Biden, Newsom and … Caltrans’ Derek Kantar!

Imagine, if you will, that you are standing on a beach. Suddenly, two men emerge and walk straight toward you. These are not ordinary men. One is the oft-called “leader of the free world” and the other is governor of our great state of California.

That scenario was not merely a dream introduced by cigarette-dangling Rod Serling. It actually happened to one of our Caltrans colleagues last month.

In Aptos, no less.

Derek Kantar has been with our department for almost 15 years. He is officially listed as a senior transportation planner in the Maintenance Division, but he describes his role as “emergency planner.” He works extensively with the Governor's Office of Emergency Services (OES), which is how, on Jan. 19, he ended up having a coastal chatting session with President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Kantar is hyper-articulate and seemingly unflappable. CT News could attempt to tell this story – a “Twilight Zone”-esque tale as vast as space and as timeless as infinity – but why bother when Kantar himself can smoothly and concisely sketch it out, in under 30 minutes and with no commercial interruptions. (Unlike Kantar, CT News also is prone to silly hyperbole.)

The scene was set by the relentless waves of heavy storms that battered most of the state from late December through early January. For more than two weeks, Kantar had been Caltrans' lead at the OES State Operation Center as part of the department's Emergency Management Team and was the ideal representative from Caltrans to answer any specific questions regarding our response to the nine atmospheric storm events.

And with that, we turn it over to Kantar.

“The president was going to be coming to Aptos, Seacliff State Beach, to tour the damage. One of the stops on the way. He was making several stops to look at the flood damage and Aptos was going to be where they had a physical stop for the press. You know, put up the podium and offer some comments. The governor was going to be escorting him on that visit. ...

 “The representatives who were going to meet with the president and the governor met in the parking lot of Seacliff State Beach in Aptos. We were then escorted down to the boardwalk, on the beach. Then they broke us into two groups. Group 1 was Caltrans, State Parks and Cal OES, each with one representative. The rest of the delegees were in Group 2.

“So the president’s motorcade came. President Biden, Governor Newsom got out of the car. They were looking around at the damage, and then walked over to the three of us. The president shook our hands, gave us his presidential coin, and then we had a few minutes to talk to the president about the impact from our programs’ perspective.

“What I shared with the president was that, while we had some segments of road underwater, landslides, mud flows, debris flows onto the highway was our big remediation effort. That’s what we were trying to clear up right away so that we could keep the public moving.

“But then the comment I made to the president specifically was – I don’t remember the exact words, but it was words to the effect that we do this so that we can keep the public moving and to make sure that we don’t have isolated populations. Because at the end of the day this is really all about taking care of people. We know how to fix the roads, but we want to make sure we are taking care of people, and that Caltrans really has a human focus on what we do. We try to put people first.

“That conversation lasted somewhere between three and five minutes. Then the president went over to talk to one of the other delegees, and I spoke with Governor Newsom for, uh, I don’t know, a little over 10 minutes, about basically the same thing.

“I commented how fixing roads is what we do for a living, clearing mudslides, landslides. I reminded the governor that while we were doing all the flood mitigation, we were still plowing snow up in the Sierra. And it was heavy snow. So we had, you know, a full litany of winter operations personnel up in the Sierra plowing roads and doing everything we could to keep people going over (U.S. Highway) 50 and (Interstate) 80.

“Keeping freight moving – that was one of the things I told the governor, that we are a multimodal transportation department. It wasn’t just roads. We wanted to make sure that rail, transit, aviation and maritime matters were not negatively affected too long because we wanted to keep mobility running. I assured him that those modes were going well. He was glad about that.

“I shared the big concern was the 29-mile segment of Highway 1 between San Simeon and Big Sur has had four landslides on it but U.S. Geological Survey and Cal Geological Survey had identified nine total slides that could affect that segment of road. One of the concerns was that this incident could wake up old landslides. I said that as a department, we’re very concerned that these storms could wake – just about the time we get something cleared, an old landslide could be reactivated because of all the rains.

“And I said even though we know how to clear debris and we know how to stabilize slopes – we do that very well – we want to make sure there are no isolated populations. Because at the end of the day we’re here to take care of the people of California.

“I put a real people-first focus on everything I was saying to Governor Newsom, and he was really glad to hear me put a people focus on that. And I said, well that comes from our director all the way down to our employees. Director Tavares has really emphasized the human side of what we do. That this is not just about inanimate asphalt. We are a people-oriented organization. The governor was really glad to hear that.

“So I talked to the president first, then the governor, and then the party move on to the other groups, and after that I was just an observer.”

The president and governor moved on, but CT News wanted to extend the conversation.

Were you nervous talking with the president?

“Not at all. Not at all,” he responded in a phone interview conducted 10 days after the Aptos affair. “I wasn’t nervous. I saw this as an opportunity to represent out 24,000 employees. I didn’t see me in all of this. I saw myself as an ambassador for our 24,000 employees. It was a chance for me to showcase the best of who we were. But I didn’t feel nervous. Stage fright is not one of my things.”

Afterward, did you kind of reflect on what you said to both Biden and Newsom, and did you have any regrets? Oh, I wish I had said this, or oh, I wish I had not said that?

“No. No,” Kantar said, “because these were hand-shaking moments. There wasn’t a lot of time to go into a lot of detail, so I did have to be mindful about what I wanted to say. With the president, since that was the shorter conversation, and landslides and debris flows was primary on his mind, I wanted to emphasize that. To tell him how expediently we wanted to try to remediate that, to take care of our people.

“I did specifically thank him for being there, because the people of California can value from what the federal government can bring to help us. I said the help is for people, and that I know Californians are glad he was able to come out and bring FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) with (him).

"It wasn’t, ‘Thank you for coming out so we can have your money to rebuild our roads.’ That wasn’t my intent. I said, ‘Thank you for being here to help the people of California.’”

Have you met or spoken with Newsom before?

“Yes. When he goes to Cal OES, he is part of the Unified Coordination Group – the UCG. … That’s where Cal OES brings the state-level executives together to talk about objectives and priorities. … I attend those UCG meetings on a fairly regular basis, helping represent, or working with Tony and Mike, on those. So I think there is some of the comfort, you know, in doing it at that level. That’s where I had met Newsom in the past.

“So when we saw him on the beach, he came over to me with a big smile because he recognized me. He doesn’t know name and face, but he recognized me from the UCG. That made for a very friendly visit.”

What were your impressions of Biden?

“My general impression was … listening to him talk to others … the breadth of the flooding, the breadth of the disaster – he definitely internalized that. He saw how big it was. So I think he was definitely – I’m taken back by the breadth of the flooding. But he had made a couple of comments – you know, after I had talked about the human side, how we’re doing this for people – and that was his thing. Yeah, we really need to make sure we’re doing the best thing we can to help people.

“So I think my impression was, the human side was more important (to Biden) than the infrastructure side. That was my general impression. And same for Governor Newsom.

“Now maybe they were following my lead to some degree, but I had worked with Newsom in the UCG and his thing was the same thing. He was more concerned about people first. And then when I said this did not, as bad as it was, it didn’t affect our freight mobility. … I did mention that when you have an economy as large as California’s, freight mobility is very important. The state’s freight program didn’t take a big hit by this one, which gives me more reason to want to focus on the human side. …

“I probably could have gone technical. I could have gone emergency management. I could have taken this thing all different kinds of ways, but when you’ve only got a few minutes – and I didn’t think I’d have as much time as I did with the governor, but – when you only have a few minutes, what do you want to make most important?

“And for me it was: Caltrans does what we do for the public. We do this for people. We do it for mobility. We do it for goods movement. This is a real people-forward thing. And I know (Tavares) was very happy to hear that. Even the governor liked that approach. So I guess it worked out.”

Kudos, Mr. Kantar. Roll the credits!