Following a weekend of heavy rain and extreme winds from an atmospheric river that hit the state, the Palo Alto community is recovering from fallen trees, power outages and damage caused by the storm.
English teacher Marc Tolentino said he struggled with a lack of both electrical and Internet power yesterday.
“The power went out around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and shortly after, the Internet went out,” Tolentino said. “Normally, the power doesn’t affect the Wi-Fi and I can just hop on my phone or get work done electronically. But there was a point where there was no power, I couldn’t open the fridge because all the food was going to spoil, and [there was] no Wi-Fi.”
According to sophomore Dorin Flynn, the road conditions were treacherous while driving up Interstate 5 from Newport Beach to Palo Alto, roughly 400 miles.
“The roads were slippery, and it was really windy,” Flynn said. “My mom’s car was getting blown in the road and there were tumbleweeds. There was also flooding in some areas — but mostly off the road — until we got back into San Jose, where there was flooding and traffic on the highway.”
At Palo Alto High School, the storm also caused fallen branches, building leaks and large puddles. According to Assistant Principal Jerry Berkson, the school is taking steps to mitigate any further damage.
“We have broken tree branches that are sitting on top of the 200s building right now,” Berkson said. “We’ll take care of that as soon as possible.”
Berkson said the area in between the 200s building, 100s building and library has been blocked off to protect students from being potentially harmed by the eucalyptus trees.
“You never know when there’s one [branch] that snaps and falls,” Berkson said. “We’re past the big part of the storm, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Latest City of Palo Alto updates on the storm can be found here.
