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Daniel Pezold, 74, walks past his former home in Blue Jay on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023. Pezold’s home was heavily damaged by snow during this past winters storms which dumped record snowfall in the area. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Autumn approaches. The weather cools. And communities in the San Bernardino Mountains continue to rebuild after late snowstorms gave them a historic hammering six months ago. Recovery has been uneven.
“I don’t know what people do who don’t have money, who don’t have resources, who don’t have friends who will take them in,” said Terri Ostlie, who lives in Crestline. “But winter is coming.”
The retired kindergarten teacher has lived in the mountain town for seven years. She had to abandon her house on March 1 after the crushing weight of a week’s worth of accumulated snow began to separate the walls, ceiling and roof from each other.
“A contractor came out and said ‘Whoo, this is the worst that I’ve ever seen,’ which you don’t want to hear,” said Ostlie, who now lives with friends.
Her insurance company denied her claim, saying that damage from snow and ice weren’t covered by her policy.
So Ostlie drained her savings to rebuild her house. She had hoped to get a Small Business Administration loan to repay the money she’s taken out of her IRAs before she’s hit with hefty tax penalties. But the federal and county governments are fighting over the terms of her loan, she said.
“I am caught between the county government and the federal government and I am absolutely helpless,” Ostlie said. “If it’s not funded, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
‘We’re struggling’
Ostlie isn’t alone in having to do everything she can to keep her home.
“I’ve talked to 25, 30 people who’ve lost their homes,” said Bill Hughes. “They’re homeless now.”
A 25-year Crestline resident, Hughes manages the local hardware store.
“It was one of the only places open in town” during the storms, he said. “We were kind of the hub of the community.”
The storms reinforced something for Hughes that many mountain residents have long believed: They can only count on each other.
“We were let down by everybody,” he said. “Nobody cares about us up here.”
At the top of his list are all levels of government.
“All the people I pay taxes to my whole life, they don’t care,” Hughes said. “We’re struggling, legit struggling.”
And that includes him. The weight of the snow collapsed his deck. Hughes can’t get federal assistance because the deck isn’t considered part of his house. And the family doesn’t have the money to repair it. Hughes’ wife, snowed in and unable to drive down off the mountain to get to work in the days after the snowstorms in late February, was fired from her job.
Rita Nelson, who was displaced from her Running Springs home by the storm, and has been living with her boyfriend in San Bernardino ever since, works for a mobile fingerprinting service. On a daily basis, she sees how many homes are still damaged, especially those belonging to older people and those with lower incomes.
“There’s so much that still needs to be done,” Nelson said. “I don’t think they can handle another battering this winter. It’s a really scary thought.”
At a trailer park in the Valley of Enchantment on Friday, she said she saw older residents living in partially collapsed homes that they can’t afford to leave.
“Almost every mobile home I saw there today had a for sale sign on it,” she added. “They just want out.”
Much of this could have been avoided if San Bernardino County had acted faster, according to former Blue Jay resident Daniel Pezold.
“They knew that a huge storm was coming. They should have had snowplow equipment up here. It wasn’t. And so, no food trucks, no medicine, no gas, no diesel. So anybody that had Bobcats that could snowplow couldn’t put diesel fuel in them,” he said. “And I blame the county for that. I still do.”
Officials largely praised the county’s response during and after the storms. But at the March 14 Board of Supervisors meeting, then-county CEO Leonard Hernandez conceded that the response may have been lacking.
“As for the band that struck the Crestline and Lake Arrowhead areas, we are working to understand whether adequate preparation was accomplished and if there would have been any way to ensure a smooth and quick return to normal,” he said at the time.
The supervisors directed county staff to prepare a comprehensive report on the storm and the county’s response by mid-September.
After the storm destroyed Pezold’s Blue Jay home, it would have cost him more money to clear the property than the land was worth, he said. He sold his home of 10 years and bought a house in Crestline.
Lisa Griggs has lived in Blue Jay for two years. Coming from Temecula, the winter storm was a shock.
“People were freaking out. They were trapped. They didn’t have formula, they didn’t have diapers. Their windows were caving in,” Griggs said.
So she and others across the mountain communities pitched in to help, delivering food and medicine to their neighbors.
“If we’re going to get any help, we’re going to have to do it for each other, or we’re going to be left for dead,” Griggs said.
‘Light switch off’ on mountain economy
As residents work to get their homes repaired before winter returns to the mountains, local businesses are likewise struggling to recover.
On March 1, heavy snow caved in the roof of Goodwin & Son’s Market, Crestline’s only grocery store. Six months later, the supermarket remains closed.
“We started construction last week, constructing the roof structure,” said Mike Johnstone, Goodwin’s vice president.
Work on the interior is scheduled to start in December. The company hopes to reopen the store in March 2024.
“It’s a very ambitious goal, but we’re trying to open as soon as possible because the community doesn’t have a grocery store,” Johnstone said.
The market’s new roof will still be flat, but much, much stronger, he said.
“We’re going from (being able to support) 75 pounds per square foot up to 130 pounds per square roof,” Johnstone added. “The contractor has said he’s never seen a grocery store built like this, and he’s been building grocery stores for 40 years. This store is going to be really strong.”
In the meantime, Goodwin’s employees operate pop-up stores around town several times a week.
“We’re trying to give the community something until we can get open,” Johnstone said.
The recovery has been quicker for Lake Arrowhead Deli.
The restaurant — maybe the oldest still operating in Lake Arrowhead — suffered structural damage, with 8 feet of snow causing the roof’s main support beam to crack during the February storm.
“I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never ever seen it snow that much,” co-owner Sean Doyle said. “I mean, we’re used to snow. We love snow. We’re all snowboarders, skiers, we all have our cars that are four-wheel drive. But for it to snow every day, all day long, for like 12 days in a row, it’s crazy.”
After months of repair work, they reopened in July. Business at the lakeside restaurant is almost back to normal, according to Doyle.
“It was great to open before the Fourth of July,” he said. “Because if we missed the summer, it would have been bad.”
Running Springs resident Jennifer Celise Hurlbut and her husband haven’t been so lucky.
The storm closed their store, Rustic Arts Cabin Outfitters in Running Springs, for almost a month. According to Hurlbut, March 2023 sales were a tenth of what they were in March 2022.
And the sales still haven’t returned.
“Tourism never bounced back,” Hurlbut said. “It’s like a light switch turned off on the mountain economy.”
The store’s July sales were down 53% from last year at the same time, Hurlbut said. The couple had to lay off nearly all their employees. At the end of September, they’re closing their store for good.
“There really is no funding for small business to tap into,” Hurlbut said. “If there were, we would have been able to survive.”
Hurlbut has taken a job off the mountain. It’s part of a mountain exodus she says has been underway for a while.
“It seems like a lot of people, once they’re able to move off the mountain, they don’t return,” Hurlbut said.
And once her youngest child graduates high school, the whole family is likely to leave.
“There really isn’t a reason for us to stay on the mountain,” she said. They’re already thinking of potentially moving to Julian or Idyllwild. “There are a lot of mountain towns that are driven by tourism that are still thriving.”
‘Mountain has my heart’
It’s been less than five months since Bear Mountain officially called an end to the winter 2022-23 snow season. In three weeks, the resort will be hiring for the coming winter season.
And thoughts inevitably turn to whether February’s winter storms were a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence — or the shape of things to come.
“I think it’s gonna be in the back of everyone’s minds now every winter,” Lake Arrowhead Deli co-owner Doyle said.
Griggs isn’t sure she can handle another winter storm of the magnitude witnessed in February.
“I have seriously considered just closing up my house and going to stay with someone else for the winter,” Griggs said. “I don’t want to get stuck up there again. I don’t want to get trapped up there again.”
Hughes, who is cynical about anyone coming to the mountain communities’ rescue if disaster strikes again, rejects the idea of moving away.
“The mountain has my heart. I’ve been here my whole life,” Hughes said. “I’m not leaving the mountain.”
Goodwin & Son’s is still open to the sky. But Johnstone isn’t worried about its future.
“I don’t get nervous,” Johnstone said. “God is going to take care of us. He’s been good to us so far.”
Among those not intending to go anywhere are Cedarpines Park residents Rosemary, 81, and Daniel Jagt, 85. The couple has lived in the mountains for more than 30 years.
During the winter storms, they spent four and a half days without power, cooking over a camp stove inside their house and warming themselves with their “very inefficient” fireplace, Rosemary Jagt said. The couple’s front door was blocked by snow almost until April.
“Everybody was extremely helpful, everybody was checking on everybody,” Jagt said. “One neighbor brought us duck eggs, another brought us chicken eggs.”
Even with the prospect of another winter storm hitting their quiet corner of the mountain, the Jagts aren’t going anywhere.
”I know someday I’m going to have to move off the mountain,” Rosemary Jagt said. “But I’m going to hang on as long as I can.”
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