After Flooding And Landslides, Bay Area Braces As 3 More Storms Arrive

(KPIX 5) -- While we were enjoying a break from the wet weather, another three storms began barreling toward the Bay Area.

Three storms are lining up in the Pacific and that could mean more trouble for the already saturated ground.

The past week has given crews much needed time to get caught up with repairs and cleanup all over Santa Cruz, but time is ticking.

The recent storms have left a 200-foot-tall, 200-year-old Redwood leaning severely to one side. Its root ball is lifting up and destroying parts of Vine Hill Road. And it's leaning directly in line with Larry Keller's property.

Crews said there was no saving it. And so for a tree that had been here since well before the Civil War, it was time to go.

Keller said he thinks his house is safe now.

And so it went all over the county, crews playing catch up to the Pineapple Express, before the next one hits.

Remember the huge slide on state Highway 17 that crushed the TV news van? It took days to clean up more than 700 yards of rock and debris.

To get ready for Wednesday's storms, Caltrans installed a net to catch anything else that might come down the same section.

The temporary netting will stop boulders up to about the size of a beach ball, anything bigger than that, good luck.

Devin Porr with Caltrans said, "But if we have a major landslide, like occurred last Monday, there's very few systems that can protect against that anyway."