The towering waves that hammered California’s coast this week have been unusually destructive, killing at least one person and prompting warnings by officials to the public to stay away from the state’s beaches.
The tumultuous surf also ripped apart a historic wharf in Santa Cruz, prompting new questions about the future of the state’s beloved piers, as the sea grows ever more fierce amid climate change.
Every year, state and local officials — often with community support — pour millions of dollars into preserving the spindly wooden structures that have been a defining feature of California’s coastline dating back to the Gold Rush.
In San Luis Obispo County, part of the Cayucos Pier has been roped off since it was damaged in a ferocious storm earlier this year. The partial closure came less than a decade after the pier underwent a $3.5 million renovation that was supposed to sustain the structure for several decades.
In San Diego, the Ocean Beach pier, a nearly 2,000-foot concrete structure built in 1966, has been closed indefinitely, as city officials explore replacing it after having spent more than $1.7 million on repairs following storms over the past five years.
And in Santa Cruz County, three wooden piers have been damaged or destroyed in storms and hazardous ocean swells since last year. Earlier damage to the Santa Cruz Wharf, which was built in 1914 and is now the longest pier on the West Coast, led city officials to begin a $4 million restoration project this year.
A team of workers was inspecting the section of the wharf that was under renovation and closed to the public on Monday when powerful waves began to thrash the state’s coastline. Three of the workers — two engineers and a project manager — were launched into the water. They were rescued and reported no injuries, according to officials. The entire wharf will remain closed until further notice and next steps are uncertain, city officials said on Tuesday.
“In a world of climate change, do you simply say, ‘That was that, and we’re going to put everything back and see how it goes?’” Fred Keeley, the mayor of Santa Cruz, said. “I’m not as sanguine about that.”
About 15 miles down the coast from Santa Cruz, a man died on Monday after getting trapped under debris that had been washed up by a wave at Sunset State Beach, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office said. Twenty miles further south, also in the Monterey Bay region, a man went missing after being overcome by high surf at Marina State Beach. Authorities called off search efforts for the man on Monday afternoon, citing dangerous conditions, according to the Marina Police Department.
On Tuesday, the Weather Service continued its high surf warning through much of the day for coastal areas in the greater Bay Area, stretching from the Sonoma coast down to Monterey Bay. A similar warning was in place until noon in Central and Southern California.
Mark Sponsler, a San Francisco-based surfer who runs the website Stormsurf, said that Monday’s surf was so powerful that he headed back to shore after only 15 minutes in the water near Pacifica, close to San Francisco.
“It was like small tidal waves coming in,” Mr. Sponsler said. “The whole bay was undulating in and out.”
Part of the lure of California’s piers is nostalgia: The state’s earliest piers were built more than 150 years ago and served steamships transporting gold, oil, lumber and produce.
As coastal shipping lines were overtaken by railroads and highways, old piers were converted to new uses. New piers were built as tourist destinations. The Santa Monica Pier, instantly recognizable for its solar-powered Ferris wheel and panoramic views of the Southern California coastline, is now one of the state’s best known landmarks.
About three dozen piers are still operational along California’s Pacific coastline. Most are public piers where visitors can fish or take in the views. Some are used by marine researchers. Others, like the Santa Cruz Wharf, include restaurants and shops.
Fires and storms have long threatened California’s piers, but experts said the risks have grown more acute, as rising sea levels from global warming have created larger-than-usual waves off the coast.
Michael W. Beck, the director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that big wave events have increased significantly over the past few decades.
Daily exposure to stronger waves — which strike multiple times a minute — also causes wear that California’s sea structures weren’t designed to withstand, he said.
“The waves have just been relentless on these piers,” Mr. Beck said.
No single entity is responsible for overseeing piers along California’s coast. Many, like the Santa Cruz Wharf, are managed by local communities, with state and federal agencies contributing to repairs and renovations.
Maintaining these piers can cost communities hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars annually, and repairing significant damage often runs into the millions.
In 1983, powerful storms destroyed nearly a third of the wooden section of the Santa Monica Pier. The city spent about $12 million to rebuild the damaged area, replacing aging wooden pilings with concrete ones, said Jim Harris, executive director of the Santa Monica Pier Corporation. In the early 2010s, the city invested another $10 million to extend some of those reinforcements to the rest of the pier.
“Today, you’re walking on a very sturdy and sufficient pier that’s not going to wash away,” Mr. Harris said.
Closer to Santa Cruz, in Capitola, officials spent more than $10 million to repair the wharf after it was split in half during a storm in early 2023. Crews widened the structure and added more pilings for support. Other communities have opted to upgrade their aging piers by replacing missing and deteriorated piles with new ones made partially out of fiberglass.
But not all municipalities have the resources for extensive upgrades, especially as coastal towns face tough decisions about how to use limited funds, from rebuilding washed-out roads to contending with eroding cliffs.
On Tuesday, Michelle Templeton, the assistant city manager of Santa Cruz, said the city had been conducting regular maintenance and reinforcing the wharf’s infrastructure even before there were signs of trouble. But she suggested that those sorts of measures might be only temporary fixes to deeper problems, as the effects of climate change grow clear.
“Mother Nature holds the cards,” she said.
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