Nine people were rescued from the Salinas Riverbed in Paso Robles Thursday night. It was the only swift water rescue reported between Paso Robles City Fire and Emergency Services and CAL FIRE USAR Team members.
With high winds and heavy rainfall impacting north county this week, Paso Robles City Fire Battalion Chief Nate Bass says they were upstaffed and ready to go, however, calls for service were minimal.
One of those calls involved his own team of swift water rescue trained personnel with Paso Robles City Fire and Emergency Services for the Salinas Riverbed rescue.
“We released our additional upstaffing this morning at 8 a.m," Bass explained. "[We were] going to do another lap of our river corridor [with the drone] to kind of see how far down the river has subsided. It has subsided significantly since yesterday's peak.”
The Salinas Riverbed is known to fill up quickly when it rains. Because of that, the Paso City Fire Department used drones earlier this week to alert people in and around the riverbed of the incoming storm.
“We had a significant increase in inflow within the river, but it was pretty minimal," Bass said. "[It had] minimal impacts to the city itself. Pretty average day.”
CAL FIRE Station 30 responds to calls outside of Paso’s jurisdiction. They also had additional staffing but were not called out for any water rescues. Station 30 responded to 66 calls throughout the county. Eight of those were traffic collisions, but there were no major injuries reported.
“Considering the rainfall yesterday and how much we got, it was surprising that the call volume wasn't there," CAL FIRE Fire Captain Josh Lorenzo said. "In the years past... they were pretty traumatic to our county. But yesterday we were pretty fortunate for [minimal calls]. The volume [of rain] was there, the calls weren’t.”
Salinas Avenue in Templeton flooded on Thurday, but by Friday morning, the water had receded, allowing residents access to their driveways once again.
The county public works website shows all roads impacted by the storm are now back open in northern San Luis Obispo County.
