For many locals, Santa Cruz’s picturesque coast is experiencing unprecedented damage.
Severe winter storms and two tsunamis have caused millions of dollars in damage to the pier and marina area in recent years, including this week’s dangerous wave that swept the pier nearly 150 feet into the sea.
On Monday, a large section of the century-old pier separated from the rest of the structure amid rough waves, sending three people – all surviving – into the sea and leaving a bathroom floating miles south to the shock of onlookers.
“The pier has been around for more than 100 years and this is the first time I can remember something like this happening,” said Gino Marini, a co-owner of Marini’s Candies, whose flagship store is part of the pier. The damage is not far away. His family business has been operating at the marina for 40 years, and while he remembers storms that caused significant damage — broken pilings or shipwrecks — there had never been a collapse of this magnitude.
The latest onslaught from the ocean worries officials and some locals, who wonder how common such dangerously strong and frequent waves might become in Santa Cruz, as a warming climate causes sea levels to rise and pump more waves into the ocean. With more energy, the situation worsens.
“Mother Nature has everything under control,” Santa Cruz Deputy City Manager Michelle Templeton said at a news conference this week. “We do know that the severity of these western swells is continuing to increase and we will continue to assess the damage that is occurring to determine how we will proceed.”
Dangerous waves that swept through Monterey Bay earlier this week also left at least one person trapped under debris and died, while another person was missing at sea, officials said. Both incidents occurred just south of Santa Cruz.
The city’s marinas remain closed as officials assess their stability and prepare for a second approaching system that is also expected to bring high surf, with waves reaching 30 feet in parts of Northern California. However, meteorologists say the next storm won’t bring waves as strong as those that flooded the pier on Monday.
But this is only the latest serious incident of damage recorded at the Port of Santa Cruz.
About a year ago to the day, another winter storm surged into the Santa Cruz Pier, causing severe damage and causing it to be temporarily closed to the public. City officials eventually began extensive repairs, including demolishing a restaurant at the end of the pier that became part of the section that washed away this week. Restoration work is expected to be completed in March.
A year ago, a tsunami caused by the eruption of Tonga’s volcano wreaked havoc on the port of Santa Cruz, causing about $6 million in damage. The tsunami brought huge waves that coincided with high tides, flooding parts of Santa Cruz that had never before been flooded, inundating parking lots and transformers.
However, that tsunami was not as severe as the one that hit California in 2011, when a tsunami swept through the port of Santa Cruz and pushed ships into each other, sinking at least 14 ships and damaging many others. State officials reported that the incident caused more than $100 million in damage along the state’s coast, noting that nearly all docks at the ports of Santa Cruz and Crescent City were damaged or destroyed.
But despite its long history of seaside disasters, meteorologists say Santa Cruz is ideally located facing south toward Monterey Bay. This typically protects the coastal city from Northern California’s worst waves.
“The orientation of the Santa Cruz Pier generally provides better protection from northwest swells,” said Brayden Murdoch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey. “Typically when we start getting more northwest swells, it’s harder for the waves to wrap around the curve of Santa Cruz.”
Those northwest swells are typically the strongest to hit the Golden State, he said.
But when a storm originates farther south than a typical winter storm, as it did on Monday, Murdock said it can leave Santa Cruz more vulnerable to strong waves and less accustomed to them. anger.
“When the storm is really absorbing energy, it’s almost due west relative to us,” Murdoch said. Although strong waves from that direction are less common, he said they could form this time of year and hit Santa Cruz more directly.
Murdoch said Santa Cruz is most vulnerable when strong waves come from the south, as happened during the Tonga tsunami, although he noted that such a strong event is least likely to occur from that location.
“When we do get strong southwest swells, it’s a really big deal,” Murdoch said. “But when it happens, it can cause a lot of damage.”
But for the most part, officials say, there are many unknowns when it comes to predicting the intensity of the storm, its origin and how much of a risk cities like Santa Cruz face.
“It really depends on each system moving across the Pacific,” said Roger Gass, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey. “Every storm is a little different.”
While Santa Cruz’s history has nothing to do with what happened this week, the candy retailer’s Marini said he’s confident in what’s left of the pier, which makes up the vast majority, even though officials have closed the pier for further construction. examine.
“We’ve been around, we’ve seen a lot,” Marini, 48, said. “We’ve been there for almost 41 years and I think we’ve been closed for 10 days for something like this. … The waves are bigger.
He blamed ongoing construction at the end of the pier for weakening it at the worst possible time.
“Had it been earlier, we probably wouldn’t have been in this situation,” Marini said. “There was just one section that wasn’t reinforced enough.”
His main concern now is that his business, along with other small shops and restaurants on the quay, has been forced to close during what is usually one of the busiest times of the year.
“Typically, this is a time when we thrive,” Marini said. He said he got an update Thursday from officials that inspections were continuing, but no clear news about reopening.
“It’s a little concerning that this may take longer than we hope,” he said. “The bills are still coming in.”
He said it worries not only him but his nearly 25 employees because he can no longer schedule their shifts. So for now, he just hopes the marina can reopen quickly and safely.
“I hope people won’t be afraid to come back here,” he said. “We rely on tourists, we rely on locals.”
era Staff writers Nathan Solis, Clara Harter and Salvador Hernandez contributed to this report.
