Logs cover Crescent Beach Road

Matt Toma woke up at 3:30 a.m. Jan. 2, looked out his window, and noticed that the occasional car passing along Crescent Beach Road was slowing way down. “I figured something was going on,” said Toma, who has lived across the road from Crescent Beach since last April.

At 4:30 a.m., Toma’s curiosity got the best of him, so he grabbed a flashlight and ventured outside to take a closer look.

What he saw was nothing short of stunning: waves breaking on the road, carrying many logs and pieces of driftwood over the entire surface, and leaving power poles completely surrounded by the water. Toma described the scene as both scary and exciting, although he never worried that the water would travel all the way to his house.

“Exciting!” echoed Joan Rorabaugh, who has lived across the road from Crescent Beach for the past 21 years. Rorabaugh couldn’t believe the sight of driftwood covering the entire road. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said, admitting that she found it enjoyable. “I’m from Maine,” Joan Rorabaugh added. “I like storms.”

Some of the highest tides in recent memory, plus winds that gusted to 65 miles per hour, created the show provided by Mother Nature. It was around 6 a.m. when the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department received a call regarding the situation on Crescent Beach Road and closed it to vehicular traffic. The sheriff’s department also contacted the San Juan County Public Works Department about the situation.

Public Works equipment operator Jerry Rivas was one of the first to check out the road from behind the wheel of a county truck. He traveled from the east, and with his side window down. The next thing Rivas knew, his face and eyes were being sprayed with water. It blinded him for a split second, but he made it through safely.

Later that morning, equipment operator Tom Vinson cleared the road of debris, using a grader and tow boom. Orcas Power and Light Company employees, meanwhile, checked the power poles to make sure they weren’t damaged by the storm. The road reopened around noon.

But the storm inflicted some damage to the road shoulder facing the beach. “About 1600 feet of shoulder is pretty well gone,” said Public Works Department foreman Jerry Todd, adding that repair work will be carried out in the next month or so. “As soon as there is more daylight,” Todd said. The job should take a day or two to complete.

Prior to 1979, storms crashing across Crescent Beach Road were a regular occurrence. That year, however, the county raised the road by about a foot, and since then things have been comparatively quiet.

Nevertheless, in the early ‘80s a storm destroyed a portion of the road, Todd said.

For decades, county officials have discussed the possibility of closing Crescent Beach Road permanently and building another one to the north of the existing road, but south of Mount Baker Road. Given the state of the county coffers, however, it’s just talk, Todd said.

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