Heavy equipment operator Troy Duncan dropped hulking boulders Thursday into an excavated section of red earth between Mark West Creek and St. Helena Road northeast of Santa Rosa.
The stretch of sinuous mountain road, burned over in the monster 2020 Glass Fire, has been battered by rain from an incessant parade of storms over the past two and a half weeks.
Seated in an excavator, Duncan deftly nudged the one-ton riprap with the teeth on the machine’s bucket while two maintenance workers shoveled broken shards and smaller rock from the road.
The work, eased by a rare break in the storms, aimed to reinforce a roughly 20-foot section of road bank with a 15-foot high rock wall. It also was meant to save the rest of the road from washout in the next storms.
Rain or shine, a large platoon of workers from the county’s newly renamed Department of Public Infrastructure have been at this kind of work, nearly around the clock, since the big wind-driven storm hit Jan. 4.
“It’s nice to have days like this to not be soaking wet all day,” said Andrew Hopper, a county maintenance worker.
They’ve scrambled to shore up a sprawling road network that for the county spans more than 1,300 miles outside of cities, making it one of the largest in the Bay Area.
So far, a complete survey of the storm damage has been impossible amid the waves of incoming rain and wind. But county officials know — as do many rural residents and motorists — that the road network has suffered a big blow.
As of Friday, the estimated damage and cost of repairs was $15 million and rising, said Johannes Hoevertsz, the county’s director of public infrastructure.
“The damage to infrastructure, to our roadways is significant — today we’re getting hammered,” Hoevertsz said Friday. “What we’re going to see is more flooding, more trees coming down.”
On St. Helena Road alone, the 20-foot section of reinforced bank required about 40 tons of one-ton rip rap and an additional 20 tons of smaller, 4-to-8 inch rock, brought in by several rock truck deliveries.
Throw in the hours of maintenance crew work and that one emergency road repair will likely cost an estimated $75,000 to $100,000, but much more if a permanent repair is needed, Hoevertsz said.
On Friday, he had a crew of about 60 workers assigned to emergency response, including road maintenance and setting up traffic signs and signals.
Between Jan. 4 and Jan. 9, those all-hours crews did maintenance work on 82 roads and performed 168 “emergency openings” that required debris removal.
The initial damage and repair work also includes:
• An estimated $3 million to build a new bridge over Salmon Creek Road north of Bodega, where a 10-foot diameter culvert, blocked by a downed tree, caused a blowout that washed away roughly 50 feet of road. Crews rushed to erect a temporary bridge that now spans the gap.
• An estimated $3 million to build a retaining wall at Moscow Road in Monte Rio, where a stretch of the slide-prone lane was washed out after runoff uprooted a tree.
If there’s a bright spot in looking back at disaster records, Hoevertsz offered this comparison: The current estimated cost of damage to county roads is smaller than that of the historic 2019 flood, which reached $50 million for roads — accounting for about a third of the countywide property damage toll.
But it hasn’t stopped raining, he added.
Erosive rain across sprawling network
The county is responsible for 1,368 miles of roads outside of cities. During times of flooding and storms that bring powerful winds, county road crews must fan out to all corners of the region while prioritizing the work they do.
Pothole repair and repaving work is put off until the county dries out and warms up, even as the rain makes things worse.
According to road upkeep experts, the surest way to make a pothole worse is to add water, and lots of it. Asphalt pavement is designed to absorb and drain water, but too much will begin to compromise the soil beneath the pavement, degrading the structural integrity of the roadway.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: