LAKEPORT, Calif. – With four of Lakeport’s neighborhoods still evacuated due to flooding, and city infrastructure suffering expensive damage, on Tuesday night the Lakeport City Council ratified an emergency declaration while staff prepared to work through another night at the city’s emergency operations center.
On Monday, the city ordered mandatory evacuations in three mobile home parks – Willopoint, Aqua Village and Lucky Four – and the Esplanade Street neighborhood, as Lake County News has reported.
Lakeport Police Chief Brad Rasmussen said about 125 people in those four neighborhoods received the mandatory evacuation orders.
Those evacuation orders remain in effect, Rasmussen said.
City Manager Margaret Silveira said about 40 people had been reported to have stayed at a Red Cross evacuation shelter at the Lakeport Seventh-day Adventist Church on Monday night, with that same number expected on Tuesday night, according to Rasmussen.
Rasmussen and other city staff were in an emergency operations meeting to discuss the situation shortly before Tuesday’s council meeting.
At that point, Rasmussen said conditions looked “pretty calm.” While more rain is expected on Wednesday, the forecast is suggesting Thursday and Friday could give the area a respite, and allow for Clear Lake’s high waters – which early Wednesday were at 10.5 feet Rumsey, a foot and a half into flood stage – to recede.
While city officials want people to be able to return home as soon as possible, Rasmussen said they have to account for safety issues, such as utilities, before taking action to lift evacuation orders.
On Tuesday night, the council added the ratification of the local emergency Silveira first made on Feb. 14 to its agenda, voting unanimously to approve it.
Silveira told the council that the city started taking emergency measures regarding the winter storms at the start of February.
“We didn’t realize how bad the storm was going to get at that time,” she said.
The declaration extends back 10 days from when it was made – to Feb. 4 – and will help the city qualify for assistance from the state government to pay for up to 90 percent of the repairs and other costs incurred in responding to the storms, city staff reported.
Silveira said they will have quite a few expenses, from fencing around Library Park – which remains closed to the public – to new k-rail placed around the park, repairing wave damage that the park has sustained and the cost of sewer pump trucks to pump out the sewer system at C and First streets near the Willopoint Resort.
On Monday, Silveira said she also had to declare an emergency to issue the mandatory evacuation orders.
“It’s become a major storm for us,” said Silveira, noting that staff has been working around the clock.
Silveira said the city has been contacted by the offices of Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry and state Sen. Mike McGuire to find out what it needs. She said she’ll send them a copy of the emergency declaration resolution.
As for damages, Silveira told the council that Library Park has suffered major damage due to the storms.
Public Works Director Doug Grider explained that, even before the city installed an aquadam last month to protect Library Park, there was a failure of the seawall on its southern portion where the pier runs down to First Street.
He said Public Works staff knew there was a failure due to water blowing up and out of cracks in the expansion joints, which Grider said are checks placed about every 8 feet or so when pouring concrete.
“As the waves were coming in, we had water blowing up, out through the expansion joints in the sidewalk,” he said, which indicated some type of seawall failure, but city staff couldn’t be sure due to the area being underwater.
He explained that the material underneath the sidewalk has been washed out, creating a cavity. “The extent of that, we have no idea until we remove the sidewalk.”
There also is erosion behind the sidewalk along the seawall, and Grider said a nearby tree may be lost.
The high water also has damaged the city’s crank up docks at Third Street, with concerns about the docks at the Lakeport Yacht Club. The clubhouse, which actually is owned by the city but leased to the club, is being sandbagged by club members, he said.
Grider said Public Works staff had set up a water wall which wasn’t intended to hold back the water but rather to break the wave action, which can tear up the park’s expensive sod.
On Friday, when waves were battering the park, Grider said the park’s 3,500-pound, 8-foot-long concrete benches were knocked over and pushed several feet into the picnic tables. The benches remain underwater, said Grider, so he wasn’t sure of the extent to which they were damaged.
Grider said the decomposed granite used for the picnic area and the center promenade of the park has all been washed onto the park’s lawn, and the bark for the playgrounds is floating away.
He offered what he stressed was a rough, ballpark estimate of damage to the park ranging between $200,000 and $250,000.
“That’s just at Library Park,” he added.
After the meeting, Grider told Lake County News that he was not concerned about Library Park’s sidewalk collapsing. “It’s stable at this point in time.”
Still, as a precautionary measure, his staff has fenced off the entire area. “You just never know. There could be a collapse.”
The prospect of a collapse, with the seawall falling over, is the worst-case scenario, Grider said.
In other updates city officials gave at Tuesday night’s meeting, Rasmussen said police were looking at closing a portion of Lakeshore Boulevard at Beach Lane and Lange Street on Wednesday morning after the Lakeport Unified School District’s morning bus route is completed. He said he already had notified the superintendent.
Rasmussen said he had officers working overtime to help patrol the evacuated neighborhoods. “We’re going to make all possible efforts to protect those peoples’ properties.”
Earlier in the day, Rasmussen had released an update on the evacuation order, notifying people that they would be arrested if they were found in the evacuated areas. He said he has the authority to make those arrests in the specific areas because the city declared it a disaster area.
Grider also gave the council an update on issues with stormwater inflow into the city’s sewer system at Willopoint, which had necessitated plugging both ends of the sewer main at the trailer park. He said pumper trucks have been required to keep the sewer system from overflowing because of the park sewer issues.
He said the park has been notified and is cognizant of the problems, which Grider said included a caved-in sewer lateral. Once the current crisis is over, it’s going to be addressed, Grider added.
“Every time we have a flood event like this, we have this exact same problem, and nothing ever gets fixed,” he said, adding that a previous flood caused Willopoint’s sewer system to overflow, which ultimately cost the city millions of dollars.
Mayor Stacey Mattina lauded city staff for working around the clock to respond to the situation, and for being at the emergency operations center through the night to answer phone calls and respond to concerned community members.
Silveira said anyone with questions or concerns can call the 24-hour information hotline the city has set up at 707-263-5614. People also can call and request checks on friends or relatives. City staff planned to be at the center through the night once again.
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