Rising seawater powered by a storm surge from Hurricane Marie inundated an oceanfront street in Seal Beach Wednesday morning, triggering a vigorous response.
The water cleared a 2 1/2 foot wall along several blocks of East Seal Way and was approaching ground-floor apartments this morning, said resident Melody Sanford.
Another resident, who lives in a two-story apartment in the 1000 block of East Seal Way, said the water had flooded the ground floor of the residence she shares with her husband.
Blanca Dubonbrown said she went to bed at 10 p.m. Tuesday, then got out of bed around an hour later and found that her bedroom was under three inches of water. She said the water also damaged pictures, carpet and furniture on the ground floor.
“It’s been terrible,” Dubonbrown said. “I was getting ready with the sandbags, but it was too late when I tried to put them up.”
A neighbor who was helping clean the apartment said there was 2 1/2 feet of water in its carport.
Emergency crews were deployed this morning to beat back the surge as much as possible.
Seal Beach Marine Safety Chief Joe Bailey said crews dug a channel to allow water that had breached a beach wall to drain back into the ocean.
At the same time, Bailey said, a sand berm was erected to hold back the storm surge before the next high tide, which was around 10:55 a.m.
Bailey said the water was two feet deep along the roadway late Tuesday night, a consequence of the rising level of water from the storm surge and a powerful southern swell.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and this is the biggest southern swell I’ve seen,” he said.
Orange County Fire Authority crews placed and distributed thousands of sandbags along the street, said Capt. Steve Concialdi.
“Our firefighters did an outstanding job filling all of those thousands of sandbags all night long,” Concialdi said.
The berm was completed just after 10 a.m., and firefighters worked for the next three hours to reinforce it, Concialdi said. The city’s public works department took over from there, and planned to stay on the scene for 24 hours to reinforce the berm from the pier to 14th Street, Concialdi said.
“It’s hit Seal Beach extremely hard,” he said of the storm surge.
“This has never occurred during the summer,” Concialdi said of the flooding, which is more common in the area during the winter months. Bailey made the same observation.
Another breach was reported less than a mile to the north, in the Peninsula neighborhood of Long Beach, where a sand berm was overtopped by the storm surge, causing minor street flooding, according to Long Beach Fire Department spokesman Jake Heflin.
— City News Service