Sea wall damage in LC

Roberto

Well Known Member
Sec 5 and 9 got hit hard with the wind and high tide over the weekend. . House in 9 lost the seawall, a swimming pool beachside and looks like the house is gone too !!
 

RP Life

Well Known Member
Sec 5 and 9 got hit hard with the wind and high tide over the weekend. . House in 9 lost the seawall, a swimming pool beachside and looks like the house is gone too !!
Do you have any pictures? Who builds the sea walls for here?
 

Kenny

Well Known Member
Sec 5 and 9 got hit hard with the wind and high tide over the weekend. . House in 9 lost the seawall, a swimming pool beachside and looks like the house is gone too !!
Oh my! How far back from the wall was the pool? The pool from house?
 

mexicoruss

Lovin it in RP!
I’m not a structural engineer, but that looks more like a facade (or a farce) than something I would rely on for an extreme event.
The point is that you cannot build on sand and expect it to hold in an extreme event like we had over the weekend..many of the structures have been there many years...every time someone adds a structure it changes the energy flow from the storms. In the old days before adding sea walls the natural dunes took the hit not concrete.
 

Kenny

Well Known Member
I’m not a structural engineer, but that looks more like a facade (or a farce) than something I would rely on for an extreme event.
If you look closely you can see they used the original sea wall for a footing. They were not thinking years ago that our tides would be on the rise as they are today.
 

Southbeacher

Well Known Member
Actually it is not about tides being worse today than decades ago, but that the coast (any coast, due to fluctuating currents and weather patterns) shifts constantly. For example, around 15 years ago, the approximate 3-4 foot dunes on our beach were carved -- overnight -- to approximately 10-foot "cliffs." During ensuing years they reformed to their previous state. Also, there are sea walls and then there are sea walls. A true sea wall goes down something like 10 feet below ground, and has other heavily structural elements than merely cement.
 
Last edited:

Kenny

Well Known Member
Actually it is not about tides being worse today than decades ago, but that the coast (any coast, due to fluctuating currents and weather patterns) shifts constantly. For example, around 15 years ago, the approximate 3-4 foot dunes on our beach were carved -- overnight -- to approximately 10-foot "cliffs." During ensuing years they reformed to their previous state. Also, there are sea walls and then there are sea walls. A true sea wall goes down something like 10 feet below ground, and has other heavily structural elements than merely cement.
It may not entirely be about rising tides, but there is no question, none, that climate change with rising tides is a factor. Don't believe it? Good for you.
 

Kenny

Well Known Member
We're having a little trouble with the knuckle draggers like our member above, so we're just going to have to leave them behind and hope they didn't procreate. This is supposed to be a non-political site, but recently the loser bunch has brought up Democrats, progressives, and liberals. Good, sleep tight.
 

Idyllwild

Well Known Member
We're having a little trouble with the knuckle draggers like our member above, so we're just going to have to leave them behind and hope they didn't procreate. This is supposed to be a non-political site, but recently the loser bunch has brought up Democrats, progressives, and liberals. Good, sleep tight.
I earlier said I’m not a structural engineer. But I am a physical scientist with a few hundred publications. The water from those melting glaciers is going somewhere. Don’t buy any fancy globes, a lot of coastlines are going to change. Having said that, I looked at a number of properties in Los Chonches, and saw several that I thought were susceptible to being undermined. I also looked very closely at one that had a professionally engineered breakwater constructed with two neighboring properties that looked good for the next several decades. I’ve owned a number of homes, and built several. The quality of construction in Rocky Point is highly variable, and for the next 20 years or so, quality engineering is probably more important than sea level rise and increases in storm intensity. By 2099 Mexicali will be an hour’s drive from the beach, but I won’t be there to see it.
 

Roberto

Well Known Member
These fixed structures assume the coastline will remain the same. Like the banks of a stream things change, sometimes dramatically and there is little that can be done to stop the change. It is not a question if a seawall will fail it is a question of when it will fail. You just hope that will be after your lifetime !

And yes you have to be concerned about your neighbor's sea wall. Many are tied together in one big structure from house to house so you have to be concerned about protection along the sides as well as the face to the sea.

And yes good engineers are needed. A neighboring property to this one payed for a rebuild of a failed seawall and it fell again in the next storm in just a few months. Just throwing down a lot of concrete is not sufficient. I do not have the sense that there is any legal recourse either.

Take a look at the newly built house Sec. 5 , Lot 22 on the beach side. Even a modest high sea was going directly into the lower level of the house when first built. Some 'improvements' were made but I think this last assault of the sea went into the house again !!
 

Roberto

Well Known Member
I keep wondering of the 'pier' the guy built contributed to the damage. Seems to me a sandy beach would slow the flowing water a lot more than a smooth concrete surface. the flat smooth pier might have been like a raceway for the incoming tidal waves pushing the water to the sea wall and the home. If a hole was poked in the sea wall it was all over. Any hydrologists engineers or physics people comment ??
 
Top