Sleepy California Town, and a Tsunami Magnet
Jesse McKinley
The New York Times
03/16/2011
CRESCENT CITY, Calif. — There are images of waves throughout Crescent City: on the signs marking the city limits, on the logo of its credit union and on the facade of Tsunami Lanes, where this city’s local rollers come to bowl.
But the waves capturing most of the attention in this most northern of California cities are in the harbor, where the remnants of last week’s surprisingly destructive tsunami are still roiling the waters. “There are three-foot waves still coming in here” said Josh Zulliger, a warden with the California Department of Fish and Game. “The bathtub in the Pacific is still swinging back and forth.”
Crescent City has long been known as one of the nation’s most susceptible spots when it comes to tsunamis, something that experts say is a result of a number of factors, including an underwater ridge offshore, which intensifies and directs the surf toward the city, and the harbor’s shape — the inner basin is a rectangle — which effectively bounces waves directly back into the line of incoming waves.
While the world’s attention is focused on the unfolding tragedy in Japan, residents here are coping with Friday’s big waves, which stormed across the ocean and sent an eight-foot swell into the enclosed harbor here, smashing dozens of boats.
Damage is believed to be in the tens of millions of dollars. And just to the south, the tsunami took a human toll when a 25-year-old man made a fatal mistake by turning his back to the surging sea. The man, Dustin Weber, was swept away; his body has not been found.
And while the waves have subsided as the days have passed, the damage is still being measured: at least 16 boats are known to have sunk.
All of the docks were destroyed, and on Wednesday, many of the boats were still submerged, including the American Maid, whose nose poked skyward even as its bow rested under the surface.
Divers for the state were working to evaluate the damage, and they attached floats to vessels in hopes of lifting them off the bottom of the harbor and then draining toxic fuel from their tanks. And sure enough, one beleaguered fishing ship — the Tamara — had been brought to the surface by Wednesday morning with the aid of several large inflatable pillows.
Still, a sheen from spilled oil and fuel was visible, and bits of the smashed docks — wood and plastic foam — dotted the beaches and cluttered the harbor, which was battered by a smaller tsunami in 2006.
“We’ve gone from having a problem,” said Richard Young, the harbor master, “to having an emergency.”
On Friday, the harbor’s protective layout — with a narrow entrance — actually sped water into the line of docked boats, creating a powerfully destructive current.
“It was like a fire hose in there,” said Gerry Hemmingsen, a Del Norte County supervisor.
Costas E. Synolakis, the director of the Tsunami Research Center at the University of Southern California, called the effect a “harbor paradox.”
“For some harbor geometries, the more you close the entrance of the port, the more amplification you get inside,” Dr. Synolakis said in an e-mail. “The entire process is quite similar to the vibrations in a drum: when you hit it, you produce waves in the membrane that reverberate.”
In 1964, a tidal wave killed 11 people in Del Norte County, where Crescent City is the county seat. Located on a nose of land that pokes into the Pacific, Crescent City is pocked by jagged outcroppings of rock and residents are familiar with the roiling gray surf. One of the nation’s most precariously placed lighthouses — storm waves would sometimes sweep the top of the structure and cause the tower to tremble — was long located just north of town, off Point Saint George, where scores died after a steamer sank in 1865.
And while the current damage is small in comparison — and compared with the losses in Japan — it is still painful for an economically depressed city where much of the population lives near or below the poverty line.
At a town hall meeting on Monday morning, more than 100 residents came both to offer their assistance — a volunteer effort to clean the beaches will begin on Saturday — and to seek it. “People are asking: ‘How long is it going to take for help to get here?’ ” said Kelly Schellong, a city councilwoman.
