‘Neighbors Helping Neighbors’: SoHum Fire Department Clears Way for Willow Creek Residents to Recover From Devastating Storm
The post Christmas storm near Willow Creek left trees blocking roads and power poles snapped and dangling precariously from power lines. [All photos provided by Briceland VFD]
On Tuesday, Dec. 28th, Briceland Fire responded to a mutual aid request by the Willow Creek Volunteer Fire Department. Sunday night and into Monday heavy wet snow in the area brought down literally thousands of trees, causing massive damage to power lines and blocking many miles of roadways, from state route 299, county roads to private driveways. There were dozens of homes damaged and one fatality caused by falling trees. Many citizens were left unable to heat their homes due to damages, loss of electricity or shortages of fuel and sought refuge in an emergency shelter.Our crew arrived in the morning and was quickly assigned a task by the incident management team. We then hiked into an area to make contact with local residents and assess damages. One citizen we spoke with was on his way to attempt to clear a long wooded driveway to the home of an elderly family member of his. We spent several hours with him cutting tree after tree. The devastation was staggering, but thankfully we were soon joined by a neighbor who brought his small tractor to help push tree trunks out of the road, and later by Shelter Cove Fire. By nightfall we had made contact with the resident, who was doing well, and we were then released by the local command center to return home to Briceland.Driving home through Redway, the town was quite darkened by our own local power outage. Most of southern Humboldt now has had their electricity restored after 24 to 48 hours without power; thankfully the damages seem to have been minor. The Willow Creek community will likely have some folks without power for weeks. Our help may have been minor in the scope of the disaster, but together with departments like Humboldt Bay, Fieldbrook, Arcata, Shelter Cove and Fortuna Fire, among others, we hopefully brought some measure of relief for impacted residents and extremely busy local fire volunteers. The mutual aid requests that local governments like Briceland Fire respond to could someday be a call for assistance for our own community here and we are very thankful to be part of a larger network of neighbors helping neighbors.
PHOTOS FROM THE STORM AND ITS CLEAN UP:
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Thank all of you out there working to help free people up. If one of you guys read this or anyone that knows the status of Sawyer Heights Road There’s a couple that lives on the end of B lane they are old but extremely precious people.
F.y.i. that would be Salyer.
The Heights are a community full of elderly It’s about 3 miles up past the bridge. This is only for people that knows the Salyer area.
You penned Sawyer, I corrected you that it is Salyer. I lived there for years. [edit] Seems like you’re from out of town, I’ve been in this area for 48 years and I know this place and its not full of elderly people. Sounds like you don’t know the Salyer area at all.
“.. old but extremely precious people..”
Wow.
Wishing blessings to all working to assist others.
Prayers for the folks in Colorado also.
I love it when Humboldt comes together…..there is no stronger more hardy group than the Humboldt community!!
We can do anything if we put our hearts, minds, and soul into it.
I was a firefighter back in the days before mutual aid agreements were established between fire departments. when Redway had a fire and we needed help we would call Garberville Fire and they would send us their “Pee Pumper”. We called it that because it would pump about as much water as we could pee.
After we established mutual aid agreements between departments and California Division of Forestry we would get first line equipment. We did a much better job of controlling fires and mitigating losses.
Now with Measure Z funding even the most rural fire departments have been improved dramatically. Fire departments are now able to participate where needed as seen it this most recent storm, They are often called to any place they are needed and sometimes participate in strike teams for wildfires or any major emergency,
It’s a good feeling for everybody when a good plan comes together!
Yet let it be a weed farm raid and you have a dozen law enforcement people there, fish and game, helicopters, national guard. What the hell.The national guard should have been sent in first thing, Eureka has an engineering company. National Guard Co Det 2 132nd Engineer Co.
When its a real emergency its the volunteers who are out there.
“Yet let it be a weed farm raid and you have a dozen law enforcement people there, fish and game, helicopters, national guard.”
“When its a real emergency its the volunteers who are out there.”
Sounds like your finally coming around. Voluntarism works. Central planning doesn’t work, leads to paying for your own enslavement/tyranny.
Congratulations.
Having lived all of my 67 years in the mountains above Willow Creek I appreciate any/all/everyone who is or has been on the ground & in the snow helping out my community. Thanks everyone
Damn. That guy in the tractor really got s**t done.
To bad logging is dead. They have the equipment and knowledge to clear the roads instead of depending on just the govement who are streached thin at times like this.
Yup. Refer to my response to grey fox. Government is always stretched thin; no amount of your money will ever be enough. It is the nature of government that liberals refuse to see. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Rural NorCal is like a herd of black sheep, and it’s good that they can get together and cooperate to help neighbors in emergencies. Kudos to all those folks helping out!
I have a hunch we’ll all need to pull together more often to deal with weather-related crises more often. Northern Mendo county had a very similar weather event that also brought down thousands of trees and closed 101 for days, it took me a day with a tractor and chainsaw clearing my driveway to make it to 101, only to find it closed.
As much as there are people who jump on a snowflake and laugh at Global Warming because of it, it appears that these freak weather conditions may in fact have an association with it. Consider that in the lifetime of those trees there never was a weather event that brought so many down at once. Some of those trees were 200 years old. Two separate areas having freak conditions at a specific altitude. Then there was the unprecedented dry lightning that cause 1800 wildfires in ’08 and more fires few years after, also freak weather. Not to mention the extreme drought and high winds that have been causing wildfires to ravage California the last few years.
NOW, there’s Boulder Colorado torched and scorched in late December, and that ain’t because California “didn’t rake their leaves”, baby!
Looks like NorCal better strap in and hang on, we’re in for a ride in the coming years. Maybe the WORLD is in for a ride. For myself I’ll stick it out here with the herd of black sheep and help my neighbor when I can as I know they will do the same for me. Good luck to us all, hope this year is BETTER!
So a “freak” SNOW storm=global warming? Riiiiiight. I noticed it’s been raining an awfully lot too whereas there was no rain just a few months ago. Perhaps your on to something
You JUST don’t get it. You OBVIOUSLY weren’t there. On the face of it, it was a close to a normal regional weather event, BUT at a specific elevation it was devastating, taking out 200 year old trees, hundreds or thousands of them, killing 1, damaging houses, etc.. A similar set of conditions took out hundreds or thousands of trees in Northern Mendocino and closed 101 for days and Caltrans spent a MONTH with lane closures and heavy equipment cleaning it up.
When you actually experience the devastation and see it firsthand, you realize that it qualifies as freak weather. A healthy tree that has stood for over a hundred years and crashes down one night with thousands of others makesit clear that it was an unusual weather event.
Go ahead, be willfully ignorant. When a “freak weather” disaster burns down your house, floods it, or a healthy tree collapses on it just figure ya gotta rake more leaves, ’cause that’s what Donnie Trump tells ya.