Are SoCal mountain communities ready for heavy winter storms?

Officials in San Bernardino County have released the latest results of a third-party after-action report evaluating the response to last year’s winter storms that caused blizzard-like conditions that caused road closures, leaving many residents stranded as supplies dwindled and supermarket shelves were picked bare.

For Lisa Ochoa, who lives in the Cedarpines Park community near Crestline, the memory of last year’s storms is still front and center.

“We literally could not get out of here,” Ochoa, standing in front of her home Monday, recalled.

KTLA spoke to several mountain residents, including Ochoa, during last winter’s harrowing ordeal that were stuck in their homes after unprecedented amounts of snowfall buried communities and left them pleading for help.

“Even though we had enough resources – we had food, we had our generators, we had heat – one by one, they go out,” she told KTLA’s Shelby Nelson. “One by one, they diminish, even just having water.”

Last year’s storm prompted a never-before-issued blizzard warning, while residents dealt with closed roads, power outages, collapsed roofs and the rationing of supplies like fuel and food.

While San Bernardino County prepared for the 2023 winter storms, many people who lived through the storms are now asking whether those preparations were enough.

The recently released after-action report noted both the strengths and weaknesses of the county’s response.

For instance, one positive was the county’s decision to activate the emergency operations plan, but where they fell short, according to the report, was that many officials, including elected ones, didn’t know how to leverage the plan or what to do next.

While the report stated that there was a lack of emergency training, the move to create a volunteer program that supported the county’s response to the storm, setting up a 24-hour call center and hotline for the community, was a success.

For hard-to-reach residents, like Ochoa and her family, however, the county’s response was lackluster at best.

“There was no one who came through here to offer any assistance to us,” she said.

Another challenge the report highlighted was that there was not enough heavy equipment for snow removal.

Residents like Ochoa are hoping this winter is less extreme than last year but feel like the county should work with them and do more to prepare ahead of time.

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“The county could come up here, have meetings with us, try to employ others to come in and help them with this,” she said.

Dawn Rowe, San Bernardino County Third District Supervisor, released a statement last week, saying in part:

“The winter storms created a tremendous hardship for many of our mountain residents and businesses. It was important to take a hard public look at how the county performed, particularly where we fell short, and implement improvements.”

The report, which can be viewed here, also gave recommendations for how the county should move forward.

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