North Coast Journal March 8, 2007 : IN THE NEWS : SHORT STORIES

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March 8, 2007

BYPASS THE STATE | IN THE DARK | IN THE DARK (II)

BYPASS THE STATE: My dad told me in 1956 that the Willits bypass would not be built in his lifetime. He died in 1980. Now it appears the bypass may not be built in my lifetime. Last Wednesday (Feb. 28) the California Transportation Commission derailed a $177 million funding plan for the bypass and gave that money to other projects in urban areas.

My dad's prediction occurred just after a four-lane section of Highway 101 was built to bypass the narrow and treacherous two-lane Ridgewood Grade south of Willits. I played in the Willits High School band the day that short section of highway was dedicated, and told my dad afterward that officials said the highway would soon go around Willits and be four lanes to the Oregon border. He scoffed at the idea. Now, more than 50 years after that dedication, the bypass has no state funding, and there certainly is no plan for four-lanes to Oregon.

The bypass is a symbol for how neglected Northwestern California has become by state government since the 1950s. In that time, prosperous fishing and timber industries have declined, the railroad doesn't run anymore and Humboldt Bay port activity is nowhere near what it could be. Humboldt and

Del Norte counties are especially disadvantaged without a four-lane highway capable of handling the longest trucks allowed, an operating railroad between Marin County and Eureka and a functional Humboldt Bay port that could handle overseas freight.

Other areas of the state have prospered because they have the transportation infrastructure and necessary facilities to out-compete the North Coast counties. They have the population, they generate the taxes and they have the most urgent need for more roads.

I am no expert on transportation, but I spent 40 years working in newspapers covering and observing the way communities tackle these problems. My conclusion is that there is no one right way to succeed, but without community support, it is nearly impossible to make meaningful progress. By community support, I mean the people who live, work and raise their children here. Without them, it matters little what agencies, councils, boards and other groups do.

I lived in a Bay Area community where a freeway was widened because people voted to tax themselves to pay off bonds rather than wait for state and regional agencies to relieve traffic congestion. In Arkansas, the people in two counties voted to tax themselves to raise matching funds for a regional airport to help spur economic development.

People know the value that new developments will give their community. I suggest we waste no more time on getting state money from a government that is unwilling to go to bat for our corner of California. The tax money is going elsewhere. We must look to ourselves and our neighbors. We know a worthy cause when we see it.

-- Jake Williams
Jake Williams is a lifelong newspaperman who retired to Eureka from the Contra Costa Times.

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IN T photo illustration of a tree in the snow and an electrical outlet with a "no" slash HE DARK: The power in Garberville first went off Tuesday morning, probably around 10 a.m. Within a half hour, the power had been restored. Then, shortly after 11, we lost it again, and this time it was gone for 28 hours. The PG&E hotline was scant on details, stating only that the outage was caused by "winter storm damage." We later learned that the damage took place somewhere between Willits and Laytonville, with the power being cut off to everybody on the grid from Laytonville to Weott.

All the businesses without generator back-up closed up immediately, as did the Jerrold Phelps Medical Clinic and the schools. As is the case with every long-term outage in Southern Humboldt, the ice cream was free at Redway's Shop Smart.

The outage was accompanied by an inordinate amount of snow in the hills, some of which stuck on the highway, causing numerous accidents from Ukiah to Pepperwood, including one fatality. Chain warnings were issued for Hwy 101 from Redwood Valley to just south of Willits, as well as Rattlesnake Summit north of Laytonville. The KMUD news was not aired on Tuesday evening, because Estelle Fennel was snowed in at her home, though she and others were interviewed on the KZYX news, which was simulcast from Mendocino County. Residents were urged to avoid driving if at all possible. As daylight faded away, the hum of household generators rose to fill the air in most of the townships, as the power remained out long after the initial repair time estimate of 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday night.

By Wednesday morning, most of the ground in Southern Humboldt was white. Most of the businesses and schools remained closed. Some of the subdivision residents in the hills reported as much as 10 inches of snow overnight. Meanwhile, the clouds gave way to sunshine and a blue sky and kids celebrated their impromptu school holiday with snowball fights. Although PG&E reported by late morning that repairs would not be completed until Thursday morning, the power came back on for most grid-connected residents at about 3:20 p.m., although Phillipsville and Weott were out until 11 p.m. Because PG&E had predicted the power would be off until Thursday morning, school at Southfork High School and Weott Elementary School was canceled for Thursday as well.

By Thursday afternoon almost everything was back to normal, the only remaining signs of the ordeal being patches of white at the tops of the hills. The rain returned and the snow chains advisories were lifted.

-- Eric V. Kirk
Eric V. Kirk is a SoHum attorney and writer; his blog can be found at redwoodreality.blogspot.com.

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IN THE DARK (II): It will always amuse me that people who live in a temperate rain forest are seemingly never prepared for what pours down from a February sky.

As often happens on the North Coast at this time of year, our power went out on a particularly stormy afternoon last week, and wasn't restored until two days later. In Garberville and Redway, there were mad dashes to the grocery and hardware stores as everyone stocked up on supplies before braving the roads home. The next morning, I would use some precious computer battery power to check out the news online, and be dismayed to see that, in five hours' time, 10 collisions had occurred within an 80-mile radius. Paradoxically, when it rains heavily Garberville residents must often conserve water -- when the power goes out, so does the water pump.

We don't live in town, or even in SoHum. We're actually in northern Mendocino County, about a mile, as the crow flies, from Confusion Hill. Although we're on the grid, we're literally at the end of the line, in a 60-year-old all-electric house. As the sky darkened, I was quickly reminded that I still love outages, for the same reasons I loved them as a child: silence and darkness, both all too rare in the modern world.

No blaring TV, background radio, humming computer, cranky refrigerator, popping toaster, beeping microwave, tinny ringing of cordless phone. My backup is an avocado-green rotary dial office model, circa 1962, that's especially handy for both outages and confusing my teenage daughter's friends. It rang once in two days, and I couldn't use line two -- my home-office line. I must confess I didn't miss it.

A streetlight graces our front yard, courtesy of the former owners. I keep forgetting to call PG&E to ask them to please turn the damned thing off, because we didn't move to the country to be deprived of darkness and moonlight. When night fell, I went outside to revel in its gifts -- and then felt, just for a moment, a twinge of fear, the fear of that which we cannot see but know is there, outside the scope of human sensory experience. "This is silly," I said to myself, before the somewhat sobering thought of Jim and Nell Hamm, the Fortuna couple who recently fended off a mountain lion, came into my head. I said a prayer for his continued recovery and went back inside.

Come dinnertime, my partner was in a mild panic because he hadn't taken the propane tanks to town to be refilled. We could use the barbecue grill or the backup gas stove, but not both. I opted to toss everything on the grill. My daughter worked on lighting candles; my main concern was that the scented ones (everyone seems to have a collection, gifted by various well-meaning friends) not be lit before dinner. I really didn't want vanilla and blackberry candle-smell permeating my grilled zucchini.

Meanwhile, just up the road, our neighbor -- who lives off the grid, in a well-insulated cabin with solar power, a propane stove and wood heat -- would never have known the power was out, if not for the fact that he was listening to the news on his battery-powered radio. He never worries about not having a hot shower, not being able to work on his computer, or not knowing how to cook on a woodstove. Calibrating the heat can be a challenge for some of us.

Even in broad daylight, I immediately knew when the juice was turned back on: an '80s video-game noise emitted from the StairMaster, the refrigerator hummed back to life, the microwave beeped, the office line started to ring almost immediately. I realized we wouldn't have a really valid excuse for another night off, complete with candlelit dinner and Scrabble game, and guiltily wished that the outage could have lasted just a little longer.