By Patric Hedlund, TME

New emergency plans and procedures for a sudden influx of snow play visitors to the Mountain Communities are being developed.

Fort Tejon California Highway Patrol’s Lieutenant Curtis Fouyer has hosted two interagency meetings this month to coordinate the many overlapping organizations that provide public safety in this tri-county region that is also surrounded by a national forest jurisdiction.

Have a look at the photo above and imagine this quarter-mile stretch of Frazier Mountain Park Road duplicated all the way to the top of Mount Piños. That is what the primary east-west arteries of the Mountain Communities looked like on January 23, 2010. Gridlock.

CHP estimates 60,000 snow play visitors arrived in that single weekend to enjoy…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

What 60,000 snow visitors on our roads look like

This is Frazier Mountain Park Road on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010, a weekend when 60,000 snow visitors—according to CHP estimates—appeared on Mountain Community roads. It took 75 minutes to drive from Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec to Ace Hardware in Frazier Park. Emergency vehicles would have been unable to get through if there had been a life-threatening emergency.

Fort Tejon CHP Lieutenant Curtis Fouyer laughs easily, but is serious about mountain residents preparing for a safe and fun winter driving season.

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This is part of the December 16, 2016 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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