That fact that the damage to the boardwalk is cumulative presents a particular challenge, Long Beach Fire Department spokesperson Melanie Miller said Sunday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe collapse began when [Hurricane] Marie came,\u201d in early September, she said, \u201cand it\u2019s been building off of that. Then Hurricane Polo, now [Tropical Storm] Rachel. It\u2019s been continuous damage since then.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been preparations \u2014 we even deployed 3,000-pound sandbags,\u201d Miller added, \u201cbut you can only do so much during low tide; there are limited windows of opportunity. And the dynamics are working against you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said that the city was taking the situation \u201cvery seriously\u201d and that it underscored \u201can importance to be incredibly serious in our region and in our state around climate resilience and coastal resiliency.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the crumbling boardwalk is a historic thread in the city\u2019s fabric.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the oldest boardwalks in California and lots of memories were made on that boardwalk,\u201d he said in an interview Sunday. \u201cIf we want to retain these iconic spaces on our coastline, it\u2019s going to take real investment to make sure that we have an iconic, quality waterfront, a coastline that is resilient and acknowledges the changing climate.\u201d<\/p>\n
That investment will be expensive, Richardson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to build more climate-resilient infrastructure. Because 100 years ago it wasn\u2019t necessarily anticipated that we\u2019d have this cadence of pressure \u2014 three major storm systems in six weeks is unprecedented in this region.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city of Long Beach has designed a \u201cseven-point plan,\u201d formalized shortly after Hurricane Marie, that addresses repairing what\u2019s been damaged, putting more sand back on the beach, creating additional layers of protection and pursuing longer-term solutions and funding, Laath Martin, a spokesperson for the city manager\u2019s office, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we responded to [Marie], we also looked at future plans and ways to address [the storms] in the immediate, moderate and long term,\u201d Martin said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had two additional storms since then. Some of the work is underway, and some is coming within days, weeks and months, depending.\u201d<\/p>\n
As of now, the city of Long Beach is in emergency response mode. It\u2019s reinforcing the boardwalk with lumber and using the aforementioned 3,000-pound sandbags to \u201cdeflect wave energy on the beach side of the bulkhead, the seawall,\u201d Martin said. \u201cIt takes a lot of the brunt of the damage.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A drone photograph of waves crashing against East Seaside Walk as homes collapse on the Long Beach Peninsula.<\/p>\n
(Kayla Bartkowski \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Martin said the city had accelerated certain projects to start as soon as the week of Oct. 19, particularly the Alamitos Bay Entrance Channel Dredging Project, which will relocate sand from the Peninsula and widen the beach by about 200 feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to do a few things before then to ready it,\u201d Martin said, \u201cso our crews can safely work in those conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Longer term, the city has secured a contractor to carry out permanent repairs. The cost is estimated at $1.5 million to $3.6 million, Martin said. The money will come from the city\u2019s Tidelands Emergency Reserves for coastal projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we\u2019re using a lot of materials right now to make emergency repairs to keep people safe, we then have to purchase more materials to do the permanent repairs,\u201d Martin said. \u201cThat\u2019s why there\u2019s such a wide range.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin said the city expected to complete permanent repairs to the bulkhead and boardwalk by the end of this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith El Ni\u00f1o, we expect more storms. They built the timeline around anticipated storms to the best in our ability,\u201d he said. \u201cBut this far in advance, you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A trio of storms since early September has put considerable strain on the historic Long Beach boardwalk, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[191932,7,9,8,1409,13033,81070,18472,191933,131,1741,191934,55417,55415,191935,61,430,2695],"class_list":["post-493161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-battered-boardwalk","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-city","tag-damage","tag-heavy-surf","tag-hurricane","tag-laath-martin","tag-long-beach","tag-lot","tag-permanent-repair","tag-sand","tag-sandbag","tag-seaside-walk","tag-storm","tag-week","tag-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493161","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=493161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}