Long Beach evacuates 20 homes as Pacific swell from post-tropical Marie cracks seawall

The Long Beach Fire Department evacuated roughly 20 homes along a narrow stretch of the city's Peninsula neighborhood Monday evening after storm-driven surf cracked the seawall protecting the beachfront boardwalk and left fissures running toward the foundations of houses on the other side. The evacuated block, known as Seaside Walk, sits between 63rd and 67th Place on a sandy spit that separates the Pacific Ocean from Alamitos Bay, one of the most exposed residential strips on the Southern California coast.

City officials said the order was precautionary rather than a response to any structure actually failing. Building inspectors were still working Tuesday to determine whether cracked concrete slabs between homes reflected surface damage or deeper foundation problems, according to CBS News Los Angeles. "These evacuation orders are in an abundance of caution while the building department evaluates the structural integrity and condition of these homes," the fire department said in a statement carried by the station.

The numbers

The surf pounding the Peninsula this week was generated by Marie, which reached hurricane strength off Mexico's Pacific coast last week before weakening as it tracked northwest over open water, far from land. By Tuesday morning it had been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds near 40 mph, centered about 780 miles southwest of San Diego, according to the National Hurricane Center's final public advisory on the system. The storm itself never threatened the California coast, but forecasters said its long-period swell would keep producing dangerous surf and rip currents for another day or two even as Marie dissipates.

That swell arrived on top of unusually high tides. Tide predictions for the harbor gauge nearest Long Beach put the evening high close to 6.5 feet, but city officials and local reporters measured actual water levels running higher once wave run-up was added, with high tide Monday evening near 7 feet and Tuesday evening's forecast near 7.2 feet. A Coastal Flood Advisory and High Surf Advisory issued by the National Weather Service's Los Angeles/Oxnard office called for breaking waves of 4 to 7 feet, with local sets to 8 feet, and singled out the Alamitos Peninsula as an area where "coastal flooding will potentially cause local damage to structures near time of high tides." Both advisories were set to expire at 11 p.m. Tuesday.

How the water got in

The Peninsula's vulnerability is partly geographic. The neighborhood, built up largely in the early 1900s along a narrow sandbar, sits at the mouth of Alamitos Bay, where waves arriving from the south and southwest funnel through the gap between the bay's entrance jetty and the outer breakwater and slam directly into Seaside Walk's low sea wall. Longtime residents said Monday's flooding was worse than anything they had experienced. "The entire house — it feels like an earthquake," resident Paula Attina told ABC7 Los Angeles, adding, "this is the worst one that we've had." Another resident, Heidi Buehler, said she had "never seen anything like it," describing water rising against her home overnight.

City crews had spent the weekend building emergency sand berms along the boardwalk, but the berms were repeatedly overtopped as tides rose through Labor Day and into the workweek, sending sand and seawater into garages, porches and streets. By Monday evening, cracks had opened in the concrete slabs between several homes, with some fissures extending toward exterior walls, prompting the evacuation order.

Monday's flooding was also the latest in a run of unusually large Pacific swells to hit Southern California beaches this summer, a pattern forecasters have linked to a strong El Niño pattern steering an active string of hurricanes and tropical storms off Mexico's coast. None of those storms has made landfall in California, which rarely sees direct tropical strikes, but several have sent swell far enough north to combine with seasonal high tides and erode beaches from Ventura County to Orange County.

Who is affected

The roughly 20 households ordered out span the length of Seaside Walk between 63rd and 67th Place, a stretch of modest single-family homes and small apartment buildings in a neighborhood of about 1,300 residents. The city closed the Peninsula to non-residents until further notice, and Long Beach's health and transit departments arranged bus transportation and shelter assistance for displaced homeowners, according to LAist. Fire crews also distributed sandbags to residents elsewhere on the Peninsula trying to keep water out of homes that were not evacuated.

Reaction

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson visited the neighborhood Monday and tied the damage to warming ocean waters that he said were amplifying tidal swings even without a storm making direct landfall.

"The climate emergency is real. This is one event, but we have to be honest, this will happen again," Richardson said.

Fire Battalion Chief Jake Heflin said the department would need a fuller survey of the boardwalk before deciding what repairs, or longer-term redesign, might be needed. "We're going to have to do a real assessment on the boardwalk, the impact of this storm," he said, according to the ABC7 report. The Long Beach Post reported that engineers and coastal-hazard researchers have separately flagged the Peninsula for years as a preview of the kind of chronic flooding low-lying Southern California neighborhoods could face as sea levels rise.

What happens next

Building inspectors are expected to complete structural assessments of the evacuated homes in the coming days, determining case by case whether residents can return, need repairs first, or face longer displacement. The National Weather Service's advisories were due to lift Tuesday night as the swell from Marie gradually eases, though officials cautioned that dangerous rip currents and elevated surf could linger into the following days. City officials said they would also review whether the sand berms and existing seawall infrastructure need to be rebuilt or reinforced ahead of the fall and winter storm season, when Southern California often sees its most damaging coastal flooding events.

No injuries were reported in connection with Monday's evacuation, and officials said the immediate priority remained keeping residents away from the compromised sea wall until engineers can certify it is safe. The city has not yet released a cost estimate for repairs to the boardwalk or seawall, and it remains unclear whether the roughly 20 households will be able to return home before the next round of high tides later this month.