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| Wet, windy weekend keeps city workers on their toes |
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| Written by John Saiz / Patterson Irrigator / | |
| Wednesday, 09 January 2008 | |
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Power lines snapped, residents went without electricity for a few hours and drainage ditches were filled to their limits Friday. More rainfall came Saturday, but the city already had seen the worst of the winter’s first big storm. “It started Friday with three simultaneous calls,” Patterson fire Chief Bill Kinnear said. “It stretched us pretty thin for a couple of hours.” Firefighters first responded to a downed power line at H Street and El Circulo on Friday morning that left much of the city powerless for close to three hours. About an hour later, another wire went down at Sycamore and Almond avenues, but that ended up being the worst of it for the fire department, as rains started to lighten and the risk of major floods subsided. “Fortunately, it started to let up,” Kinnear said. “By the time the water came out of the hills, … down here had gotten pretty dry.”  Time for sunshine: The sun peeks over a South Third Street roofline Monday morning. It stayed around for the entire day, after much of the state shook off the remnants of its first major storm system this year. Photo by Elias Funez “It started off innocently enough,” said Robert Andrade, the city’s deputy director of operations and maintenance. “Then, it packed a wallop on Friday.” In response, the public works department packed hundreds of sandbags and formed a list of employees who would be on call throughout the weekend. Andrade estimated that of the nearly 2,000 sandbags the public works department packed with the help of inmate labor, only 150 remained by Monday. The city also called in many of its on-call employees. “We sound the alarm, and the troops come running,” Andrade said. “Thursday night, we had a list of people ready to go at the drop of a hat.” For the most part, the systems the city had set up to deal with heavy rains performed well, Andrade said. A drainage ditch that runs along Highway 33 posed the most problems. Another hard-hit area was Newcastle Park at American Eagle Avenue and Red Robin Drive. The park’s concave field filled with water as the rains poured down. “It came down all day long,” Andrade said. “At some point, the system loses capacity.” The park is crucial for drainage in the area and is the last step before the runoff pours into Salado Creek. “The bottom of the system is going to collect the most water,” Andrade said. Along with dealing with the problem areas, public works employees were out all weekend looking for trouble spots. The experience they gained will be used to prepare for heavy rains in the future. “We get to see what did work and what didn’t work,” Andrade said. In all, the city got 3 inches of rain from 8 a.m. Thursday to 8 a.m. Sunday. The instrument at Yancey Lumber Co. that measures Patterson rain indicated that no more rain fell between Sunday and Monday morning. Showers resumed Tuesday. The National Weather Service predicts that the Patterson area has a chance of showers tonight and Thursday morning, but the rest of the week should be dry. To reach John Saiz at the Irrigator, call 892-6187 or e-mail him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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