Hurricane Marie swell causes dramatic beach erosion in Newport Beach
Marie swell causes dramatic beach erosion
Hurricane Marie’s powerful swell dramatically reshaped beaches across Orange County. Severe erosion near the Wedge and Balboa Pier exposed buried debris and created steep drop-offs.
ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. - Hurricane Marie may have stayed hundreds of miles offshore, but its powerful swell dramatically reshaped beaches across Orange County.
At the Wedge in Newport Beach, massive sections of sand have been ripped away, exposing rocks, wires, asphalt, a pipe and pieces of an old pier that had been buried for decades.
"That’s crazy. I’ve been coming here my whole life. I didn’t even know that was there," said Dominique, a surfer at the Wedge.
The erosion is even more dramatic near the Balboa Pier.
The beach now has a steep drop-off that looks as if it was sliced straight through the sand. Beachgoers are navigating the massive wall just to get down to the water.
For some, getting back up is another story.
"How do you get to the water?" FOX 11 asked Joanne, who was near the Balboa Pier.
"I can’t. Not at my age. I can’t go down that cliff and try to get back up again," she said.
Marie never made landfall in Southern California.
But the storm’s massive swell slammed into the coast, pounding boardwalks, damaging homes, flooding streets and stripping away tons of sand.
"To have so much sand and now none, it’s Mother Nature letting you know who she is," said Michael Manfredi, a skimboarder near the Balboa Pier.
FOX 11’s Matthew Seedorff saw the dramatic erosion firsthand.
"Pretty remarkable to see this up close," Seedorff said. "All this erosion is uncovering, essentially, a time capsule of things below. And this is about 8 to 10 feet tall."
Joanne, who has lived in the area since 1957, said she has seen erosion before — but nothing like this.
"We have erosion often. This is the most we’ve had for a long time," she said.
Near the Wedge, some sections of the beach have been roped off as lifeguards worry more sand could give way.
FOX 11 reached out to several Newport Beach city officials about what happens next and whether the city plans to replace the sand stripped away by Marie.
So far, no plan has been released to replace the sand.
That leaves beachgoers wondering how — and when — the dramatically altered coastline will be restored.
"Now you’ve got boulders and rocks out there. I don’t even know what they’ll do to fix it," a resident near the Wedge said.