Cleanup continues on San Mateo County coast days after Bay Area storms

PESCADERO, Calif. (KGO) — The cleanup continues on the San Mateo County coast Monday, days after storms hit the region.

ABC7 News saw crews clearing debris throughout the area.

Construction worker Jose Acosta repaired a fence in Montara.

“Just a lot of damage everywhere,” said Acosta, who works for OGRCON Construction. “Been pretty busy. So we’re trying to get to all the jobs that we can.”

A tree slammed into a home in Montara and now, tarps cover the roof.

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Neighbor Cindy McCool said that same tree also damaged her fence.

“It felt like an earthquake,” McCool said. “I felt like somebody was standing at the foot of my bed and just shook it. Of course, it was raining and it was windy and I couldn’t get out.”

McCool said she lost power for four days and said she still doesn’t have cellphone reception.

“I’m feeling really cut off because we have no phone line,” McCool said. “There’s no cell service where I’m standing. I have to go to a hot spot and my husband has health issues and I can’t even call 911 from my house.”

Unfortunately, this is all too common for some residents on the San Mateo county coast when big storms hit.

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That’s why San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller said county officials are backing a microgrid in Pescadero that would be powered by solar energy.

“Which would then take the power from that grid, put it into batteries and then in outages that occur from storm systems like this actually go ahead and kick on and keep people with power for the amount of time that we think’s going to be necessary to see power restored in really terrible storm systems,” Supervisor Mueller said.

San Mateo County Board of Supervisors approved a commitment of up to $3 million to the community microgrid project on December 9. According to a news release from the county, Peninsula Clean Energy has committed $10 million and the hope is to get additional funding from Pacific Gas & Electric’s Microgrid Incentive program.

Supervisor Mueller said power got restored quicker on the San Mateo County Coast this time, compared to past storms.

But there’s still room for improvement.

“We are always asking PG&E for more accountability and more investment but I would be remiss not to say that they did work with us and communicate very well through this last storm system,” Supervisor Mueller said. “They did have crews in place to do repairs but we’re going to keep pushing for more. We need investment to keep power up all the time.”