County steps in after snowstorm overwhelms Pine Mountain Club

Mar. 11—Running a bed-and-breakfast in the quaint town of Pine Mountain Club has shown Jim Liberty the quiet beauty of life away from the city. But he has come to see another side, too.

"I think if you choose to live in a remote mountain community, it's important not to rely on other people," he said.

That's not so easy sometimes, like when a rare snowstorm hits, knocking trees onto power lines, cutting electricity for days and blocking road access, as happened earlier this month.

People were left stranded, including the elderly and disabled, as temperatures dipped into the 20s. Propane tanks ran out, pellet stoves stopped working and snowplows owned and operated by the local property owners association were rendered inoperable.

Because PMC is a private community, the county of Kern has no responsibility to maintain or clear the roads. But when distressed residents started reaching out to the area's representative on the county Board of Supervisors, Zack Scrivner, he felt an obligation to respond.

"I recognized that it was an extraordinary amount of snow, more than they have seen for many, many years," he said. "That's why we responded in the way that we did."

In the first week of March, Scrivner joined a contingent of heavy equipment operators and 50 county firefighters who, along with utility crews escorted up the snow-covered Grapevine by Caltrans, made their way to PMC, located about half an hour past Frazier Park at elevations a mile in altitude and higher.

What they found was a community in distress. The plowing that had been done left berms hardened by snowmelt and refreezing. The town's only cellphone tower, at that point dependent on power from a generator, had run low on fuel. Residents complained of a lack of communication by the town's property owners association.

It was also a community looking after itself the best it could. Neighbors made a point to check up on the most vulnerable among them, delivering food and medicine as needed.

"Each little street kind of looks after our own," Liberty said.

County personnel set up a warming center at the community clubhouse while front loaders went to work removing ice and snow. Firefighters climbed the mountain where the cell tower stands and filled up the generator with gasoline to ensure residents were able to contact the world outside.

Snowplows resumed the clearing of roads — until even the county's equipment begin to fail as the property association's had before.

"We plowed and dug people out," Scrivner said.

Firefighters were given lists of residents who had not been heard from. They set out through the snow to carry out more than 100 wellness checks. A path was made for FedEx to enter PMC for much-needed deliveries of items like pet food.

"This was an unprecedented situation because of the level of snowfall that they received out there, as well as the power outages, which because of the temperatures (were) a big concern," he said.

Plowing of snow has continued since then. The more recent concern, Scrivner said, is that rain from the atmospheric river that slammed Kern County this weekend would add to the already worrisome weight on roofs.

Other parts of Kern have endured large amounts of snow this winter. But Scrivner, a Tehachapi resident accustomed to snow, said nowhere else in the county experienced trouble — "Snowmageddon," he called it — to the extent PMC did.

In retrospect, better preparations clearly should have been made at the household and community level, said Scrivner, who was in close contact with leaders of the property owners association. But he acknowledged the difficulty of anticipating the extreme conditions that befell PMC in late February and early March.

Top officials at the property owners association did not respond Friday to requests for comment.

As the bulk of the county's intervention drew to a close, the Kern County Fire Department called for better preparation next time.

"An important lesson has been reinforced throughout Kern County this February. Preparedness is key!" the agency said in a news release. "It is each person's responsibility to heed the warnings issued for forecasted weather, to have adequate amounts of non-perishable food and water on hand, to plan for disruptions in utility and communication services, and in winter months alternative ways to keep warm."

The release noted that a community preparedness event has been scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 23, to be attended by dozens of agencies offering to provide helpful information.

Liberty, who with his wife runs The Old Bear Bed & Breakfast, recalled a great amount of frustration being expressed by his neighbors — and admitted that he, too, came close to losing patience. After all, residents pay the property association for services that, in some cases, never came.

But he pointed out that residents also stepped up and looked after each other in a time of need. That included the bed-and-breakfast itself: The couple called up people who had made reservations and warned them to stay home. But not everyone got the message.

"We still ended up taking people in who had nowhere to go," he said. "We're like, 'We hope you're not here for a week.'"