Rain-Damaged Roads Exact Toll on Car Tires, Suspensions

PALO ALTO (KPIX) -- The heaviest rain may be leaving but the pain remains for drivers navigating the countless roads across the Bay Area suffering storm damage.

Heavy rains can create new potholes or exacerbate existing ones.

"I was driving down 280 and exited the freeway. Immediately, an indicator light came on in my car, 'You have a flat tire. Pull over immediately,'" said driver April Bosworth.

Bosworth was part of a long line of customers at America's Tires in Palo Alto where cars with damaged or flattened tires kept coming in even after the rain had tapered off.

"A lot of what we've worked on today is people who hit a pothole or curb," manager Max Van Osdol said. "People can't see it and so they run over it thinking it's a pothole. But really there's a three or four inch hole in the road and they run over it and it pops their tire or bends their wheel."

Work crews across the Bay Area scrambled to fix damage to roads and highways.

In Fremont, Caltrans closed two southbound lanes of Interstate 680 to fill deep gouges in the pavement where the rain had eroded the asphalt.

And, across the bay in Mountain View, work crews quickly repaired a bone-rattling pothole that had opened on Miramonte Avenue.