SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — More than 50,000 people signed up for the city’s Alert San Diego messages to get updates on emergencies nearby. Now that the storm has passed through San Diego, some are wondering if the region went overboard with storm preparations.
We brought that question to city leaders...
“The short answer is no," said Mayor Todd Gloria. "What we did absolutely prevented additional damage to the community.”
Emergency Manager Chris Heiser says they listened to the experts, and prepared accordingly.
“I don’t control the weather, no one does, but you have to make decisions based on as it’s been expressed," Heiser said. "Science, and the best information you have at the time.”
Leaders thanked San Diegans for listening to weather warnings and staying home. As a result, they say this tropical storm probably had less of an impact than the storms this past winter.
"Here we are saying we’ll open schools tomorrow, power will be on shortly, and garbage is being picked up, I think that’s a good day in local government,” Gloria said.
The San Diego Unified School District also took precautions. The district delayed the first day of school for almost 100,000 students to assess infrastructure after the storm.
“We’re taking out damaged furniture, damaged carpets right now, any supplies, things of that nature,” said Sabrina Bazzo, SDUSD School Board President.
Bazzo says a few classrooms will have to relocate because of flooding, but wouldn't specify which schools were impacted.
"San Diego Unified has a lot of older schools although they're perfectly fine, they work great when there's not weather."
Overall, the County distributed more than 100,000 sandbags this weekend. At its peak, SDG&E had 15,000 outages, and the city says it had 147 fallen trees. But leaders agree in the end, there was minimal damage.
