Palomar Mountain News

Helping a property owner move a trailer sure opened my eyes.  My husband Don, and son Nathan, spent a couple hours, trimming along the road.  They had permission from the property owners to cut trees, trim branches, and brush.  (They didn’t count on the poison oak – that showed up later!)  Then Don made 8 trips with his tractor delivering and compacting eight tons of decomposed granite.  That DG filled in some huge ruts that would have made it impossible to get this trailer out. The trimming made a difference, but as you can see, it was very close quarters.

The trailer was 12 feet wide by 24 feet long and 13 feet high.  Sharing the video below with Mountain News Subscribers was not my intent when I grabbed my phone to take it.  Coming up the road was pretty scary and once Don started out, it was total commitment.  They had to take the trailer out through a pole gate. When the gate was measured, they had four inches of clearance on each side of the trailer.  Don did have Sam Taylor out there with his welder just in case one side of the gate needed to go away.  They made it through the gate but it was pretty tight!

When I was filming the video below, the thought came to me, “Wow, this trailer is about the same size as the fire trucks up here!!!”  A fire truck on a call could not have possibly stopped to do all the trimming on the way in.   There is no way they could have even made it through the initial entrance of this road without cutting branches and filling the ruts.  There are four cabins at the end of this road that some fire trucks couldn’t possibly get to.

Fire trucks aren’t the only trucks that can not get down quite a few of our roads these days.  New requirements for propane and septic trucks have companies needing much bigger vehicles.  There are many cabins those new trucks can not get to now to service properties until road grooming is done.

With the frequent rain we’ve had, our trees have really shot up.  “Trees are just like children, they grow up so fast!”  I’m suggesting neighbors work together, evaluate the road access and do some spring grooming!

Our Fire Safe Council has some grant funds available that may help, too.

We’re in this together!    Bonnie Phelps