Japan's Quake Leads to Damage on California Coast

By Julia Prodis Sulek, Paul Rogers and Mark Gomez, San Jose Mercury News
03.12.11

Surging water generated from the powerful earthquake off Japan's coast hit the California coastline Friday morning, capsizing boats, splintering docks and panicking thousands of seaside spectators from Eureka to Santa Cruz who had expected a mild amusement but were sent scrambling to higher ground. Some picked up their boards and ran to the beach. Others paddled out farther, then rode the swelling surge to shore.
 
One person taking pictures along the Klamath River in far Northern California was swept away and was still missing Friday afternoon, while emergency crews in Oregon rescued a handful of others from the water.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday declared a state of emergency for Del Norte, Humboldt, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. 

In the Bay Area, Santa Cruz Harbor took the worst of the tsunami; $15 million in damage was caused by two separate series of thick, rolling surges, the first about 8 a.m. and the second at 11:15 a.m. At least 30 boats broke away from moorings and several sunk, including one of two harbor patrol boats. Onlookers gasped and screamed as they tripped and stumbled up the hillsides moments before the second major surge blasted through.

"The dock, it looked like an explosion," Michael Sack, co-owner of Sanctuary Cruises, said of the harbor's U dock that was hit by the first surge. "The dock just blew up. It buckled and it splintered."

While many thrill-seekers were drawn toward the water by news reports that the tsunami was heading this way, thousands of more cautious beach-dwellers heeded evacuation advisories sent through automated calls from county emergency service agencies and headed en masse to the safety of mountaintops.

Parking lots and roadsides were jammed from Mount Madonna and the summit along Highway 17, to Skyline Boulevard through San Mateo County and the clifftops of Pacifica. Scores of people filled their cars with food and clothing, expecting the kind of devastation they had seen in movies or the apocalyptic sights from Japan on TV Friday morning.

"My main thing was to save my family," said Jose Urbina, who lives a few blocks from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. After receiving a call from a friend, he left his home at 3:15 a.m., some three hours before automated calls went out through the Beach Flats and other low-lying areas near his neighborhood. Urbina, his wife and two children were in one of hundreds of cars filling the summit parking lot along Highway 17. "Panic," he said, "was the only thing."

In Watsonville, after evacuation calls went out at 6:30 a.m., long lines of vehicles jammed gas stations and roads leading out of town. Highway 152 leading out of Watsonville and up to Mount Madonna was at a standstill early Friday morning. Children didn't show up for class at Watsonville area schools.

"We have up to 75 to 80 percent, possibly a 90 percent loss of attendance," said Brett McFadden, chief business officer at Pajaro Valley Unified School District.

Attendance also was down at Aptos-area schools, but not significantly.

In San Francisco, police shut a four-mile stretch of highway that runs along the city's western edge. Further south, several neighborhoods in Half Moon Bay on the west side of Highway 1 were evacuated and public schools in Half Moon Bay, Pacifica and Pescadero were closed Friday. 

At the Berkeley Marina, Harbormaster Ann Hardinger said at least four surges of water rushed into the harbor at about 25 mph, damaging six boat slips, breaking three docks and breaking a wooden piling.
 
"I've never seen the current so fast in all my life," Hardinger said.Some ferry services that shuttle commuters across the bay suspended operations Friday morning. Still, it was the worst tsunami damage to California since an Alaskan earthquake in 1964 triggered a tsunami that killed 17 people along the West Coast. Eleven of those deaths occurred in Crescent City, which suffered no deaths or injuries Friday but was hit by surges that destroyed boats.

In Santa Cruz, "we were just in the line of fire," Santa Cruz Port Director Lisa Ekers said of the direction, energy and flow of the tsunami. The Santa Cruz Harbor, which is home to about 850 boats, experienced "far more damage," she said, than any other harbors in the area, including Moss Landing, Monterey and Half Moon Bay.

The damage could have been far worse, she said, if her staff hadn't rushed to the harbor at 3 a.m. to tie down boats and disconnect all electricity and fuel supplies. Using megaphones in the early-morning hours, they woke up some 60 people sleeping on their boats. 

While the first series of surges caused the most damage, to the U dock as well as part of the J dock, hundreds more people had gathered along the frontage road and grassy area near the upper harbor by the time the second series hit.

"Everybody evacuate right now!" a harbor employee yelled through her megaphone as she drove up and down the waterway. "There's another big wave coming!"

That's when people scrambled up the hillsides, turning around when they heard the crunching of boats and splintering of wood. Dozens of boats, many 30 feet and longer, turned onto their sides and slammed into other boats. 

By lunchtime, the normally serene harbor reeked of diesel fuel, a colorful sheen polluted the surface and tires, and empty plastic bottles, paddles, life jackets and other debris bobbed in the water. Sections of dock 20 feet long washed out into the open ocean. An abandoned jet ski crashed up against the jetty rocks and rowboats, kayaks and other crafts were floating upside down in the harbor.

ReNae Ammon of Scotts Valley had come to the harbor to check on her 31-foot sport-fishing boat.

"You forget how powerful the ocean is," Ammon said. "You can really be at its mercy."

But Santa Cruz being Santa Cruz, laid-back surfers took to the waves despite the evacuation warnings. At the mouth of the San Lorenzo River just before 8 a.m., however, they were caught off-guard when the tide rushed out from under them. Many who had been floating on deep water just moments before suddenly found themselves standing in water just knee-deep.