Hopefully viral post requesting help for Crestline

I have written a post which I have copied below. Feel free to link if you don't have Facebook. If you do have Facebook, please share it.

Facebook Post

Please share this widely! I’m a resident of Crestline, CA and a former disaster relief worker for the American Red Cross. This is the worst disaster response I’ve ever encountered. One week after an unprecedented snowstorm, we’re in dire straits and getting very little assistance.

Crestline and other areas affected by the San Bernardino snow disaster need help. We need a FEDERAL disaster declaration, door-to-door welfare checks for people trapped in their homes, door-to-door help shoveling paths out of the snow, removal of 10’ and higher ice berms trapping our cars, reimbursement for disaster-related expenses, and permission to return to our homes if we need to leave the mountain to get medical aid or supplies. Please contact President Biden, CA Governor Newsom, and San Bernardino elected officials to urge this help. You can just copy the requests in this paragraph, but read on if you want more details about what’s going on - and my own story.

We are used to snow here, and most residents are well-prepared for a typical snowstorm. Crestline normally gets six inches to two feet of snow. We got over nine feet of snow. Individual residents are not prepared for that, and we are overwhelmed.

Some people are literally trapped inside their homes by snow blocking their doors. Others can leave their homes but not their yards because the snow is over their heads. Many streets are not plowed, so no vehicles can drive. When streets are plowed, the snow is pushed to the sides and forms 10’ – 20’ walls of solid ice which block cars and driveways. The official statement of San Bernardino is that there will be no help breaking down the ice walls or shoveling paths to homes – they are only willing to plow the streets. These are not normal ice berms and individuals cannot break them down! We need help with this.

Many people are running out of food, as the only grocery in Crestline collapsed due to snow and the one in the next closest town partially collapsed. The only food distribution is at city centers, and it’s not in the same places every day. Many people cannot get past the ice walls or walk miles through snow up to their waist or over their head to get to the food. Because the food distribution points rotate rather than being in the same place consistently, people are struggling for hours through the snow only to find there is no food there that day. The sites are announced over the internet the day before, but many people have their internet cut off due to the storm and have no way of knowing where the food will be. We need consistent, daily food distribution sites. We also need door to door food distribution as many people can’t walk to the sites. Remember, our cars are trapped and we can’t drive!

Residents are allowed to drive down the mountain (if they’ve dug their cars out), but if we leave, we will not be allowed back up. No one is saying when we will be allowed back, but officials have hinted it will be at least a week and maybe a month or more. So anyone who drives down to get medical help or food is trapped away from their home with no idea of when they can return. Because of this, everyone is afraid to leave, so we have no way of replenishing our own supplies and no way of lightening the load in general by going to stay with friends. Residents need to be allowed back up the mountain!

Homes and businesses are collapsing from the weight of snow on the roof. We have ten times the amount of snow we normally get in some places, and we need help with it.

As gas vents are blocked by snow and gas pipes are breaking from the weight, a number of houses have exploded or burned down. I have yet to see any assistance shoveling out gas vents. Again, normally we could do this ourselves, but not when there’s nine feet of snow and ice!

Supposedly help is here. None of us have seen it. We’ve seen National Guard helicopters circling, but no boots on the ground. If ever there was a time for a large National Guard deployment, it’s now. The American Red Cross has opened a shelter, but it’s in Redland – off the mountain and 45 minutes away from anyone who actually needs help. We need the Red Cross on the mountain, where they’re actually needed.

We would love to help each other and are doing our best, but we literally can’t get to each other. We are overwhelmed and need help. I am especially worried about disabled, sick, and elderly people who live alone. What happens to them if they don’t have close neighbors who can check on them? We need door-to-door welfare checks.

Here's my own story. At the beginning of the storm, one of my water pipes burst. The water company contacted me and told me they were cutting off my water. I filled my bathtub and all containers. (I also keep emergency water.) They plowed my street just up to my water meter, turned off my water, and backed out rather than continuing to plow the street. That was a week ago and to date they have been the only official response of any kind I have seen on my street.

Soon after, my internet cable broke in the storm. My 4G and telephone service also went out. I live alone and at that point I had no way whatsoever to communicate with anyone. I am five feet tall and my house was surrounded by snow over my head. I dug my way out of the house in the hope of making phone calls asking for help from a neighbor’s house. Then I discovered that the ways out of my property were also blocked. My driveway was under nine feet of soft snow, and my staircase, which is wooden and very steep, was under five feet of soft snow. Both ended in ice walls about ten feet high. Either way out was extremely dangerous.

I was so desperate that I climbed and slid down the staircase, then climbed the ice wall. I found a neighbor with internet and phone service, and began making calls for help. I explained to everyone that I spoke to that I had no communication whatsoever at my house and no running water, and that leaving my house was extremely dangerous. I requested help shoveling the staircase and for my internet and/or phone to be fixed so I could at least call for help. (I couldn’t move in with the neighbors or go to a shelter as I have pets and farm animals I need to care for.)

The response I got was disheartening. My internet company, Spectrum, offered me a service appointment ten days in the future. The San Bernardino official helpline took my number, but I never heard back from them. The plumbers I contacted about repairing my pipe so I can get my water turned back on were sympathetic, but they all lived in San Bernardino and worked in Crestline, and were not allowed up the mountain. One of them said that he has snow cats and a full crew and asked to come up to help shovel people out, but was refused permission to go up the mountain.

My neighbors shoveled a path up my stairs so I could get in and out without risking my neck. I still have no running water and no idea when that can be fixed. My car in under ten feet of snow and blocked by a fifteen foot wall of solid ice, so I can’t leave. I still have no reliable internet or phone service at my house. I am posting this from a neighbor’s house.

Please repost this to spread the word of the desperate situation and shocking mismanagement of this disaster. Please contact President Biden to ask him to declare a FEDERAL disaster. Please contact Governor Gavin Newsom of CA and elected officials in San Bernardino to ask them to send actual help, not just empty promises and false claims.

Thank you.

Rachel Manija Brown, writing from Crestline, CA on March 5, 2023.

Feel free to copy or reprint this anywhere with attribution.

Trapped on Mount Hood & Code 1244

In honor of the snowpocalypse, I listened to a podcast series, "Trapped on Mount Hood," which was so interesting that I read the book it was based on the same day. That was a mistake. (Because the book was bad, not because Iw as traumatized by snow.)

I had not previously heard of the Mount Hood incidents, which was one of the worst alpine disasters in US history. A group of students were taken hiking up Mount Hood students from a private high school is part of a mandatory wilderness program, got caught in a storm, and seven of them died. Two adults also died. I find this particularly awful because it was mandatory for the students, but the disaster happened because the teacher leading them made a series of absolutely terrible decisions.

There was a storm coming, which he knew about, but did not factor into his decision-making. They started too late to avoid at, continued hiking under poor weather conditions, were poorly equipped for getting caught in a storm, ends didn't turn back until long after it would have been prudent to do so. They had to dig into a cave, which wasn't big enough for all of them so they kept having to rotate who was inside and who was outside. Conditions got so bad that a hired guide finally decided to leave and go for help in a blizzard, and took the only student who was willing or strong enough to go with them. They made it out, but got so lost in the blizzard that they had a hard time figuring out where the cave was. Meanwhile the cave got completely buried in snow. By the time the cave was found, several days later only two of the people inside survived.

The behavior of the teacher leading them is a bit mysterious. The author of the book says that he made such bad decisions that he must have been hypothermic. However, the decision to start the hike late when he knew there was a storm coming happened before the hike began, so he couldn't have been hypothermic then. There's also the matter of not taking equipment that should have been taken under the circumstances – also a decision made long before the hike began. However, he previously did not have a pattern of doing reckless things, so it's not really clear why this particular height was different. In previous hikes, they turned back without reaching the summit two out of every three times.

Code 1244 is an incredibly frustrating book. The author interviewed literally everyone who would agree to talk to him who was involved in the incident, and he did get to speak to most of the people who were and who are willing to talk at all. (One of the main people involved, the girl who survived the case she hiked out, has never publicly spoken about it at all.) He had an incredible amount of access so you would think he could have used that to write an interesting book. He did not. It's emblematic that I still don't know what a code 1244 is.

I wishvhe had done an oral history of the event, because I bet that would have been fascinating. What he instead did, as far as I can tell, was to write down every single factual detail that everybody told him, but put in his own words rather than theirs. His own style is extremely dry. He occasionally mentions what people felt or thought, but not all that much. So it's a recital of incredibly minute details. This book has more citations than I think anything I have ever read. About every third sentence is footnoted. I applaud his integrity but it also means that about one third of the book consists of citations.

There are so many details that the overall story often gets lost. It was much harder to follow what was going on in his book then it was in the podcast. I got the book because I was curious to learn more details then the podcasts gave, but when I finished his book, I felt that I knew less, not more. In particular, it was very hard to tell what was going on with the rescue operation and whether or not it was mismanaged, and whether that made a difference. The author obviously felt that one person in particular was to blame for the cave not getting found sooner, but I'm not sure if that was correct.

Based on the podcast, it sounds like he thought that guy was responsible for the guide who hiked out not having been taken up in a helicopter soon enough to search. But in his book, I couldn't tell whether that was a problem or not, or who had made that decision. One thing I really wondered about was why no one ever asked the girl who had hiked out with the guide to go up in a helicopter and see if she could recognize something. It seems to me that two people following the same route might notice or remember different things, so why not ask her if they were going to ask him? This never comes up in either the podcast or the when they finally did let the guide search, it's possibly important because he led the helicopter to the wrong spot five times before he did finally get locate the right spot on his sixth a try. So there was a lot of time wasted searching in the wrong areas, even after he got involved.

It's a very sad story, and also a very interesting one if you're interested in survival and wilderness rescue. If you are, listen to the podcast.

Against the Odds podcast.