Highway 101 flood in Marin prompts calls for better communication

Local leaders are calling for greater coordination with state agencies after historic floods paralyzed traffic in central Marin.

The California Department of Transportation and the California Highway Patrol said their teams were aware of the projected high tides and surging storm this month, and they responded swiftly. Rapidly rising water that inundated Highway 101 prompted Caltrans to shut down all lanes in both directions at Lucky Drive around noon on Jan. 3.

“More crews were dispatched in both the North Bay and the entire Bay Area to deal with the potential flooding issues,” said Matt O’Donnell, a Caltrans spokesperson. “They worked to clear the highways as quickly and safely as possible.”

O’Donnell said Caltrans crews communicated the closure to the CHP and posted to its electronic message signs along the highway to alert drivers.

The incident was also fed to the agency’s QuickMap website, where drivers can see closures throughout the Caltrans highway network, O’Donnell said.

The CHP issued a traffic advisory shortly after it was notified and posted to social media at 12:18 p.m.

“Not everyone uses X, or Facebook or Instagram, but our CAD communications is linked to Google Maps and other mapping systems, and that updates when we issue alerts,” CHP Officer Arthur Tellez said, referring to the computer-aided dispatch system.

Caltrans opened a lane in each direction around 2:30 p.m. and all lanes were opened at 4:30 p.m., O’Donnell said.

County officials said the traffic buildup started before the highway was closed and called for better coordination between the county and the state agencies, which oversee messaging on state highways.

“One of my broader priorities is to enable residents to be able to make better choices,” said Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, whose District 4 includes Corte Madera and the section of Highway 101 that closed.

“There is opportunity for better coordination of those messages,” Rodoni said. “I think we failed that this time around. I don’t think we had good communication.”

Steven Torrence, the county’s director of the Marin County Office of Emergency Management, agreed.

“The County continues to encourage partner jurisdictions to use AlertMarin for wide-scale or regional incidents so that people across multiple cities and towns in Marin County receive consistent and coordinated information,” Torrence said in an email.

He said his office, which received no requests to help spread the word countywide, will “lean in” to additional alerts in the future when local or state officials are overwhelmed.

“Historical data alone can no longer be relied upon to predict where floodwaters will stop, nor can we assume that one to two inches of rainfall will not result in significantly greater impacts,” he wrote. “Both the community and government agencies must be prepared to take proactive action, and enhancements to preparedness and response must be incorporated into all planning efforts.”

Said Rodoni: “King tides and atmospheric rain events are part of our weather patterns in December and January. We all need to get better prepared.”

IJ reporter Steven Rosenfeld contributed to this report.