Valley storm clean up continues

The rain may be over for now in the Coachella Valley, but the clean up continues for some of the hardest hit areas of the storm. In La Quinta, ducks took a swim in a newly formed lake where a public park used to be. “It’s disgusting, it’s only getting worse,” said Elizabeth Chavez, who lives in Indio. “You see children playing, there’s not even any sort of caution signs.”

The aftermath of the storm left a major mess, not only at parks, but also on roads in La Quinta and Indio. “I think the city really has to make an effort all across the city of Indio to make it better for the public,” said Chavez.

Progress is being made. Dirt on the road and one abandoned car are the only reminders of what Eisenhower Drive looked like on Sunday night, when the rain started. City workers in La Quinta used construction equipment to push dirt off the major roadways. In Indio, crews picked up closed signs and began the process of reopening streets. The only street closures remaining were: Adams and Blackhawk Drive in La Quinta, Avenue 44 and Golf Center Parkway and Avenue 48 and Arabia in Indio. “We’re out monitoring the roads to see how the flooding is going away,” said Rob Rockwell, the finance director for the City of Indio. “We have street closures where there’s still some standing water and accumulated sand.”

One of the trouble areas, Arabia and 48th remains closed due to mounds of mud and even a sidewalk that buckled in the storm. Some drivers say, it’s causing lots of inconvenience. “People have to go all the way around because they can’t get a tractor to bulldoze this stuff over and that kind of sucks for the people,” said Victor Gomez, an Indio resident.

While drivers continue to navigate orange cones, the city says its doing everything it can to get things back to normal. “We do have limited resources after the last few years of economic recession, but we’re going to get out there and work around the clock as much as we need to, to get those roads back open,” said Rockwell.