San Bernardino Residents Desperate After Heavy Snow

A vehicle attempts to drive along snow-covered Conaway Avenue in downtown Grass Valley, Calif., during a snowstorm, on Feb. 28, 2023. Elias Funez/The Union via AP

Residents in parts of California, especially the San Bernardino Mountains, are battling heavy storms, with roads blocked following large amounts of snow and people finding it difficult to secure food and medical supplies.

“A life and death situation is unfolding in San Bernardino Mountains after this week’s powerful storm,” ABC reporter David Gonzalez said in a March 5 Twitter post that was accompanied by a video of him exploring Crestline.

“Made it to Crestline, California. No Joke. I didn’t realize how bad it was up here. It’s like a warzone. I just interviewed a guy carrying MREs up a mountain because he has no food,” Gonzalez said in the video. MRE refers to individual rations used by the U.S. armed forces.

“There’s people writing ‘stop’ on the snow, saying ‘plough us’, ‘help us’ because the roads look like this,” he said while pointing to massive amounts of snow covering the region. “People, sadly, are probably dying up here, which is crazy to think about.”

In a video uploaded to Twitter on March 2, Michelle Calkins, a resident of Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains, said that communities in Crestline, Lake Arrowhead, and Running Springs are “screaming and begging for help from our state.”

According to Calkins, many mothers in the region are low on formula and have been calling the emergency hotline. “But no one is taking us serious [sic],” she said, adding that several people are also running low on medical supplies like insulin.

“Our county declared a state of emergency but doesn’t seem to be taking it serious [sic]. People are trapped in their homes and have been for now more than five days because the streets are not ploughed. The snow has now accumulated up to about nine feet. On those streets, people cannot walk anymore.”

Newsom Exit

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency on March 1. However, the declaration came only a week after storms severely affected residents in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Newsom attracted severe criticism after reportedly leaving the state amid the crisis.

“Californians are trapped in their homes without power. More storms are on the way. And Governor Newsom has just left the state for ‘personal travel’,” Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) said in a March 3 Twitter post.

Newsom had returned back to the state “per his press office,” according to a March 6 Twitter post by Emily Hoeven, a reporter at San Francisco Chronicle. Newsom had taken a personal trip to Baja, California, a spokesperson told the reporter.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection as well as other state agencies have deployed 24 crews to aid communities impacted by the winter storms, “including 12 crews committed to the San Bernardino Storm incident,” Hoeven said in a March 6 post.

Snowy Conditions

According to AccuWeather, a weather forecasting service, more heavy snow is expected to affect California this week.

“The storm track will be well to the north of Southern California, and most mountainous areas will not get the heavy snow that northern parts of the state will … There can, however, be small accumulations of less than 6 inches through the Transverse ranges,” said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Heather Zehr, according to a March 3 post.

Regions above 3,000 feet are expected to get fresh snowfall of two to five feet in total. Heaviest snowfall is expected to be in Northern California regions like the Sierra Nevada, estimated to occur in a few waves through Wednesday.

“Winds won’t be quite as strong this go around, compared to the last round of storms, but can still be strong enough to contribute to poor visibility and cause blowing and drifting snow,” Zehr said.