‘One Storm and Pow! The Sand Is Gone’ : Miles of Beaches Left in Shambles

A week ago, the beach lay five feet below the deck of Don Helsley’s mobile home north of Laguna Beach.

By Monday, after two days of storm surf and high tides, the drop from deck to sand was more than 15 feet, and his beige coach at the El Morro Beach Mobilehome Park was listing badly. Surging tides had undermined the trailer’s foundation and swept away tons of sand, exposing chunks of concrete and rocks, remnants of past attempts by residents to halt erosion along the narrow stretch of beach.

“Every winter, the beach disappears,” Helsley said, staring at the now tranquil Pacific Ocean, which for two days this week threatened to wash some of the surfside colony’s mobile homes to sea. “This has gone on for eons. But every time it happens, it just blows you away.

“One storm, and pow! The sand is gone,” he added. “You just hope it comes back.”

From Seal Beach to San Clemente, the recent wave and tidal assault, which peaked Monday, took huge bites out of local beaches, not to mention the Huntington Beach Pier.

The storm that began on Jan. 17 was blamed for the deaths of eight people and an estimated $68 million in property damage in Southern California, including more than $5 million in Orange County.

Gov. George Deukmejian on Thursday proclaimed states of emergency in Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties as a result of the damage caused by wind, rain and coastal flooding from this week’s storm.

The governor’s declaration, which came at the request of the officials from the three counties, is a necessary legal prerequisite before local governments may apply for federal disaster assistance, according to spokesmen for the governor.

While not as visible--or as dramatic--as piers collapsing or homes sliding into the ocean, beach erosion at some spots along the county’s 42-mile shoreline was severe.

“It was awesome what the storm did to some beaches,” said state oceanographer Reinhard Flick, who examined the damage at El Morro and elsewhere this week. “In some places it will take months, if not several years, for the sand to return.”

In San Clemente, for example, officials estimate that the high tides, coupled with 20-foot waves and strong winds, stripped away a strip of sand 20 feet wide along a two-mile stretch of beach.

Although the erosion was worse after the last storm of this magnitude in March, 1983, city officials say damage to beaches this time is far more serious because the cumulative effect of the two storms has left little or no sand buffer in the event of a new storm.

With two months of winter left, San Clemente’s lifeguard headquarters, several public restrooms and concession stands near the pier have been badly undermined, and a new storm could topple the structures if the beach is not built back soon, city officials said. The $40,000 price tag to fortify the buildings and clean up recent storm damage would be minuscule compared to tourism losses if the beach did not return, they said.

“This is a beach city, so the condition of the beach is critical to us,” Marine Safety Capt. Lynn Hughes said. “We just count on Mother Nature to bring it back.”

In fact, residents, lifeguards and city officials along the coast say nature already is at work returning the sand lost in the storm.

In Newport Beach, where the storm swept away 50% of the beach in some spots north of Newport Pier, incoming tides already have begun redepositing sand. The source, lifeguard Brent Ranek said, is newly formed sand bars just offshore. Like giant claws, the towering waves scooped sand off the beaches, depositing it just offshore. When the storm passed, Ranek said, the more gentle normal surf began carrying the sand back to shore.

It is a predictable cycle, one that has occurred for eons along the Southern California coast. “Within a couple of months,” Ranek said, “all that sand will be back, provided we don’t get hit with another big storm.”

Yet coastal erosion is not a problem as simple as waiting for the spring and summer tides to bring back the sand.

Breakwaters, jetties and seawalls, all built to deflect the ocean’s punch and enhance seaside development, have blocked the natural tidal flow of sand to some beaches, reducing some to strips of pebbles.

And dense coastal development has led to the building of dams and lining of flood control channels with concrete, interrupting the normal mountain-to-ocean replenishment cycle, some experts contend.

As a result, some oceanographers and coastal officials predict it may take longer for beaches hard hit by winter storms to return to their normal state.

The economic implications are enormous.

At the famed Hotel Laguna, a beach cabana and 12 feet of private beach washed away at high tide Monday. A 100-foot section of the city’s boardwalk on Main Beach, a popular tourist spot, was undermined and collapsed.

“It is the beach that draws people, who in turn spend money, rent hotel rooms and buy expensive homes,” said Prapraveen Gupta, a state Coastal Commission planner in Long Beach. “The beach is everything to some cities.”

That is one reason more attention has been focused in recent years on coastal erosion, including theories about atmospheric and global temperature changes contributing to the disappearance of entire coastlines.

In the contiguous United States, scientists estimate that at least 20% of the 10,000-mile coastline is under siege from the sea. Some Southern California beaches may be eroding as much as 10 feet a year. The impact is not always visible, except after major storms, because many Southland beaches are artificially rebuilt and stabilized.

Seal Beach, which is situated between jetties that act to block the movement of sand at both ends of a milelong stretch of beach, spends about $30,000 a year to haul and dump sand on the strand south of the city pier.

For nearby Sunset Beach and Surfside, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to ask Congress for nearly $1.7 million for the next phase of the sand replenishment program for the unincorporated coastal enclaves.

The twin beach communities are sandwiched between Seal Beach and Huntington Harbour on a narrow, but densely populated finger of land, which the corps considers among the most unstable shorelines in the United States.

After the storms of March, 1983, hundreds of homes in the communities of Seal Beach, Surfside and Sunset Beach were flooded by high tides and storm surf, a scene that was nearly repeated this week.

Bulldozers spent several days this week rebuilding a sand berm that now stands as the only line of defense between another storm and many of the Sunset-Surfside homes, which sit less than 50 yards from the water’s edge.

After those intense 1983 storms, Prapraveen said the Coastal Commission was swamped with requests from beachfront property owners to build seawalls and reinforce homes. He said he expects the same rush this time.

‘His Own Worst Enemy’

“Any time nature strikes,” state oceanographer Flick said, “man’s first reaction is to fight back by building something bigger and stronger to withstand the next blow.” But that mentality fails to recognize that man may be his own worst enemy when it comes to coastal erosion, he said.

“Historically, we’ve always had the severe winds, rain and flooding on the coast,” said Flick, who works at the Scripps Marine Institute in La Jolla. “It’s just that now, man has decided to develop right to the water’s edge.” So far, he added, “man has shown a willingness to pay the price and risk disaster.”

Terry Saemans and his family have watched storms come and go from their space at the El Morro mobile home park for nearly 40 years. They were one of the first to camp at the cove just north of Laguna Beach, and have watched the colony evolve from tents to tiny trailers to 50-foot-long coaches stacked side by side. They also know well the elaborate efforts to fortify their homes from the sea’s wintry outbursts.

Saemans’ mother, who lives alone in the mobile home, was evacuated Monday morning, when the waves breached her deck and crashed against her front windows. By that afternoon, the tide had retreated, taking with it much of the sandy beach. “It comes with the territory,” said Saemans of Dana Point, who spent summers at El Morro.

Yet with the bravado of a veteran of storms past, Saemans predicted the sand would return by the time summer rolled around.

Why was he so sure? “God wouldn’t let it be any other way,” he said.