point and rebuilt if they can get cement pillars down into something that isn't going to slide away anytime soon. So, likely it will be 6 months or more at this point before Hiway 1 has that one bridge replaced. Last I heard they were evacuating residents by Helicopter because the road is cut below where they live as well so there was no way by road out.

Everywhere you drive you can see chuckholes and cracks in roads that have been undermined by underground rivers and waters. On Interstate 15 near San Bernadino a Fire engine fell when the road on the shoulder of the freeway was undermined down about 15 feet onto it's side. Luckily, all the firemen got out okay before it fell the 10 to 15 feet down into moving waters undermining the Freeway there.

In Morgan Hill the Anderson Reservoir overspilled it's banks and closed the north bound 101 lanes for a couple of days and flooded 500 homes in San Jose for the biggest Floods there anyone had ever seen. 200 people had to be rescued. However, most of this week after about Tuesday or Wednesday we haven't had much rain and things are now trying to dry out enough to withstand another rainstorm.

Right now, at least no rain is expected until Sunday about 1 week from now so hopefully things will dry out so more roads don't crumble or collapse and more trees don't fall down and hopefully no more bridges will be undermined by slides caused by underground water in dirt and rocks.

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