Long Beach residents are reeling after powerful waves generated by Tropical Storm Rachel pounded their multimillion-dollar beachfront homes, wrecked properties, forced evacuations and tore through a century-old boardwalk in yet another major storm to hit Southern California.
The worst damage was reported along the Alamitos Peninsula, where heavy surf ripped apart wooden stretches of the historic waterfront boardwalk and sent seawater surging through homes and onto nearby streets.
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said at least eight buildings covering 13 addresses had been red-tagged and declared unsafe to enter. Another property received a yellow tag, permitting residents to return briefly to collect belongings.
For some homeowners and renters, the storm has brought the painful reality of watching their dream homes threatened by the ocean.
Natalie Cabrera, 59, had lived on the peninsula for about a year and a half while renting a beachfront bungalow. She said she was heartbroken after the waves damaged the foundation of her home.
“I don’t want to leave. At all. Ever. This was my dream,” Cabrera said.
She said the relentless surf pounded the property repeatedly, pushing water beneath the structure and damaging the interior.
“The floor is squishy. Because the ocean just kept hitting and hitting my home, and the water went underneath,” she said.
“Water didn’t come through my front door. It came up from the ground.” Cabrera said longtime neighbors told her they had never seen a storm cause damage on that scale.
“My other neighbor’s been here 30 years, and never, ever have they seen this. So I’m a newbie to the neighborhood. And I’m just devastated to have to leave,” she said.
Cabrera said she planned to relocate to Ontario, where her son and daughter-in-law own a home. “That’s where I grew up. So I guess I’m just going to have to go back,” she said.
Even amid the destruction, Cabrera said she was thankful that her family and neighbors remained safe. She also remembered how strangers quickly stepped in to help defend her home.
“Everybody just came together, total strangers. There was a young kid from USC, fishing. He saw the devastation of the waves just rushing through my front door, and he came.
“As fast as the water came, they’re shoveling the sand out.”
Robert Wells, 80, said his family has owned a summer home on the peninsula since 1962, but he had never witnessed destruction so severe.
“It’s never happened like this before,” Wells said. “Yesterday, and this morning, the water came right over here. And just took everything out.”
Wells criticized the city’s efforts to shield beachfront properties, contending that a sand berm built to keep back the ocean may have intensified the destruction.
“There are more greater chances than not that if they hadn’t put that berm there, that the damage would be minor. And now the damage is major,” he said.
“If they had done nothing, it would have been better. They wouldn’t have all this damage.” Wells also said residents were preparing to pursue legal action against Long Beach.
“There is a class action lawsuit forming against the city of Long Beach,” he said.
Meanwhile, John Fernando, who has lived on the peninsula for more than a decade, said he evacuated his property as the tide began rising.
“I left when the high tide started building up around 9am this morning,” Fernando said.
He described how the powerful ocean waves had stripped away layers of sand, exposing structures that had previously been buried beneath the beach.
“No one’s ever seen the rocks and the extra stakes in the sand until now when the ocean just ripped it out,” he said.
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Fernando said residents had been working around the clock to protect their homes and help neighbors whose properties had suffered more extensive damage.
“We’re all in this together. We’ve all been protecting our own properties. And then when we could provide support, we’d help each other out at the same time. This is definitely like 100% a group effort,” he said.
But with another unusually high tide expected, Fernando feared the destruction was far from over. “There’s tomorrow, there’s the king tide, so this is just the beginning, it’s not over,” he said.
The storm’s destruction was particularly severe along Seaside Walk, where massive waves breached the protective bulkhead, damaged the historic boardwalk and left beachfront properties vulnerable to further erosion.
Video captured a large crack running from the foundation to the roof of one waterfront home, while other footage showed powerful waves crashing into structures along the shoreline.
By Saturday evening, parts of the damaged boardwalk had become inaccessible, with officials posting no-trespassing signs as emergency crews scrambled to reinforce the coastline.
Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for residents along Seaside Walk between 64th and 66th places, with the order scheduled to remain in effect until noon Tuesday, subject to changing conditions.
The city also restricted vehicle access to the peninsula to residents only, allowing emergency crews to move equipment and supplies into the hardest-hit areas.
Long Beach officials distributed 7,600 sandbags to residents, bringing the total handed out during the three recent storms to approximately 15,000.
Crews also deployed heavy equipment and massive sandbags to reinforce damaged sections of the seawall and prevent additional properties from collapsing.
The latest storm comes after Southern California’s coastline was battered by Hurricane Marie over Labor Day weekend and Hurricane Polo in the following weeks.
In Newport Beach, officials declared a local emergency Friday after coastal flooding inundated streets along the Balboa Peninsula, prompting crews to construct protective sand berms and deploy pumps.
The city temporarily closed its beaches and shut down the Newport Pier, Balboa Pier and the Wedge as officials worked to prevent additional damage.
Orange County officials coordinated the distribution of tens of thousands of sandbags, while public works crews used bulldozers to reinforce vulnerable stretches of shoreline.
Meanwhile, powerful winds reached the Inland Empire, where footage showed a structure being ripped from the ground as two people desperately attempted to hold it down.
Post-tropical Storm Rachel made landfall in northern Baja California, north of Ensenada, before moving inland and bringing heavy rain and flash-flood concerns to parts of the Southwest.
Back in Long Beach, residents were left assessing the damage to their homes and wondering how long it would take to rebuild.
Dave Uff, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years, said his home on 63rd Place had been spared after he surrounded it with sandbags, but several of his neighbors had not been as fortunate.
“On Seaside Walk, some of the fronts of the homes have been destroyed. On 63rd Place, a lot of water and sand intrusion, that’s going to be hard to mitigate,” he said.
“This is the worst anybody’s ever seen it. The people that have been here for 60 years say this is the worst they’ve seen it.”
Despite the losses, Uff said residents were determined to help one another recover.
“We’re a very tight community here, and what affects one affects all. And some of our neighbors have lost their homes. We’re all hurting for them. We’re all helping out,” he said.
“We’re heartbroken, but we’re steadfast, and we’re doing what we can to keep things normal, as normal as possible, and waiting to rebuild.”