Freak winds hit Vallecito
11/24/2010 By: Carole McWilliams
Falling trees take down power lines, homes
A freak windstorm ripped through neighborhoods along Vallecito Creek Sunday evening, downing possibly hundreds of trees in about an hour. The trees brought down power lines and damaged permanent homes, RVs, sheds and parked vehicles.
It brought comparisons with the wind vortex that knocked down trees east of Vallecito Creek during the June 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire.
Upper Pine Fire Chief Rich Graeber described it as a major weather event. Man, oh, man, its Armageddon up there, he said. He estimated 300 to 400 trees came down, mainly blue spruce.
Some were ripped up by the roots. Others had the trunks snapped off, some within a few feet of the ground, some 10 to 15 feet up, some maybe 30 feet up, and some even higher.
Some yards were a jumble of broken or uprooted trees.
Worst hit was the Tucker Lane/ Mountain River subdivision area, a mix of stick-built homes, mobile homes, and RVs that are there year-round.
Also hard hit were the neighborhoods between Grimes Creek and Vallecito Creek.
Graeber said the first page came in at around 6:30 p.m. Sunday, followed by many 911 calls from residents.
He said he had to go around the back side of the lake to get to Tucker Lane, because of trees and power lines down on County Road 501. Many trees and power lines also were down across the subdivision roads.
Vallecito resident Justin McCarty helped clear roads with his heavy equipment, Graeber said.
As of mid-day Monday, local Red Cross representatives and county representatives were at the north Vallecito Upper Pine fire station. The station was using a generator for power.
Marianna Spisock from the County Building Department was taking phone calls from county and Upper Pine crews out inventorying the damage. She used colored markers to designate the level of damage lot by lot on a large map of parcels north of the lake.
La Plata Electric crews were busy in several places. LPEA called in every available crew and contract crew, Graeber said. LPEA reported almost 400 customers without power Sunday night. At least five utility poles were broken.
LPEA crews were immediately dispatched to the area and worked through the night, in spite of the weather, to begin making repairs to the downed equipment, LPEA operations manager Steve Gregg reported. Sustained winds in the early morning hours, however, resulted in additional damage to essentially LPEAs entire backbone in north Vallecito Lake.
As of 6:30 a.m. Monday, Gregg said 435 customers were without power.
Graeber said 60-plus homes had been listed as damaged significantly as of mid-day Monday, but he expected a final tally closer to 100 homes.
Graeber and County Emergency Management Director Butch Knowlton gave a media tour of the affected neighborhoods some near Valley of the Spruce, Mushroom Drive and Lane, Boletus Drive, Tucker Lane and Drive, Mountain River Lane and side streets.
Knowlton said LPEA has been upgrading lines over the past several years to be more storm-resistant. The amount of damage Sunday night indicates this was a lot more than we normally see here.
Priscilla Kirkpatrick had a tree down on her mobile home and an old VW near Valley of the Spruce guest cabins. Another tree was down on a car next to another trailer where Kirkpatricks niece lives.
Right then, her main worry was a still standing tree that looked like it was going to fall on Kirkpatricks pumphouse.
A short distance from Kirkpatricks trailers, a small house was surrounded by downed trees. The chimney was knocked off the roof.
Neighbor Chris Brasuel was helping clean up. He had a badly bruised arm from the night before. He said hed been visiting the neighbors house when the storm happened.
I just moved here three weeks ago from Phoenix, he said. I have two boys. I wanted to get them out of the city.
In a yard along Boletus Lane, Graeber said of a huge uprooted spruce, Thats a 200-plus year old tree. What happened last night to make it come down?
Another huge spruce nearby had the top snapped off. A short distance away, several trees were down in a tangled clump. They barely missed a propane tank. Another tree had landed on the corner of a garage roof and fell to the ground in the narrow gap between the garage and undamaged house.
In the Tucker/ Mountain River area, Graeber guessed around 200 trees had come down. A short distance uphill, there was no damage, he said.
The many trees across those roads had been removed by Monday afternoon. Steve Norman was getting debris off his neighbors mobile home roof, which had pretty noticeable damage.
Just up the road, a snowman built on Sunday leaned perilously but had survived the barrage of wind and trees.
Across the road, downed trees lay on either side of a red propane tank. Graeber said the tank was upside down Sunday night and firefighters got it back right-side up.
At that point in the tour, Graeber commented, We arent to the worst of it yet.
A small mobile home on Juniper Lane had a tree trunk laying across the roof, but the building seemed to have survived with little damage.
At a cluster of year-round RVs on Cottonwood Drive, Jean Earp said that between 6:30 and 6:45 p.m. Sunday, It started getting so loud, I opened the door and it pulled me out.
He wasnt clear whether that was wind or low pressure. Earp said there wasnt much wind at ground level, but the tree tops were flailing in circles.
He walked the short distance to his parents trailer. Earp said he saw a tree go straight up before it fell. Another tree also had been uprooted next to Tex and Barbara Earps trailer.
Across the road not far from the Earps, several fallen trees had obliterated a small unoccupied RV.
Tour driver Travis Wright commented, Its probably best that this happened in the winter when a lot of people are gone.
Back at the fire station, County Building Department staffer Jerry Schuyler said most of the damaged houses seemed to be unoccupied. What I saw was a lot of luck, he said. There were lots of trees that didnt hit anything. It could have been much, much worse.
He guessed that 10 percent of fallen trees hit something.