Residents of Preston Hollow Drive are grappling with safety concerns from recent explosions and chaotic traffic detours, seeking city aid to ease the turmoil.
SAN ANTONIO — Two full weeks after two powerful explosions destroyed two houses on Preston Hollow Drive, people who live in the northeast side neighborhood are still trying to restore their shattered sense of safety and peace.
Now, neighbors who live on the east end of the block say they are struggling to cope with heavy traffic caused by detours that have blocked easy access to nearby Thousand Oaks.
Some say the city has installed detour signs that lead straight to a dead end at Preston Hollow and Preston Court that is dumping frustrated drivers into a cul de sac and threatening the safety of residents unaccustomed to drivers who are trying to escape the trap.
Jimmy Aldape lives one house from the corner.
“It’s been just completely crazy over the past couple of weeks since the explosions right around the corner. It was traumatic. It was a huge explosion. I have a video of me in the house, and you can hear the explosion when it happened!” Aldape said.
He said everyone in the area remains on alert.
Aldape said “The neighbors are all concerned that there’s some kind of problem with the gas pipes coming into the neighborhood and I know my house has gas, so every time I hear anything that falls to the floor, anything ever since the explosion, I’m just, I’m completely freaked out and I’m constantly checking to make sure everything’s okay.”
With regard to the traffic issues that have flooded his street, Aldape said “That has become insane. We are a small, closed neighborhood that basically has one inlet from Thousand Oaks, and there’s another secondary inlet from Sunlit Grove, but that second inlet has now become a high traffic area.”
Aldape said traffic is circulating through the back side of the neighborhood and becoming trapped at the end of the detour.
It’s dangerous, Aldape said, because kids play outside throughout the day.
“Right here we have homeschoolers and they have children running around and playing during the day and because of this extra high volume of people trying to come by to either look at the damage on the houses or whatever, they’re directed into this neighborhood,” Aldape said, adding the drivers “They have to make U-turns or they’re making 3-point turnarounds and a lot of these people don’t know to expect children, so it’s just extremely frustrating.”
Aldape said he tried asking the city for help but got nowhere. “I’ve tried to get them to come out and change the barrel signs because they need to put something like “no exit, no throughway.” It just needs to change so we can make sure that the children are safe,” Aldape said.
Aldape said some frustrated neighbors have taken to the streets with hand-lettered signs, warning drivers of the blocked passage.
“They went out yesterday and they handwrote some signs and they put “not an exit,” Aldape said, adding it’s a detour to a dead end.
Aldape said when he tried to appeal to one worker who was installing the signs, the man gave him a phone number to call that didn’t work.
In addition to the danger, Aldape said many frustrated drivers end up angry.
“Yes, they’re upset because it’s almost one mile that they’re being driven all the way around for nothing, absolutely nothing, just to turn around,” Aldape said.
While walking his tiny dog Izzy, neighbor Rene Ruiz agreed.
“The folks here had to make their own signs, to tell the drivers not to go this way, but yet the detour sign tells them to come this way,” Ruiz said, adding “But it’s not for the locals to do that, it’s for the city or whoever’s in charge of that to take care of that.” Ruiz said he knows many of his neighbors have been feeling frustrated “I know that there’s a lot of things that that could be done better.”
A spokesman for the city responded to a request for more information, writing “Staff is reviewing the resident’s concerns and will update the signage as needed.”
District 10 council representative Marc Whyte said he has been told the ‘on the ground’ portion of the investigation into the explosions by NTSB is complete, so the traffic problem will be temporary, but he agreed to ask questions about the matter.
Aldape said neighbors are getting most of their updates from each other.
“I’ve discovered that they’re going to be tearing down the houses, so we have no idea how long the entrance to our neighborhood is going to be closed,” Aldape said.