Portion of Santa Cruz Wharf Falls Into the Sea!

That is today’s headline. What these boys are looking at from their precarious perch on the old railroad bridge is that little building in the water at the edge of the cliff. If you’re not from here, I imagine it would be easy to think that somehow it belonged there, because the alternative is very weird: this is the restroom building that just this morning was at the end of the municipal wharf, a structure that’s out of the frame, but about 3/4 of a mile to the right. Shortly before 1 pm, about 150 feet of the pier, a section that has been under repair from previous storm damage and closed to the public, simply dropped into the ocean after being pummeled by strong surf. There were only 3 people on the wrong side of the fence, and they were quickly rescued from the turbulent water. Videos show great sections of the wharf floating like oversized rafts, with a man waving from the center. Amazingly, no one was hurt. Speculation is that after a popular restaurant was demolished there wasn’t enough weight on that part of the wharf to hold it down against the severe waves that have been hitting the coast. Which brings us back to the restroom building that the boys are watching: it somehow floated intact in the choppy water all the way to the river mouth, where it lodged against the cliffs. Changing tides may give us a different perspective in the morning. Beaches and the wharf are closed; folks in low lying areas to the south of us have been told to evacuate. And I won’t post any more ocean shots for at least a couple days, since we’ve all been warned to stay far away from the water.