Parents thank Jenner, Caltrans for safety upgrades where daughters died

JENNER - The parents of two little girls who died after their mother’s truck slid off Highway 1 into the Russian River last year expressed gratitude to neighbors and public officials Monday over efforts to make the road safer for others.

Hesitant at first, and at a loss for words, Sarah and Josh Markus stood at a community meeting and paused, at risk of tapping into a vast emotional reservoir they were working hard to contain.

Then Josh Markus, 35, ?spoke up.

“We’d like to say ‘Thank you’ to everybody for how hard everybody’s working on this, for how much everybody came to help us with this,” he said.

Grief underlay the Monday night meeting led by state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, at the Jenner Community Center, where about two dozen people gathered to hear details of a new Caltrans plan for traffic-?calming signs and 600 feet of guardrail on a curve in the road above a steep 40-foot embankment.

The project has been designed to be low-cost and streamlined in order to qualify for expedited bidding and construction, said Sean Nozzari, Caltrans’ deputy district director for traffic operations.

If all goes well, it should be completed by year’s end, he said.

A memorial plaque in honor of Kaitlyn, 6, and Hailey, 4, also is planned for the site, 5th District Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins said.

Sarah Markus, newly employed as a teacher’s aide, had just left home at 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 23 and was driving her daughters to Monte Rio for school when she lost control of the family pickup on slick, wet pavement.

The truck fishtailed and careened over the embankment at the south edge of town and down into the Russian River. While their mother escaped, the sisters, among a handful of youngsters in the tight-knit, picturesque coastal town, were trapped in the submerged cab and did not survive.

Within hours, community leaders channeled their heartache into a campaign for long-needed safety improvements on a stretch of road that had previously claimed two lives, that time also when a vehicle plunged off the edge of the coast-hugging highway and into the water below.

Caltrans already has installed three black-and-yellow chevron signs marking the curve in the road at the south end of town, a stretch residents say carries risk because the speed limit shifts from 50 mph to 25 mph in a relatively short distance.

Several speed limit signs have been added and moved strategically to discourage speeding as motorists enter and exit town, and to remind them in Jenner to travel at a modest 25 mph because of residents and pedestrian traffic, Nozzari said.

He said Caltrans hopes to award a contract for the remaining work next month and has planned the project so it will cost no more than $291,000 and qualify for streamlined bidding.

So far, the agency has received only one bid from the eight contractors approached. Nozzari said he and his staff are working to get additional bids.

The project includes the 600-foot guardrail, which will necessitate narrowing the striped eastbound lane from 12 to 11 feet in width, he said. It also will eliminate several unofficial parking spaces along the highway shoulder.

Four new solar-powered, automated feedback signs that flash the pace of speeding vehicles are included in the project, two for each direction of traffic, Nozzari said. Solar-battery-operated signs were selected to avoid the cost and time involved in underground electrical wiring.

Though the guardrail is the key piece, CHP officer Sean Laurie vouched for the power of speed signs to slow traffic. He said he’s seen a substantial reduction in speeding in an area where he would routinely issue a dozen tickets in two hours just a few years ago.

Hopkins and McGuire, appearing to blink back tears Monday, rued the fact that two girls had to die before the community gained traction in highway safety efforts, which Hopkins said were buoyed by the Markuses’ “strength and grace.”

Standing before the group, Sarah Markus, who has left Jenner for a new home in Monte Rio with her husband and their son, Adam, thanked those who have worked on the community’s behalf to prevent future accidents.

“We really appreciate everybody’s support,” Markus, 33, told the group. “It’s really hard for me to be here, but I have to do it for Kaitlyn and Hailey. There’s four people who have died in that area, and I really hope it doesn’t happen to anybody else.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.