Edhat Staff
California Highway Patrol to Ensure Highway 101 Remains Open to Facilitate Evacuations: Highway 101 remains open at this time
The California Highway Patrol, the National Weather Service and public safety partners will monitor storm activity to ensure Highway 101 remains open to facilitate resident evacuations from areas currently under the Recommended Evacuation Warning and if a Mandatory Evacuation Order is issued.
Contrary to speculation, there are no plans to close Highway 101 at 9 a.m. tomorrow March 1. CHP will monitor the storm when it is predicted to meet the threshold to potentially create debris flow. If Highway 101 needs to be closed, the CHP would do so just prior to the arrival the intense portion of the storm. Bands of rain, timing and intensity will guide this decision. Evacuation and closure information will be communicated broadly to the public as decisions are made.
Community members are encouraged to go to ReadySBC.org for up-to-date information on evacuations and road closures.
By an edhat reader
Will Highway 101 close with the storm that’s on its way? We’re already in the evacuation warning zone and people are expecting a Mandatory Evacuation as the storm is supposed to land tomorrow afternoon.
Update by an edhat reader
Santa Barbara’s CHP office posted the following on Twitter:
“The 101 will NOT be closed at 9:00 AM Thursday morning. If the 101 needs to be closed it would only occur after a Mandatory Evacuation Order is in place and everyone has had the opportunity to evacuate. A closure would occur just prior to the arrival of intense rain fall.”
If there is a choice between inconveniencing tens of thousands of individuals or being responsible for the deaths of even a couple of souls I’d say the official choice is obvious. Thoughts and prayers to those forced to suffer the inconvenience and live to tell the tale.
Pure speculation on their part. Mudslides occur based on rain intensity. Intensities are not projected to be anywhere near the 6 inches/hr that occurred in the January Storm. Projected to be 0.5 inches/hr at most, which is normal for a winter rainstorm. If that’s all we get, and if they have cleaned the creeks and debris basins by now, there won’t be any major problems.
It does not appear that you understand the problem. I would be angry as well if I did not understand, but fortunately I do. Just remain calm is the only advice I have for anyone who has reached a boiling point.
I don’t understand how officials were “inept” in January warnings. There were flash flood warnings days ahead of the storm. Edhat had the warning from the National Weather Service 2 or 3 days ahead of time, KEY-T did too. If people didn’t or wouldn’t understand what a flash flood is, especially living near a creek, then how are the officials responsible? There was no way the debris flow caused by 0.56 inch in 5 minutes could have been predicted. I don’t think officials should be accused of “over reacting because they are afraid of lawsuits” when they are simply concerned with saving lives. That debris flow came so fast on Jan 9th that any cars on the freeway at Olive Mill would have been buried, one almost was and the man barely got out with his life.
Nice try AH-, the new posting by the CHP, an hour after mine, is dispelling the rumors of previous.. they are watching active radar and plan on only closing the freeway JUST prior to the arrival of the storm. Just as I was suggesting. It does not take much time to clear the freeways. It is good to see that sanity is prevailing on this one.
I think they should be ready to close it, if the need arises. But to preemptively close it with the forecasted intensities being so low would be foolish. I guess they want us to think that they are on top of things after being so inept during the January storm. And they almost got lucky during January- if we had somehow not had that 15 minute burst of rain, very little damage would have occurred. Very unlucky for that to have occurred.
Lets just hope that sanity prevails on this and other related issues. The officials tend to over react more due to fear of lawsuits than due to reality sometimes. I just hope they keep in mind the tens of thousands of lives they affect IF they shut down the freeway and I hope they only do so IF significant debris flow is imminent. We will see.
Closing a freeway and draining all of the cars off of a freeway literally takes less than 5 minutes, since cars are traveling at 60+ mph.
Who cares about some silly little line that was either drawn up for a fire or a flood. The potential for a catastrophic mudslide was announced by weather service agencies days in advance! Amazing how many little snot nosed babies are out there crying and laying blame on others, when the blame should clearly lie with the folks who didn’t listen to the numerous announcements by weather reporters.