A series of winter storms rolled across the North Coast since the holiday weekend, devastating the area’s infrastructure

HUMBOLDT COUNTY, Calif.(KIEM)- Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsel declared a Local Emergency yesterday from the amount of snow and its impact on utilities and road closures throughout the county.

“At this point in time, I needed to declare a local emergency to pave the way for additional resources to come in the county to support us during this time…Locally, the next thing to do is to ask for assistance from the state and federal resources through a mutual aid, and by declaring a local emergency, it paves the way for that to occur,” said Sheriff William Honsal, Humboldt CountySheriff’s Office.

Hoopa Valley Tribe has been heavily impacted, causing Joe Davis, Tribal Chairman for Hoopa Valley, to declare a state of emergency to FEMA directly.

“We are declaring the state of emergency because of the critical infrastructure that is not operating for the fuel for the critical fuel delivery things like that but also the major road damage and powerline damage that has occurred,” said Greg Moon, Director of Emergency Services, Hoopa Valley Tribe.

In Willow Creek and Hoopa, the snow has caused trees to fall on people’s houses, cars, roads, power lines, and poles, leaving many without power and causing PG and E access issues.

“We are seeing a lot of hazards a lot of trees are still crumbling down a lot of hazards still out there so we are informing our customers in Hoopa and willow creek that the hardest hit area in Humboldt county right now that I could take a few days before we are able to turn the power back on because of this winter storm,” said Deanna Contreras, North Coast Spokesperson with PG&E.

As part of the restoration process, the number of customers impacted has fluctuated throughout the day, and currently, PG&E is investigating the exact cause of the outages.