EL CAJON, Calif. — The City of El Cajon has launched a “pothole challenge” calling on residents to report potholes after record rains tore up multiple streets.

“We asked our residents over the weekend to pin as many as they could possibly find,” says City of El Cajon Marketing and Engagement Manager Chris Berg.

Fifteen teams are working to repair more than 100 potholes reported by residents through the My El Cajon app.

The city says it received 102 requests. Now, crews are on a mission to respond to fill all of them by the end of the week.

“I saw the challenge on Instagram,” said resident Joseph Picek. “I downloaded the app after I saw it. It seems to have obviously worked pretty quickly.”

Crews are filling the potholes with cold patches, which are temporary fixes. The city says more permanent fixes include repaving the road, which is more time consuming and costly to taxpayers.

The city says it is repaving its 400 miles of roads on a rotating section-by-section schedule. 

“That really takes some time for that to cure where these give us that band aid approach now and then as we see which ones are not going to hold, we’ll go out and do that more permanent adhesion later,” Berg said.

Crews say the cold patches can last anywhere from a few weeks to a year.

They encourage residents to report all potholes or broken patches through the app.

One crew took only a minute and 39 seconds to get pothole patch filled. 

“I’ve seen them around a couple of streets in the area and saw this one the other day and actually reported it on the app so it seems like it’s moving pretty quick,” says Picek.

Crews aim to repair pothole requests made through the app within 48 to 72 hours.

The city says more than 8,600 residents have downloaded the My El Cajon app as of Tuesday.