{"id":502257,"date":"2026-10-20T13:54:40","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T13:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/502257\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T13:54:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T13:54:40","slug":"monday-morning-coffee-the-scramble-to-prepare-for-more-storms-long-beach-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/502257\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Coffee: The scramble to prepare for more storms \u2022 Long Beach Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get this briefing in your inbox each week by signing up at LBPost.com\/newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a race playing out right now on Long Beach\u2019s Peninsula, and the stakes are high.<\/p>\n

A dozen families in the coastal neighborhood lost their homes last week to the pounding waves brought on by Tropical Storm Rachel<\/a>. Many of them are still processing that loss, said the area\u2019s City Council member, Kristina Duggan. Nevertheless, the clock is ticking before the next storm arrives, she said, and the city must prepare now.<\/p>\n

During a press conference Friday<\/a>, Duggan, Mayor Rex Richardson and city officials outlined the scramble to shore up the Peninsula\u2019s defenses. A historic El Ni\u00f1o season<\/a> means another generationally strong storm could begin building soon. And more rounds of exceptionally high tides \u2014 one piece of the puzzle<\/a> that made Rachel so devastating \u2014 are expected around Thanksgiving and Christmas.<\/p>\n

That leaves precious little time to rebuild the shoreline that protected the Peninsula for decades.<\/p>\n

That protection first fell in September when Hurricane Marie stripped away tons of sand<\/a>, exposing the wooden bulkhead underneath the neighborhood\u2019s coastal boardwalk. Rachel then blasted through what was left.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"A portion of the boardwalk and its bulkhead are destroyed and no longer protect homes along the Peninsula in Long Beach on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

With beachside homes now more exposed than ever, Long Beach has jump-started repair plans.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s spending \u201cupwards of $3.6 million\u201d to repair the boardwalk, said Stephen Figueira, a civil engineer with the city. Crews are working day and night, whenever it\u2019s safe during low tide. It\u2019s complicated by the fact that they can\u2019t safely work on the sections of boardwalk that suffered the most damage between 64th and 66th places. Homes there are still at risk of collapse and must be assessed and shored up first to keep workers safe.<\/p>\n

But even a refortified bulkhead won\u2019t be enough. The boardwalk was never meant to hold back the ocean, Long Beach City Manager Tom Modica said. The city is already trucking sand up the beach to protect it, and it\u2019s sped up a dredging project<\/a> to clear sediment from the Alamitos Bay channel and pump it onto the beach. Crews work 24 hours when possible, Modica said. They hope to have much of the work done by the end of November \u2014 as long as it\u2019s not delayed by more bad weather.<\/p>\n

The city had estimated the dredging would add more than 500 feet of new beach along the Peninsula\u2019s most vulnerable areas, but with so much sand stripped away lately, it\u2019s now likely to be less. That project, which the city was already planning before any storm damage, is expected to cost $11.4 million.<\/p>\n

Long Beach is also tapping emergency funds to start designing a low-profile rock wall that could help protect the boardwalk. But how the rest of that $6 million project could be funded remains unknown. City officials were optimistic about securing help \u2014 and reimbursements for emergency costs \u2014 from the state and federal government. (You can watch the city explain all the funding details here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

There was also another message at Friday\u2019s press conference: The Peninsula may have suffered the worst damage, but it is certainly not the only part of Long Beach at risk.<\/p>\n

During Rachel, high tides overtook beach bike paths and parking lots, even inundating Junipero Beach, Councilmember Cindy Allen said. During heavy rains, other areas will flood too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be clear. This is just the beginning of El Ni\u00f1o season,\u201d Allen said, \u201cso I want to encourage everyone to stay aware, stay vigilant throughout the fall and the winter storm season.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have a host of resources for you to prepare at LBPost.com\/elnino<\/a>. And city officials suggested visiting longbeach.gov\/emergency<\/a> to sign up for emergency alerts and learn about upcoming sandbag giveaways.<\/p>\n

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Quick sips of the latest news<\/p>\n

Yet another port record: This has happened a lot lately, but the Port of Long Beach just set a new pace for cargo. It moved nearly 1 million container units in September, making it the busiest month in the port\u2019s 115-year history. Putting that in context, it was 25% more cargo than in September 2025. You can read the port\u2019s official take on it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Vote! The deadline to return your ballot for this election<\/a> is Nov. 3. You won\u2019t see many Long Beach-specific races on it. Nearly all of them (mayor, City Council, LBUSD school board) were decided in the June primary. We\u2019ll have a guide coming soon on the lone Long Beach City College trustee seat in contention. For those complicated statewide propositions, we recommend CalMatters\u2019 guide<\/a>. Our partner LAist has great guides for the regional races<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Heplful\/interesting links<\/p>\n

The agenda for the Long Beach City Council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 15 \u2014 and any other upcoming meetings \u2014 can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ICYMI: We published a deeply reported investigation<\/a> into a local affordable housing provider accused of a massive fraud scam. It also raises serious questions about city oversight in cases like this.<\/p>\n

In case it\u2019s on your mind, you can sign up for emergency alerts from the city of Long Beach at longbeach.gov\/alertlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get this briefing in your inbox each week by signing up at LBPost.com\/newsletters. There\u2019s a race playing out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-502257","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\/502257","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=502257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}