What Biden Saw (More or Less)

The President was scheduled to tour several local areas this afternoon that were damaged in the recent storms, including this beach, with its battered beachfront homes, landslides, and a popular state park that is closed indefinitely. This is a view of the landmark Cement Ship, which has sunk further into the sea, and a portion of the pier that no longer connects it to land. (Not the ragged piling in the foreground, but further back...admittedly it's a little hard to see if you don't know what you're looking for.) On the far right is the former picnic area. Off camera is a juicy landslide, just one of many many unstable cliffs. There was a campground at the foot of the cliffs, but it's gone.

A group of us walked along the shore for about a mile, stepping around the enormous piles of wood and marveling at the amount of displaced sand. We came back on the road, which wasn't much different than the beach--so much mud and sand and debris everywhere. Lots of guys with shovels and wheelbarrows moving loads of dirt around, big fast trucks, bright colored machinery, lots of plywood. Mud. Dirt. More mud, more dirt.

Biden was also going to the badly damaged village of Capitola, and then south to the flooded farms in Watsonville, to the areas where the levee overflowed and took everything from so many people.