By Clarence Cromwell
A winter storm that assailed the Santa Clara Valley last week dumped more than 5 inches of rain on Saratoga in 24 hours and lashed the city with strong winds that toppled trees, loosened power lines and deadened telephones for thousands of Saratogans.
According to city officials, 6,000 Saratoga homes were without power after the storm. Most regained power by the weekend, but power was not restored to all customers until late Monday, Dec. 18.
Telephone service was also hampered. The first lines went out on Sun., Dec. 10, and about 1,200 Pacific Bell customers still lacked service Thursday afternoon.
Scott Blakey, a PG&E spokesman, said power was knocked out for so long because Saratoga power lines suffered more damage than those in communities to the north because high winds blowing through the hills south of town on Dec. 12 tore down numerous phone lines and poles.
"There's a little matter of 100 miles of transmission line that's vanished [around the state]," Blakey said. "Ten miles of line in your area have gone. I think probably the amount of damage overnight was worse than either of the storms we had in January or March."
The utility also lost 32 transmission towers in the northern half of the state. None were close to Saratoga, but Blakey said one reason customers here waited so long for power was that re-erecting the towers was a higher priority.
"To some degree, the costs of this are shared by customers and shareholders," Blakey said. He said a Public Utilities Commission fund will help pay for some of the damage.
Although a smaller number of phones, those of about 1,800 customers, was knocked out by the storm in Santa Clara County, Pacific Bell officials said they also had some difficulty repairing their lines.
The company brought in 200 additional service technicians from Southern California to help repair lines, but phone lines continued to fail as others were fixed or dried out, because rainwater seeped into underground lines.
As of Thursday, 1,200 customers had phone problems, said Beverly Butler, a Pacific Bell spokesperson. Customers reported problems such as faint dial tones, static-ridden lines or no service at all.
At that time, Butler said service would be restored by the weekend.
City officials on Dec. 12 set up an emergency operations center at City Hall to handle reports of storm damage. The center would also serve as headquarters for rescue efforts if the city declared a disaster, as it did in the January 1995 storm.
City crews had already been at work clearing roads of tree limbs and repairing storm damage since the evening of Dec. 11, when the heavy rain began.
They removed fallen tree limbs and trees from roads and alleviated floods by clearing storm drains.
The city kept the emergency operations center open with one phone, sometimes without electricity, until 3:45 p.m. Tuesday.
The Saratoga Fire District received 15 calls involving dangling or sparking power lines or exploding transformers. One downed wire closed Fourth Street, near Big Basin Way, until Tuesday afternoon.
Around the city, residents and businesses battled the storm on other fronts.
At St. Archangel Michael Church, winds blew the tarpaper from the roof of the auditorium, causing a temporary indoor rainstorm that threatened to buckle the wooden floor of the building. Three church employees with mops sopped up the water Tuesday.
The winds also blew a $4,000 awning off the front of the Dolce Vita restaurant on Big Basin Way.
The storm drenched Saratoga with 7.23 inches between Sunday evening, when the rain started, and Tuesday afternoon, said Gary Reed, district manager of the Saratoga Cemetery District, where the city's rain gauge is kept. Most of it fell on Monday.
A total of 5.54 inches of rain came down between 8 a.m. Monday and the same time Tuesday. Another 1.16 inches fell before 4 p.m. Wednesday, bringing the season's total rainfall to 7.51 inches since the July 1 beginning of the rainfall season. More rain on Thursday was expected to add to the total.
Madronia Cemetery has kept rainfall records for Saratoga at least 48 years.
The water and lack of power shut down local schools Dec. 12.
Foothill, Argonaut and Saratoga elementary schools and Redwood Middle School were closed because they had no power or phones. There were leaks and some flooding at Saratoga, Foothill and Redwood schools, and a tree fell in the parking lot at Redwood.
Parents were notified before school via phone trees to keep kids home, but some didn't get the word and had to be sent home by staff stationed at the schools.
Saratoga High School was closed Tuesday for lack of power. The lights came back on at 5 p.m., Principal Kevin Skelly said. The high school also canceled a holiday music concert slated for both an afternoon assembly and a concert that evening.
Rain kept some voters away from the polls on Tuesday. The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Office first estimated that 30 percent to 35 percent of voters would turn out.
Of 28,5972 voters registered in the county, 28.3 percent, or 81,000 of them, cast ballots.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, Wednesday, December 20, 1995.
©1995 Metro Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.