Long Beach officials ordered residents off part of Seaside Walk and red-tagged eight structures as unsafe Saturday as Tropical Storm Rachel drove punishing waves into the Alamitos Peninsula, with the worst expected to arrive Sunday morning.
City crews worked through the night piling heavy-duty sandbags against a failing bulkhead on the peninsula, where surf has already damaged a boardwalk, torn out sand berms built after earlier flooding and left one additional structure yellow-tagged. An evacuation order covers the 6400 and 6500 blocks of Seaside Walk, and Mayor Rex Richardson said the city is still weighing whether to expand that zone.
“These kinds of impacts are not normal. They’re unprecedented for our community, and while our crews have been working hard day and night. Hundreds of employees and volunteers responding and mitigating impacts. These continued threats have brought significant damage right to our shoreline’s front door,” Richardson said.
The National Weather Service said the coastal flooding threat will persist through Sunday, peaking around the morning high tide, when water levels are expected to reach roughly 8 feet.
“Damaging sea-water coastal flooding is likely through Sunday, especially near the Sunday morning high tide where anticipated tide levels are expected to be around 8 feet,” the agency said.
Forecasters singled out south-facing beaches as the most vulnerable stretch of coast, naming Long Beach and Malibu specifically. The warning comes after a separate round of flooding already hit Long Beach and Newport Beach in recent days, part of what Richardson described as an unusually active stretch of storms.
“It is not normal that we see this type of activity,” Richardson said. “Just in this season, this marks the third hurricane in just six weeks. We saw Hurricane Marie over Labor Day, which was followed soon by Hurricane Polo, and now Rachel is bringing with it more high tides, more surf, erosion that continues to cause damage to properties and damage along our coastline.”
The city has handed out 7,600 sandbags ahead of Rachel, bringing the total distributed across the three recent storms to about 15,000. Vehicle access to the peninsula has been restricted to residents only.
“We’ve closed off vehicular access to the Peninsula for residents only,” Richardson said. “We’re encouraging everyone else to avoid the Peninsula all weekend, so that our city crews can have access and best perform this critical work.”
The National Weather Service has posted a coastal flood warning for Los Angeles County beaches through 3 p.m. Sunday and a high surf advisory calling for waves of 4 to 7 feet, dangerous rip currents and significant beach erosion. Rain is expected to spread across Los Angeles and Orange counties Saturday night into Sunday, with showers possibly lingering into Tuesday, and wind gusts of 50 to 60 mph are possible in foothill and mountain areas.
Officials are urging residents and visitors to stay away from beaches, coastal walkways and exposed roads, and to never drive around barricades or through floodwater of unknown depth.
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