The next time there’s a traffic jam on Highway 101 it may not be because of an accident or a little resurfacing. The drought could be to blame.
The Central Coast still fosters native Monterey pines, but perhaps not for long. Over prolonged drought, the trees are in trouble. With select groves growing from Monterey to Baja California, the once beautiful but now stressed trees are a beacon for fungus farming beetles that spread pine pitch canker.
Like landowners and grounds managers all over the region, California’s transportation dept. (Caltrans) has to evaluate the situation and often remove the dead and dying vegetation.
Along a busy roadway such as the Hwy 101 stretch between Arroyo Grande, Pismo Beach and SLO the task is easier said than done, although with careful planning the process of turning several tons of dead foliage into mulch can be made to look simple enough.
On Sept. 13, two lanes of northbound 101 became one and the frustrated drivers started to back up as Caltrans crews worked to take down two large pines on the embankment exactly half-a-mile south of the 227/ Grand Ave. exit.
The SLO City News was invited to take a closer look behind the orange cones while the crew, overseen by Jay Karl, tree crew supervisor with Caltrans’ District 5, chained up limbs and took a chainsaw up a cherry picker.
“We can’t do this at night,” Karl explains after quick introductions and showing off what looks to be one of the beetles responsible for the destruction, “Even with floodlights the shadows would too dangerous.”
Aside from the dubious mental image of swinging branches from great heights in the dark next to a man with running chainsaw, there are the cars, zipping by at 45 to 60 mph, and not all of them paying attention. Instead, the work is done on a beautiful morning Sept. 13 – before the heat wave. And while the work is still dangerous by nature the crews observe more safety precautions than might be expected of your neighborhood tree surgeon.
Clearing out a “drop zone” from the brush along the road and positioning equipment all must be done before the cutting even starts and all while observing safety standards for operating inside a lane of one of the California’s busiest North-South conduits.
There’s not a member of the highly trained crew that’s been doing this for less than five years, but for newcomers, the spectacle can be unnerving – with often confused, distracted or just plain pissed off motorists streaming around the cones. Sometimes they honk at the workers, eachother or perhaps even the CHP officer posted at the end of the pass.
While that is simply unwise, not to mention disrespectful under the circumstances sometimes they do worse.
“Those cones are 15 to 20 pounds,” said Karl, “Sometimes they get clipped…I don’t know if that would be fun to do, I wouldn’t want to hit one in a car…. but if 15 pounds comes flying at you, it hurts.”
The precautions taken to avoid accidents, or at least protect workers if there is one, include parking the behemoth trucks at intervals that would be nearly impossible for a vehicle at speed to careen through without being blocked. The masses of steel and plastic, not to mention the cones and CHP officers posted provide some piece of mind for the guys that are otherwise occupied being lumber jacks in a very public venue.
Never the less, general road safety is never far from the mind of Caltrans District 5 Public Information Officer Colin Jones.
When leaving the relative comfort of the District’s office on Higuera Street in SLO, Jones’s mind turned to the recent death of an electrician in Southern California.
District 7 Transportation Electrician Jorge Lopez, was killed Sept. 1, less than a fortnight before the tree crew operation. Lopez did not have the benefit of all the precautions when, Caltrans officials say, he was struck by a big rig that crossed onto the shoulder of the highway as he was standing outside his vehicle on State Route 14 near Palmdale.
“We’re definitely on a ‘Work Zone Alert’ mindset right now in the wake of the L.A. area fatality,” Jones said, noting that the average is two to three such incidents a year, “but that is just Caltrans. We have lots of contractors in the field and tow-truck operators. People like that are in the field everyday in danger.”
So far, since the tree related efforts began in earnest in 2013, tree crews have not been on the casualty list, but the sight on the roadside in Arroyo Grande has near limitless potential to be duplicated. It only took 5 ½ hours to clear the two dead trees, but approximately 500 have been tagged in District 5.
According to the agency, over on the central and southern Sierra foothills highway right of ways, 25,000 dead trees have identified as potential threats to the roadway.
As of Sept. 2016, Caltrans has allocated $46 million worth of tree removal contracts across 10 counties.
