SEAL BEACH, Calif. \u2014 For many, living just blocks away from the ocean is the California dream.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a dream come true for Merrick Rustia, who goes surfing almost every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone wants to be coastal, so you know, you work hard over the years, and you finally make it. So this is kind of where we landed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rustia has owned a home in Seal Beach for 10 years. Lately, he has started noticing the impacts of El Nino on the beaches.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The surf] kind of scoops the sand out and creates this berm, and right now we will walk out there \u2014 it is like a four-foot berm,\u201d Rustia said.<\/p>\n
This comes as homes in neighboring cities, such as Long Beach and down the coast in Dana Point, are being destroyed by abnormally large winter swells.<\/p>\n
\u201cForecasts on all 27 models right now are all predicting at least a 3.4 El Nino,\u201d said Kevin Kothlow with Team Rubicon while teaching a flood mitigation course to Seal Beach staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the first time, the city of Seal Beach brought in Team Rubicon\u2019s disaster response team to train city staff in person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you guys see where that broke? That is not the chain that is supposed to be happening,\u201d Kothlow said while teaching staff and volunteers how to work with sandbags.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the training, they learned erosion control, how to build sandbag structures, several flood prevention techniques and how to create an exit plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get an alert on your phone saying there is a flash flood coming, that is not the time to do a three-point turn to get out of there,\u201d Kothlow said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On top of preparing for future flooding, crews in Seal Beach regularly construct a giant sand berm to protect homes. Public Works and Marine Safety also position heavy-duty water pumps along low-lying vulnerable areas when they anticipate a storm is coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is so much beach here that we are pretty lucky,\u201d Rustia said while standing on a beach near his home.<\/p>\n
In the 10 years he has lived in Seal Beach, Rustia has never been impacted by flooding \u2014 but it is something he says he\u2019s always on the lookout for.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a homeowner, we\u2019re always concerned about it, you know, because we have the marina on that side and the ocean on this side,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it can happen. You never know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEAL BEACH, Calif. \u2014 For many, living just blocks away from the ocean is the California dream.\u00a0 It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[36621,2997,171294,7,100978,643,131,133,132,1492,5999,5996,171295],"class_list":["post-505455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-app-environment","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-weather-stories","tag-california","tag-cody-taylor","tag-environment","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-public-safety","tag-socal-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod","tag-weather-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505455","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=505455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}