Santa Cruz County residents survey damage from heavy rains

Downed trees and power lines were spread throughout Santa Cruz County on Thursday, some residents saying it’s a little too familiar.

Aptos resident Kathy Williams lives off of Valencia road where a tree knocked out some power lines early Thursday morning. “This particular storm season really hasn’t been too bad for us here, but
this today is a little bit dejavu though,” says Williams.

Her family has a generator for backup, but she says living with this many trees around, this is expected, “Almost now its instinctive every time it rains hard we’re thinking okay where did a tree fall, not did it fall, where did it fall. Any time you hear a crack or something on the roof you think uh-oh.”

Trees also came down in Scotts Valley, La Selva Beach and Ben Lomand shutting down roads and causing some power outages in the area.

CHP says while downed trees and power lines were a big issue, there were also nine accidents from midnight on Thursday to 1:30pm. Officer Trista Drake says most are from drivers going to fast, “most of the cause is just going too fast for the conditions, too fast for the wet roadways. Your car doesn’t handle the same as it does on dry roadway.”

Ofc. Drake says one of the most effective ways to get drivers to slow down is to make their patrol cars visible, “”We’ll sit out cars out someone prevalent like the summit, either that or we’ll drive up and down 17 when it’s raining pretty heavily with our lights on just slowing everybody down.”