It wasn’t confetti coming down on Panoche Road this New Year’s
Eve; it was boulders, mud and gravel.
Paicines – It wasn’t confetti coming down on Panoche Road this New Year’s Eve; it was boulders, mud and gravel.
In what some refer to as the “Jones” area of Panoche Road, just past Appel’s farm at 11065 Panoche Road, the weekend’s brutal weather caused a landslide that started around noon on Friday and was still creeping down the side of the cliff Monday afternoon. Friday, the debris only had covered about half the road, according to County Supervisor Reb Monaco, but by Monday the width of the road was completely covered.
The county closed the stretch of road Friday, but according to County Administrative Officer Gil Solorio, the blocked-off section of Panoche was still seeing some traffic as drivers pulled their cars up onto the shoulder of the road and around the heap of rocks and mud.
“Certainly we’re not encouraging people to use the road, but as an
acknowledgment to the locals we’d like to ask that only they use the road,” said Solorio, adding farmers in the area would have to take Interstate 5 just to get around the closed-off section and into Hollister if they weren’t allowed on the road. Still, he said, drivers should use the road “only if they have to.”
It will take at least another two days for crews to bulldoze the debris out of the area, according to Assistant Public Works Director Peter Corn. Because the land is still sliding down, however, he said he couldn’t calculate how much the clean-up cost would be.
The County Board of Supervisors has added an emergency item to its agenda and will be discussing the landslide at its meeting this morning.
The Hollister Public Works Department reported no other weather-related problems over the weekend from the estimated 2.3 inches of rain falling since Thursday.
Diana Henderson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Monterey office, said there will be about a 20-30 percent chance of showers Tuesday and Wednesday, and that will jump up to a 60 percent chance Thursday through the weekend.
