When big things happen in your neighborhood a blog can be more than for just photography.
What will a year’s worth of rain do to the foothills of Orange County when it all falls in five days? WOW. You’d have to experience it to fully appreciate it.
So my morning started with checking my unscientific rain gage on the patio and when totaled with the rain fall I measured from Friday to Monday, we’ve had 15 inches of rain since this series of storms started on Friday. OK, that’s a kind of record. And the biggest storm hit last night. I remember the rain waking me up with a solid roar like that of a strong wind but there was no wind.
As I was leaving the house I happened to notice that the slope was washing away. There was a big gash through the spring green working its way toward our neighbor’s hours. The first thing I did was call the association to report it. The next thing I called our neighbor. From above it looked, well, it wasn’t possible to see how bad it was and I headed off to work.
When I got down the hill to Santiago Canyon Road the county sheriff had it shut off. OK. Not surprising with all this rain. But then a fire truck went on up the road. Paramedics? If so, bad accident. I noticed other canyon roads were also closed and a huge earth mover was positioned ready to go into action when needed. (And who says our government sucks. You’ll get an argument from me, that’s for sure.)
I noticed as I drove by our local fire station that people were there filling sand bags. I got to thinking that I just couldn’t go off to work and ignore what was going on, especially with huge storms forecast for the remainder of the day. So I swung the car around and headed back home to change into my grubbies.
I got my daughter’s car and went back down to the fire station to get a load of sand bags. There were already a couple of other people there filling bags. We chatted the chat of people that are in the process of rising to meet a situation. I filled my bags, loaded them into the car and brought them back.
To get down the slope I pulled out my old climbing rope, slings and carbineers. Talk about your slippery slope. This is a steep 30 degree slope with wet, slick vegetation on top of really slippery mud. It took a while to figure out how to get about 300 pounds of sand bags down this slop but we finally worked it out. Once in place it became apparent that we were going to need more – lots more.
So I made three more trips to the fire station to get more sand bags – 60 in all. I figure about a half a ton of sand bags (the sand was wet don’t you know). At one point the captain came out and helped us fill bags. These guys and gals are great. (The only problem is they filled them too full an they were way too heavy – but don’t tell them. I’m not complaining.)
The other thing that was apparent at the fire station was the constant whine of sirens coming and going. It was like they would never end. And the full contingency of fire fighters were mustered out to be ready. They were already well into a very busy day.
So I got the 60 or so sand bags deployed on the slop. The next ten to fifteen feet above where I placed the sand bags is ready to go so I don’t know if they’ll do any good. But you gotta give it your best.
My wife called and said it took her two hours to get to the freeway this morning because so many roads were closed. And the one road that was open out of the area was down to a single lane. It normally takes 15 to 20 minutes to get to the freeway.
Well, I’m de-mudded, dried out, hot showered, freshened up and ready to head in to get a least a couple of hours of work in.
Today’s storm will pass, tomorrow will be sunny and so will Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. If the meager sandbagging efforts holds through the day we might be in good shape for Christmas. There’s another storm heading our way next week but that’s too far off to worry about just now.
One thing I enjoyed while sitting in the mud on the slope and schlepping sand gags was the sound of the stream at the bottom of the canyon (a joy we don’t get very often) and the smell of the vegetation. The grasses, mallow and fillaree smelled good enough to eat. Actually they are good enough to eat. And if I hadn’t something a bit more pressing on my mind I would have taken a moment to enjoy them. But the smell was heavenly.
So with that though I wish a hearty…
Merry Christmas to all.
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