In the cold morning of Jan. 16, Morro Bay Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Erica Crawford joined emergency groups, local business owners, and residents to begin discussing impacts of the historic winter storm and subsequent blackouts that affected the city.
“In the moment when we were reacting, we met the needs as they came out,” Crawford told New Times. “But coming out of that moment, we can take what we learned and rally support around it to help begin the r
ecovery process.”
The winter storm that started on Jan. 8 downed power lines due to excessive water flow and high winds. More than 22,000 SLO County residents lost power early in the storm, requiring PG&E crewmen to brave floodwaters and downed trees to help restore power.
In Morro Bay, a downed transformer caught up in the flood cut communications for emergency groups trying to help local businesses where employees were stranded. Some businesses faced the issue of perishable food spoiling, while others had no way to receive emergency information due to the lack of electricity.
“It just happened so fast,” Crawford said. “There were just so many aspects of nature coming at us all at once, all at the worst time, but we knew we had to work to restore power first so we could get those stranded out.”
The city worked alongside PG&E to establish what caused the main blackout, Crawford said. A portion of one of the power company’s transformers was submerged in rising creek water, so workers, firefighters, and other emergency groups scrambled to prevent the other portion of the transformer from suffering the same fate.
By using the non-flooded transformer as the main source of power, PG&E managed to restore electricity within 24 hours and help establish electronic communication between residents and emergency responders.
PG&E Communications Representative Carina Corral said the power company had to use specialty equipment in areas across the county, as most of the damaged areas were inaccessible to standard vehicles used for normal repairs. Corral emphasized that workers are trained in advance for these scenarios to ensure care and safety.
“It was a constantly evolving situation that required out-of-the-box thinking by our workers,” Corral said. “In a situation where oversaturated ground meant trees would topple much easier, it was important our workers were prepared and safe.”
In the aftermath of the storm, Crawford and the Chamber of Commerce began to work alongside other advocacy groups to help businesses that may have had electrical equipment damaged by floodwater. SLO County received a major disaster declaration signed off by President Joe Biden on Jan. 17, which enables residents and business owners to apply for relief through disasterassitance.gov.
Crawford’s also advocating that residents and local governments rely on existing organizations, using them to bolster the federal support.
“We have to advocate for the leverage of the bureaucracy of these organizations that already exist now that we know what we have to fix,” she said. “With everything we learned from the flooding and outages, we can build up support to not only recover but be ready for the next time a storm like this happens.” ∆
This article appears in Jan 19-29, 2023.