{"id":459101,"date":"2026-09-10T06:46:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459101\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T06:46:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:46:46","slug":"waves-like-cannonballs-residents-return-to-battered-homes-tattered-boardwalk-after-tide-recedes-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459101\/","title":{"rendered":"Waves \u2018like cannonballs\u2019: Residents return to battered homes, tattered boardwalk after tide recedes \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dozens of Long Beach residents previously evacuated from their Peninsula homes Monday night were allowed to return Wednesday, after building inspectors deemed the structures safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Long Beach Fire Department Capt. Jack Crabtree said the city\u2019s building department cleared 18 of the 19 evacuated properties by 8 a.m. Wednesday, and they began notifying residents later that morning. One home was yellow tagged, meaning its homeowner can only go inside to retrieve essential belongings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This comes roughly two days after a series of strong ocean swells \u2014 supercharged by the remnants of Hurricane Marie miles off the Pacific Coast \u2014 battered the city\u2019s Peninsula and its tiny strip of homes. Waves clawed away enormous amounts of beachfront sand, puncturing sections of the wooden boardwalk and chewing away at more than a dozen homes\u2019 foundations.<\/p>\n

When Carmen Vaudry returned Wednesday, she discovered her home\u2019s deck facing the boardwalk had been damaged. In the 13 years living there, she\u2019s never seen anything like it \u2014 waves that hit the seawall and then soared into the air, shooting water upward beyond her roof. The sound, she said, \u201cwas like cannonballs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A collapsed pathway between two homes right at the boardwalk after strong waves pounded the Long Beach peninsula on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

\u201cShakes the whole house,\u201d she said. \u201cJust slammed against, it sounded like earthquakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEither way, even if they didn\u2019t evacuate, we were going to have to leave,\u201d Vaudry said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another man, who asked to be identified as C, spent the day cleaning the two-foot trench of sand that accumulated along his alley. As opposed to Vaudry, his evacuation was voluntary, so he stayed. He remembers how the waves hit a sand berm meant to protect homes but also formed \u201ca launch ramp,\u201d shooting water up onto the boardwalk and into his alley. Over the course of several days, it formed a river of floating debris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He and other neighbors \u2014 about 15 to 20 of them \u2014 grabbed shovels on Monday and began digging out their section of boardwalk path.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Robbie Cox shovels out two feet of sand in front of a home along the boardwalk after strong waves pounded the Long Beach peninsula on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

Compared to when he bought his home in 2009, when the shore was 100 yards from the seawall, the ocean is now nearly at C\u2019s door, sending water and sand at such intensity that he had to tow his neighbors\u2019 cars over the weekend. \u201cNow it\u2019s a constant construction zone,\u201d he said of the beachfront.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The storm forced the evacuation of about 20 structures, left stretches of boardwalk in tatters and swallowed a swathe of city beach seemingly overnight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So far, the city hasn\u2019t released any plans for repairs to the boardwalk, which remains closed between 63rd Place and 68th Place. The Claremont beach parking lot, at 5400 E. Ocean Blvd., has reopened fully for public use.<\/p>\n

\"\"A young man stands behind a barricade, looking over the damage to the boardwalk in Long Beach, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026. Waves pounded the peninsula for the last 2 days, causing severe damage to homes along that stretch. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

Beach crews, meanwhile, are focused on rebuilding. Bulldozers and dump trucks were seen rumbling by, dumping mounds of sand towards what they want to be a 10-foot-tall berm some 4,000 feet wide that they\u2019ve seen repeatedly washed away since Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The standard berm is approximately 2,500 feet long, but city crews, in preparation for the storm incident, extended it to a total of 4,000 feet from 55th to 72nd Place. Kelly Armstrong, the beach superintendent, said crews worked extended shifts of up to 16 hours from Thursday through Tuesday to reinforce the berm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Emergency repairs were conducted along the boardwalk\u2019s wooden seawall on Tuesday night, he said, meant to fend off a high tide that officials say reached three feet at around 8 p.m.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jim Perona and Marilyn Perona walk along the boardwalk on the Long Beach Peninsula to see high tides reaching the area in Long Beach, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2026. Photo by Justin Enriquez.<\/p>\n

After waves reached six feet Sunday and Monday, waves Tuesday night reached two to three feet high and are expected to crest at two feet Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all to protect a narrow strip of oceanfront homes along the Peninsula between 62nd and 69th places, which is exposed to swells that pass through the gap outside the breakwater and jetty that juts from the Alamitos Bay channel.<\/p>\n

A longer-term issue will be restoring the swathe of beachfront sand that was ripped from the shoreline. Unable to give an approximate figure, Armstrong said there are three-to-four block sections where up to 10 feet deep of sand has disappeared.<\/p>\n

\"\"Several tons of sand have eroded, exposing the seawall along the Peninsula in Long Beach on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026. Waves pounded the seawall for the last two days, causing severe damage to homes along that stretch. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not anything that anyone has ever seen since, you know, maybe the 30s or the 40s,\u201d said Armstrong. (The year 1939 is remembered for a massive storm that wrecked homes on the Peninsula<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of different agencies that have been inspecting the beachfront and inspecting the wall, the seawall, and looking at, you know, avenues of repair, as well as our city engineers were out there,\u201d Armstrong said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A greater worry, officials say, is the frequency of high tides that trample through the city\u2019s sand walls and flood streets, as changing ocean dynamics and El Ni\u00f1o conditions<\/a> spurred by climate change create taller and warmer tides \u2014 above predictions this season<\/a>, according to the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n

Long Beach is near to awarding a contract to commence a $14.5 million dredging project that, if approved, should start in late October and extend the beach out by 260 feet using 415,000 cubic yards of sand from the entrance channel of Alamitos Bay.<\/p>\n

Any other measures are still under consideration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of Long Beach residents previously evacuated from their Peninsula homes Monday night were allowed to return Wednesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-459101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}