PD Editorial: Powerful storm exposes weak spots

Be careful what you wish for. Sonoma County asked for rain - and got a fire hose.

That hose, in the form of a large atmospheric river, hit the North Bay with powerful winds and between 4.2 inches (in Petaluma) to nearly 8.5 inches (in Guerneville) over a 24-hour period, flooding streets, knocking down trees and creating some usual sights - such as kayaking through downtown Healdsburg.

There were some silver linings to this major cloud burst.

For one, meteorologists and emergency crews earned their stripes for projecting the timing and severity of this system, the largest winter storm in years. As predicted, it slammed into the North Bay late Wednesday but saved its full force until between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. Thursday when flooding and road problems were at their worst.

As such, residents and merchants had ample opportunity to prepare for the deluge, doing anything from altering their daily routines - many chose to stay home from work - to filling sandbags to protect their homes and businesses. PG&E also deserves a plug for its preparatory work and quick response to outages, which ensured limited power problems for the North Bay. Outages peaked early in the day at 19,000 customers, but many had their power restored within hours

That said, the storm also exposed some of the region’s weaknesses. The most visible concerned downtown Healdsburg, where water from Foss Creek spilled into the streets lapping at the front doors stores and restaurants and seeped inside more than two dozen. Longtime Healdsburg residents said they hadn’t seen that kind of flooding since 1986.

While the North Bay experienced scattered road closures, the county’s most vulnerable stops included parts of Highway 101 in Windsor and access ramps at several locations, including at Westside and Shiloh roads where flooding blocked traffic. The Highway 101 exit to central Healdsburg also was closed for a time.

Another major pothole exposed by this storm concerned communication between some local school districts and parents about whether schools would be open for business.

Some districts, including those in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, alerted parents through email and texts as late as 7 a.m. that schools would be open. But that changed within minutes of the start of the school day, leaving some parents having to fight through traffic and storm conditions to return and pick up their children.

Petaluma City Schools ended up canceling the school day just after 7:30 a.m., minutes after Bellevue Union and Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified made the same call. The notice about the closure of Analy High School came about 10 minutes later. Notifications about the closure of Santa Rosa schools began going out shortly thereafter, although some parents didn’t get a robo-call notification until 8:15 a.m. While students cheered the decision, parents had good reason to be miffed, particularly given that, while some schools had flooding, many saw no visible reason why the rain should disrupt an instructional day. Meanwhile, the last-minute notice left some parents, particularly those of younger kids, scrambling to come up with someone to watch their kids.

“While I regret the communication first to stay open and then to close caused confusion, the unpredictability of the conditions and continued deteriorating weather made the second decision necessary,” Superintendent Socorro Shiels wrote to parents. She said the “dangerous unpredictability” of the storm system, which continues to work through the region this morning, also was the reason for the closure of schools today. (For a full list of other schools that will be closed today, go to pressdemocrat.com.)

We’re still not clear why a second day of closures is necessary. Shiels has promised that the district “will be reviewing all emergency and communication procedures.” We hope that will include not only evaluating the conditions requiring closure but whether to allow principals at each school to make their own call as to whether the school bell should ring on such rainy days.

Not all stores and restaurants across town close when a few are swamped. The same should be true for schools.