Crescent City: Tsunami target

SAM SCOTT
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Robert Markin pulled his trailer up to the Crescent City Harbor, hoping to find something worth hauling away.

Instead, he found his boat, The American Maid, poking out of the water with a head-sized hole punched through its bow and its stern crushed and sunk.

"It's junk," the 80-year-old fisherman said Wednesday, staring down at the uninsured vessel. "If I stay here much longer, I'm going to start crying."

Crescent City has long been known as a magnet for tsunamis, the consequence in part of off-shore ridges that practically steer surges to its exposed position like gutters in a bowling lane. Since 1933, the city 20 miles south of the Oregon border has been hit by approximately 35 tsunamis, most infamously in 1964 when one nearly wiped its downtown off the map.

The most recent tsunami, though, is the worst in the five decades since then, Crescent City Mayor Charles Slert said. Sixteen boats were sunk, 47 others were damaged and rows and rows of concrete floating docks that once housed Northern California's most productive fishing fleet were gone, smashed into the corners of the boat basin or flung along nearby beaches.

"This harbor is toast," said Thomas Coopman, who couldn't get past law enforcement blockades in time to take his 30-foot crabber to the safety of the open sea. He finally slipped through, only to watch the Ruth M. go down in a wreck'em derby of untied boats and swirling debris.

"If they get started working right now, it'll be years before they get this place going. It's totally wiped us all out," Coopman said.

For the small city of 7,643 hemmed between the forest and the sea, prolonged repairs to the port could be economically painful.

Fishing major industry

Fishing is a major source of revenue for the town along with tourism, agriculture and the nearby Pelican Bay State Prison. In 2009, the most recent figures available, fishermen brought in $17.6 million worth of seafood to Crescent City, 48 percent more than the second most productive Northern California port, Eureka.

That money ripples through the economy to restaurants, stores and other businesses, Mayor Slert said, contrasting Crescent City's losses with the damage in Santa Cruz, where recreational vessels were hit hardest, he said.

Fort Bragg also suffered dock damage, but no vessels sank. The one fatality was a 25-year-old man who was swept out to sea while taking pictures of the tsunami near the Klamath River south of Crescent City.

"It's going to have a major impact on our economy here, which was already fragile and being challenged just like the rest of the region, state, country and world," Slert said.

Still many around town seemed unfazed by the turn of events. Crystal Winkelmann, a waitress at Tomasini's Enoteca, joked about getting a call from someone who had seen news reports and was worried Crescent City was underwater.

The waves were terrible for the fishermen, she said, but life hasn't changed much for the rest of the town, where business seems to be going on as normal.

"As far as this being a total disaster, I'd say, &‘No, not really,'" she said. "It's not like this whole town is going to implode. We can hold our own. We'll be okay."

History of tsunamis

Such nonchalance comes partly as the result of the town's long history of tsunamis, Slert said. In 2006, a smaller tsunami spawned by another quake off Japan caused millions of dollars in damage to the harbor. As a result, port leaders were in the middle of designing a $20 million harbor overhaul when this month's tsunami hit.

And the recent damage pales in comparison to the '64 onslaught that drove water through downtown, wreaking havoc over 29 city blocks. The wave slammed through 54 homes and 42 businesses and killed 11 people.

The worst damage that day wasn't caused by the face of the wave, said Ray Young, 77, whose family bakery on Second Street was destroyed after taking in 8 feet of water. It was caused by the churning water and whirlpools that filled in behind it, just like in the current videos from Japan, he said.

"The water just kept coming in and just kept rising," he said. "It was just turning things up like a washing machine."

A sign at the harbor shows the high-water mark that day, about the height of a basketball hoop. The recent surges, by contrast, barely got the sidewalks wet, Harbormaster Richard Young said.

"The water never got out of the boat basin," he said.

The difference makes it difficult to grasp how so much damaged ensued from such modest waves. But the key isn't so much the height of the waves; it's how quickly the peaks and troughs come, Young said.

A normal tide cycle may drop the water eight feet in eight hours. The tsunami surges did that in 20 minutes, causing violent jerking that torqued the docks, pilings and boats until they broke free and became just another force of destruction.

"The docks failed, the boats got loose and then the boats became battering rams," said Lori Dengler, a professor and tsunami expert at Humboldt State University.

The situation was worsened by the harbor's design, she said. The basin keeps out winter storms, but only intensifies tsunami surges, which funnel into its tight mouth and bounce off its rip-rapped walls like billiard balls.

The basin is the final straw in Crescent City's susceptibility to tsunamis, Dengler said. It creates a force that's even more powerful than the one conjured by nature.

"It's a tsunami on amphetamines," she said. "It's a tide on amphetamines."

The design of the basin was created prior to computer modeling and fundamental changes would be too expensive, she said.

New design should help

The hope now is that the design created in the wake of the 2006 tsunami can be implemented to strengthen the pilings and docks so they'll be impervious to moderate tsunamis. If those plans had been in place, the harbor would likely have sustained only minor losses this month, she said.

"We might have seen a couple of boats loose, but everything I have heard suggests the pilings would have stood, the docks would have stood," Dengler said.

But the cost of implementing that design in current conditions is estimated to top $36 million, Young said. Even if the state picks up 75 percent of the tab as part of its disaster response, there's no way local funds can cover the rest, he said.

The city needs federal disaster assistance, which will be contingent on statewide damage from the tsunami surpassing $44 million, he said. Even then it could take at least 1? years of work to have the harbor fully restored.

Struggle ahead

Troy Gardener, whose boat landed on top of The American Maid, crushing the smaller boat, said that fishermen will struggle mightily if the harbor is inoperable for long. Few have savings and none will qualify for unemployment as self-employed workers, he said.

He's confident, however, the harbor will be able to take baby steps back to health once the U.S. Coast Guard opens the port again. Currently dive teams are lifting sunken vessels to remove diesel, hydraulic fluid and other hazardous materials while clean-up crews are removing debris.

Soon the port should be able to put out temporary docks and use surviving pilings so that captains can at least moor in the harbor and row to land.

"It'll be an okay deal for those who are left here," Gardener said.

You can reach Staff Writer Sam Scott at 521-5431 or at sam.scott@pressdemocrat.com.

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