NEVADA CITY, Calif. — In Nevada City, 10,000 people remain without power after a winter storm dumped feet of snow and brought gusty winds to the area.
Many residents are unable to get to their homes while others have been stuck inside them for multiple days.
For Jennifer Heatherman, her power isn’t expected to be restored until March 7.
“The power is still out it’s been out since Sunday,” said Heatherman.
She lives two miles outside of Nevada City and her family have been stuck inside their home for six days.
ABC10 made 3 attempts to reach her. The first, up Bloomfield Road which was blocked by PG&E doing work to restore downed power lines.
Jennifer is a mom who’s also four months pregnant. As former member of the military she describes it as “it looks like a bomb went off on that road”.
We then tried driving Rock Creek Road until unplowed conditions became impassable and a third possibility was blocked by a down tree. If ABC10 couldn’t get to her, Jennifer is worried about who else couldn't.
“[I'm] very scared because pregnancy complications can happen in the second trimester and they are usually pretty severe situations. I don’t know where a medi-vac would land near here,” said Heatherman.
It’s only going to get worse with the next storm expected to arrive Saturday.
The community came together to help two elderly neighbors get evacuated. The Heatherman’s will be evacuating to a neighbor’s home ahead of the next storm because they only have 10% of their propane left. At one point they were considering snow shoeing to Nevada City with their 2-and-half-year-old.
“We’ve had to turn off our generator during the daylight hours. We don’t have a generator going right now and we only turn it on to keep the pipes from freezing,” said Heatherman.
George, who is a co-owner of Lika’s Quarter Café, says they can’t go home because it snowed over and there is no power. They are commuting over an hour each day from Sacramento to the café.
“It’s devastating for businesses, we are doing about a tenth of our normal business. Unfortunately for my employees, it’s very difficult on them because we can’t have them in because we aren’t making enough to pay them," said George. "I don’t know if I’ll make rent this month.”
The stranded families were able to report their situation to 211 and PG&E. What they are asking for is more propane to be delivered, if possible, by work crews.
