This past winter, El Niño caused nearly $100 million in damage in two California counties alone. By mid-March, 40 (of 58) California counties had been declared federal disaster areas. El Niño has been blamed for several deaths, the destruction or damage of hundreds of homes, the crippling of infrastructure, and the erosion of beaches and cliffs.
An earthquake lasts a few seconds; a hurricane a few hours. A fire can last for days. El Niño, however, is particularly stubborn. It's like a strategic aggressor — advance and retreat, parry and thrust.
California is familiar with disasters. Maybe not El Niño exactly, but disaster in general. Yet each disaster is different, and unlike many others, the state had time to prepare for this one. Predictions and supposition were bandied about months, nearly a year in advance.
The two-agency regulatory arm of the California coastal zone management agency, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and the California Coastal Commission (CCC), is charged with protecting more than 3,000 miles of coastline and managing its growth (BCDC's purview is limited to the San Francisco Bay area only). Disasters force these groups into action.
"The amount of damage along the coast [from El Niño] has been substantial, more than any that I've seen in my 25 years in this program," CCC executive director Peter Douglas said. "The amount of time that is required to deal with emergency permits and advice and working with local governments and other agencies to try to coordinate — it's been extremely costly in terms of human resources and dedicated time. And it's going to get even worse."
Both Douglas and Will Travis, his counterpart at BCDC, have weathered major storms and disasters in their roles as coastal resource managers. The knew what to expect and made appropriate decisions to deal with potential circumstances. For Travis and his group, the biggest challenge has been getting permits into people's hands.
To get an emergency permit to install protective devices from BCDC under normal circumstances, an applicant submits paperwork to a permit analyst, who then sends a recommendation to Travis. Travis discusses the permit with the chairman of the BCDC board and the two make a decision. The process usually takes at least 24 hours, he said.
"This year," Travis said, "I've reached an agreement with our chairman that he has pre-authorized everything I deem to be an emergency."
Under this policy, only Travis can say no. The staff can only say yes. If staff believe a permit should be denied, it goes to Travis for review.
"I don't want us to get hung up on what is the best way to do it," he explained. "There are people out there hurting. They need response from government immediately."
For Douglas and CCC, the problem has more involved those folks who don't apply, but do the work anyway. Still, the agency has issued more than 100 permits for emergency placement of erosion control devices, a practice that is troubling.
"That's only the people who came in and asked for emergency permits," he said. "Then we have all those properties that were protected without permits."
Many homes were protected illegally, with structures such as rip rap. Often it was done improperly, "it was too small, it wasn't engineered, it migrates across the beach, it ends up being a hazard. It's got to be dealt with," Douglas said.
The first requests for emergency permits came last summer.
"People were saying 'Gee, all these predictions of big storms and although we've been putting it off for years now, we want to build this sea wall now,'" Douglas said.
They've tried to be flexible, though he worried people were taking advantage of the situation. Technically, there was no emergency — the first drop of El Niño-fueled rain didn't fall until months later.
"No one could be sure El Niño would result in strong storms," he said.
Everyone is sure now, and thanks to some of the decisions Douglas' group made, damage has been limited. For example, the City of Carmel had an old deteriorating sea wall that could have been replaced well before El Niño threatened the town, but officials there moved too slowly. The result was a panicky plea to CCC.
"They came in and said 'My God, we've got to get this thing done,'" Douglas said.
The new wall "had very significant impacts and should have been analyzed under the regular permitting process," he said. "But we gave them the permit and they built it. If they hadn't, they would have lost infrastructure such as roads and water and sewer lines."
After the storms end, teams of inspectors will scour the coastline, looking for erosion control devices that are illegal. They'll then compare the beaches to pre-El Niño levels.
Post-storm construction will also offer challenges. California law, Douglas said, allows a destroyed home to be rebuilt without a permit, as long as it's in the same place and is the same size.
Another challenge is what happens when the land the home was built on no longer exists?
"A lot of the damage we've had is structures falling off cliffs, because the bluffs have fallen away," Douglas said. "There's no rebuilding there — the property is gone."
Both agencies worked to ready themselves for El Niño. There were extra workshops and training, alerts to other governmental agencies and the public. Winter is usually a dangerous time for the California coast, so some of it is familiar to these people.
For Travis in San Francisco, El Niño's wrath has been somewhat muted. His territory hasn't seen the tremendous damage surrounding areas have endured.
"What this reminds us is San Francisco Bay is in fact a great harbor," Travis said. "As we've watched the damage just outside the Golden Gate — in Pacifica, in Marin County — we haven't seen that kind of damage in the Bay. We've had higher water and a little erosion, but nothing compared to the open Pacific coastline."
Travis and Douglas worry about El Niño's rubble being properly disposed of, especially in areas such as Big Sur, where winter storms caused tremendous damage to roads.
"We have losses there that are just awesome," Douglas said. "The road is out in a number of places and that is going to be real difficult to repair."
