Tropical Storm Rachel Rips Apart Long Beach Boardwalk and Homes, Forcing Mandatory Evacuations

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Powerful waves from Tropical Storm Rachel battered Long Beach’s Alamitos Peninsula over the weekend, tearing apart sections of a century-old boardwalk, damaging beachfront homes and forcing residents from their properties as the storm slammed the Southern California coast.

At least eight buildings covering 13 addresses have been red-tagged as unsafe to enter, while one additional property received a yellow tag, which allows residents only limited access to retrieve belongings, according to Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson. Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for residents along Seaside Walk between 64th and 66th places, and the city restricted vehicle access on the peninsula to residents only so emergency crews could move equipment into the hardest-hit areas.

Residents describe unprecedented destruction

Natalie Cabrera, 59, said relentless waves undermined the foundation of the beachfront bungalow she has rented for a year and a half, leaving the floor warped and the home uninhabitable. “The floor is squishy. Because the ocean just kept hitting and hitting my home, and the water went underneath,” she said, describing how water came up from the ground rather than through the front door. She said neighbors who had lived in the area for decades told her they had never witnessed anything like it, and she now plans to move to Ontario to live with her son.

Robert Wells, 80, whose family has owned a summer home on the peninsula since 1962, said he had never seen such severe destruction and blamed the city’s sand berm, arguing it made the damage worse. “If they had done nothing, it would have been better,” he said, adding that, in his words, “a class action lawsuit is forming against the city of Long Beach.” Resident Dave Uff, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years, echoed the sentiment: “This is the worst anybody’s ever seen it.”

Storm’s reach extends across the region

In Newport Beach, officials declared a local emergency Friday after coastal flooding inundated streets on the Balboa Peninsula, closing beaches and shutting down the Newport Pier, Balboa Pier and the Wedge. The National Weather Service issued a coastal flood warning for Los Angeles County beaches and a high surf advisory with waves of 4 to 7 feet, warning that conditions could deteriorate further if high tides, winds and large swells peaked together.

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. Long Beach officials said they distributed 7,600 sandbags to residents, bringing the total handed out during the three recent storms — following Hurricane Marie over Labor Day weekend and Hurricane Polo in the following weeks — to roughly 15,000. Crews have begun moving 45,000 cubic yards of sand to add 200 feet of width to the weather-ravaged beach, with a larger sand replenishment project to follow the week of Oct. 19.

Reporting based on coverage by the New York Post and MyNewsLA.