Gilroy
– Monday was a dreary day of ordinary winter storms in Gilroy,
but winds gusting up to an estimated 50 mph wreaked havoc on
Hollister residents Monday morning – uprooting trees, ripping apart
buildings and leaving almost 7,000 people without power for parts
of the day.
Gilroy – Monday was a dreary day of ordinary winter storms in Gilroy, but winds gusting up to an estimated 50 mph wreaked havoc on Hollister residents Monday morning – uprooting trees, ripping apart buildings and leaving almost 7,000 people without power for parts of the day.
The wind picked up about 7am and kept emergency personnel running for several hours. While trees and huge limbs crushed cars, blocked roads and a portion of the carport at the DMV lifted right off the roof, no one was injured, according to police and fire authorities.
Hollister Fire Chief Bill Garringer said the department received about 25 calls for service for different trees and wires down. Because of the power outages, firefighters also hopped from house to house for people calling to report appliances shorting out, he said.
“We basically ran around and made sure everyone was safe – but there was no real big emergency,” Garringer said.
Gilroy authorities said they had no reports of unusual damage or flooding, beyond a power outage that affected 46 buildings in Gilroy from 5:41pm Sunday to 2:30am Monday.
Mike DiMarco, spokesman for Santa Clara Valley Water District, said the storm, so far, has caused no water-related problems.
The Hollister Police Department reported 23 trees down that fell on cars, buildings, power lines or in the roadway, said Capt. Richard Vasquez.
City public works department employees didn’t even take a lunch break in order to clean up the debris scattered all over town, said Ray Rojas, street supervisor.
The phone started ringing about 7am and didn’t subside until about 2pm, and the street department alone received nearly 30 calls for service, Rojas said. Most of the calls were from trees or tree limbs on cars or in roadways, but Rojas said high winds creating clean-up chaos is “normal if we have a good storm.”
None of the agencies had monetary damages immediately available to report.
PG&E reported 22 different storm-related power outages in Hollister, with the largest one hitting about 7:20am and leaving 5,300 customers in southwest Hollister and most of downtown without power for about three hours, said PG&E spokesman Brian Swanson. Repair workers restored power for 6,950 customers, both commercial and residential, by about 10:30am, but 415 customers in the areas of Fairview and Santa Ana Valley roads were left powerless until Monday evening, he said.
Swanson said the outages were scattered throughout the city. While the cause of most of them wasn’t immediately available because they were still under investigation, the outages resulted from downed wires or trees falling on lines, he said.
About 1,100 of San Juan Bautista’s 1,600 residents were left without power due to eight separate outages that started about noon and lasted until Monday evening, Swanson said.
San Juan City Manager Larry Cain said the city, which is notorious for having problems with its dilapidated infrastructure, didn’t suffer any problems with the water system and got off easy with only a few downed tree limbs.
“The wind’s blowing garbage around because today’s garbage day, but there’s no big problems,” Cain said. “Everything’s OK in San Juan.”
Although there are no official wind reporting sites in Hollister, gusts up to 48 mph were reported at the Pinnacles, said Bob Benjamin with the National Weather Service in Monterey.
Benjamin said a strong weather system with low pressure moved down out of the gulf of Alaska and collided with a high pressure system that was providing Hollister with nice weather the past couple of weeks. That impact created a storm system with very high winds, and the weather will be more naughty than nice throughout the week and into the weekend, he said.
“People will feel it a little breezier than normal, but not anywhere near what was experienced this (Monday) morning,” Benjamin said. “There will be some sunny breaks but it will be intermitted. Unsettled is the best word to describe this week’s weather.”
Anyone anxious to take care of some post-holiday DMV business had to wait until noon on Monday, because the powerful morning winds blew the carport facade on top of the southern part of the building clear off. The actual roof of the DMV was not affected and it was business as usual in the afternoon, said DMV manager Cara Vanderford.
Vanderford found the debris in the parking lot when she arrived at work at 7:30am. The state will be footing the bill for the unknown amount of damage caused to the top of the building, and repairs will take a couple weeks, she said.
“It looked a whole lot worse than it was,” she said. “It was good it happened before anyone was here. Our parking lot could have been full of people. It could have been bad.”
The California Highway Patrol secured the building until a state inspector from Sacramento made it down to give personnel the go-ahead to reopen. No other buildings in that area sustained damage, and why that portion of roof received the brunt of the damage was bad luck, Garringer said.
“A high wind caught it just right,” Garringer said. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. Rain’s not getting on your driving record.”
The National Weather Service predicts showers intermittently through the weekend.
On Thursday, snow could fall at elevations as low as 2,000-3,000-feet throughout the Bay Area according to Benjamin.
Temperatures are moderate locally, with highs in the mid 50s and lows in the low- to mid-40s.
“You won’t need a long thermometer this week,” Benjamin said.
Only the highest peaks, Mt. Hamilton west of San Jose and the Highway 17 summit to Santa Cruz are high enough to expect snow, he said.
Most of the rain from Monday’s storm fell north of Santa Clara County with only .40 inches falling in Gilroy by 3pm Monday.
In Morgan Hill, high winds began gusting through the area early Monday morning but, except for losing palm fronds and limbs, most trees managed to withstand major uprooting, according to a Morgan Hill Police dispatcher.
Staff writers Matt King and Carol Holzgrafe contributed to this report.
