“WHAT BERM ?” say local residents as surf and tides inundate Seal Beach

Homes along Seal Way were threatened by inundation of ocean water with Monday’s 5′ 8″ tide.  Local experts said that was not an exceptionally high tide and wonder what to expect when the really big tides come?

Alex and Pam Gates, (visible on the porch of the 2nd house on the right) visiting from Kansas City were shocked when they woke up Monday morning and saw a lake nearly 1/2 milelong that wasn’t there when they went to bed.  “We left a blizzard in K.C. and walked into a flood in Seal Beach.”  

Local residents expressed great concern over the extent of the flooding,  As seen in the photo above (photos by J Rootlieb)  the entire length of Seal Way had water up to the steps of the homes.

 

Automobiles in the parking lot on the east side of the pier were in water up to their axles.

Some were in deeper water than is shown here and they were concerned about salt water damage.

 

Look closely at the first photo.  You can see where the water came through the pier pilings. What were the engineers thinking when they built a berm 1/2 mile long but left it open at both ends.  Nothing was done to to block the water that consistently comes in from the ends of that line of sand?

Although the “flood” waters often come in at the jetty end and then run down the strand, in Monday’s situation it appears that the water came from both ends. 

In the last two years it has come in at the pier…the lowest spot on the beach and creates “Lake Seal Beach.”   A nice catch phrase for the larger papers and TV stations to use in their reports but  not something that warms the hearts of  those living on the lower floors of all the homes along the strand.

The damage to those homes…. runs in the many millions of dollars when the water breaches those necessarily low porches. They are necessarily low because building height restrictions mean that the lower floors cannot be high enough to protect the home from the inundation of sea….unless the residents are willing to remove their top floors?

The berm cost 60,000 or $70,000 annually (estimated cost) is wasted if the berm does not “isolate” the buildings from the tides. The seawater can, and has, run one to two feet deep throughtout the entire lower floor of those homes.   

One hopes this is not yet the result of global warming since its been going on for over 40 years…albeit lessened in recent years.