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Hordes from city trash rural communities
By Billie Jo Jannen and Christy Scott
The Alpine Sun
PINE VALLEY — A tour Monday along I-8, Old Highway 80, and any number of small residential roads in Descanso and Pine Valley reveals a landscape of destruction. Fences are mangled — some hastily repaired where livestock needed to be contained — piles of trash, including dirty diapers and tampons, and hundreds of people defying property owners and private property laws for a chance to play in the snow.
“This is wide open space...Look! He’s not even using it!”
According to Pine Valley Deputy Mike Crews, these are common comments from non-residents to deputies when chided for invading private properties in search of chills and thrills.
It was a madhouse,” said battalion Chief Scott MacKellar of the Pine Valley Fire Protection District.
MacKellar said the Pine Valley emergency crews responded to seven times their normal call volume — and the heaviest day was actually Friday, before the northbound highways were shut down. In the early hours of Friday, in fact, Pine Valley and other Back Country departments responded to a report of a multi-car pile-up toward
Boulevard. They arrived to discover that it was only a series of “spin-outs” from black ice on the I-8. Of the 26 cars involved, crews helped some get back on the road, called tow trucks for the rest, and determined that there were no serious
injuries, MacKellar said.
Once Sunrise and Highway 79 were closed to through traffic on Saturday, snow-seekers simply spread out into nearby communities, mainly Pine Valley and
Descanso, and onto freeway shoulders and medians — many of them clearly posted as “no parking,” “no trespassing,” and “private property.”
“I’ve been working for 10 years up here in the snow and I’ve never seen anything that crazy,” said CHP Officer Brian
Pennings. “It was absolute gridlock everywhere on Back Country roads from Buckman Springs to Willows Road.”
“It absolutely baffles my mind,” Pennings added. “Hundreds of people were just pulling over on the side of the road with their families, unloading the car — grandparents, kids — and then just playing on the side of the highway.”
“Not only playing, but hiking up the side of the embankment and then sliding down on their sleds or boogie boards, right down onto the busy highway,” he added.
“We would go along and clear people out, tell them to pack it up and leave, and then we look in the rearview mirror and what do you know, there are dozens of more people pulling off to the shoulder and getting out to play,” Pennings said.
Indeed, locals had no better luck dealing with trespassers, illegal dumpers, and fence vandals, according to local deputies who responded to several days of non-stop calls from beleaguered residents.
Crews said at least one local restaurant was so inundated that many customers walked off without paying: “They were simply overwhelmed by the numbers,”
Crews said a man in Descanso spent part of a day in his yard with a bullhorn, vainly trying to order people off his property.
Many residents who tried to do the same discovered that they had no better luck than CHP officers struggling on nearby I-8. In fact, Crews added, at least one man even refused to obey a deputy’s orders to leave a private property.
Crews said many traveling through town simply stopped their cars in the middle of the Old 80 to climb out and play.
Residents suffered the indignity of having their yards used for restrooms, Crews said, and one even reported an actual pile of human waste in his front yard.
Caltrans was no more successful in coping with the crowds:
“The biggest problem for us was all the people everywhere,” said Caltrans representative Edward
Cartagena. “People were pulling over to the side of the road, or playing on the shoulders, and the plows just couldn’t get through.”
According to Cartagena, in one instance, it took a driver 45 minutes to go a normal five minute drive to plow on the east side of Willows Road.
On Saturday afternoon one of the snowplows was stuck on the eastbound side of I-8 on the Pine Valley Creek bridge. Behind the stuck plow were hundreds of drivers after the CHP closed the highway, stranded for more than four hours in the heavy falling snow.
At the same time, a truck and fifth wheel trailer were stalled in the westbound lane, blocking westbound traffic, as well.
Cartagena said the blade of the plow was sitting too low as the truck tried to clear the icy, single construction lane on the bridge. The blade got caught one of the stanchions of the bridge rail, damaging the plow. In this instance, Cartagena said, the thousands of people walking and sledding along the side of I-8 were the main reason that it took four hours to clear the wreck — even longer to move the accumulated cars across the bridge.
Photo: It was back to business as usual on Monday morning, as Caltrans
contractors returned to work on the Pine Valley Bridge rehabilitation project. The bridge, only one lane of which is currently open in either direction, was the source of much havoc and delay during the weekend’s storms — particularly Saturday when the lanes on both sides were blocked by mishaps. The eastbound side was blocked for four hours by CalTrans’ own snowplow, which was rescued by another plow. The bridge rehab project, at a cost of $5.1 million, will include La Posta bridge and one between Pine Valley and Alpine. Completion is expected
in March 2007.
Billie Jo Jannen/The
Alpine Sun
No solution in sight
While the past weekend’s problems were worse than those usually seen, they happen regularly, particularly in Mount Laguna and other high country communities.
To date, no solution has been found to the seeming madness that overcomes coast and valley residents when a bit of snow falls in the Back Country.
Crews said it would be impossible to enforce by writing tickets with the manpower available. “It takes 10 to 15 minutes to write a ticket,” he said. “We’re talking about 10,000 tickets.”
Pennings agreed that controlling snow-smitten crowds is an issue of manpower — and while every available officer was called, including many on vacation, it was simply not enough.
On Monday alone, the Pine Valley substation received 50 calls — and that was after the worst.
The number of resident complaints over the weekend remains unknown, as the weekend’s calls were taken by the sheriff’s communication center.
A supervisor there told The Alpine Sun that it would take too long to pull those figures and that the sheriff’s department would likely charge money for this task.
A call to the sheriff’s data processing center was not returned.
 Local roads
Starting Friday morning, Caltrans crews worked steadily on roads with snow plows and sand. Caltrans officials said the county’s 12 snowplows operated steadily all weekend, with drivers working in shifts so that the plows could keep moving.
Throughout the day, snow, sleet and strong winds pounded the Back Country hills. Snow was reported in all of the county's mountain areas, even as low as 1,700 feet in elevation. Residents of Cuyamaca reported two feet of snow, which would challenge the one-day record of 22 inches set in 1987. The snowfall in Mount Laguna was even greater, reportedly waist deep.
Friday night, the CHP closed the north end of Sunrise Highway because of snow and ice and the CHP reported an inch of snow on I-8 east of State Route 79 about 10 p.m. At 11 p.m., the CHP closed all eastbound lanes of I-8 east of Crestwood Road because of icy pavement and a large number of stalled vehicles.
In Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, CHP closed Route 79, which hadn't been plowed by mid-morning. Several drivers who got through before that found themselves stuck in the snow while trying to navigate 79 between I-8 and Julian.
Sunrise Highway and State Route 79 were closed all day Saturday and Sunday.
Westbound I-8 from the Imperial County side was shut down to all traffic without chains before 8 a.m., according to CHP officials.
By 6 p.m. on Saturday, the California Highway Patrol had responded to 236 reported car accidents throughout the county. In ordinary weather, the CHP usually responds to 75 accidents or less during a 24-hour period.
Photo: California Highway Patrol Officer, Paul Segal chats with a resident as he stands watch at the intersection of Highway 79 and
Viejas Boulevard to keep motorists from traveling into dangerous local mountains during the weekend storms. Despite the blocks on Highways 78 and 79, some motorists managed to find other ways into the
mountains and had to be rescued.
Lori Bledsoe/The Alpine Sun
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