On September 10 Laguna Beach declared a local emergency: six oceanfront homes on Ocean Way and Lagunita were yellow-tagged with compromised seawalls. On October 13 the bluff at El Morro cracked under Coast Highway; one southbound lane has been closed since, and on October 19 Caltrans filed an emergency notice for temporary slope and roadway stabilization near Morro Ridge Road. Laguna's oceanfront homes sit behind private seawalls with the hillside draining down toward them. The sea and the hill both put water into a house from below.
A seawall that has lost its face or its footing lets seawater and sand move behind it at every high tide. The slab and the lower walls behind it take that water first: a damp floor with no rain, a white salt crust on concrete, a lower level that smells of the sea.
A saturated hillside drains through the house below it. Retaining walls, planters and the slab edge on the uphill side take water under pressure after every storm, and the lower level shows it as damp walls, efflorescence and mold. The fix is drainage behind the wall and a membrane, not paint.
Where run-up reached a lower level, the drywall, insulation and framing that took seawater have to be opened and dried within days. Salt stays in whatever is left in place.
Not on the sand? The same higher sea lifts the water table under low-lying streets blocks inland, so a slab can take water from below with no wave in sight. How the groundwater behind the beachfront works →
Laguna Beach's local emergency and the State's El Niño emergency of September 21 mean an emergency coastal development permit for seawall repair is decided within 24 hours; it lasts 120 days and the follow-up permit still has to be won. The wall is the coastal engineer's design and the armoring contractor's build; Coast Highway at El Morro is Caltrans's. Our part is the house: the moisture survey, drainage behind retaining walls and under slabs, dry-out, mold, and the documentation the adjuster and the City will ask for.
Local emergency. Six oceanfront homes yellow-tagged with compromised seawalls.
NTD · AccuWeatherCaltrans filed an emergency notice for the Crystal Cove Coastal Access Preservation Project: temporary slope and roadway stabilization and wave-energy-dispersing devices on Coast Highway near Morro Ridge Road, under the Sep 21 state emergency. One southbound lane has been closed since the bluff cracked on Oct 13, and the beach below is closed.
CEQAnet, Notice of Exemption 2026100640, Oct 19 · Patch Laguna Beach, Oct 13 · Surfer, Oct 20The whole coast, dated and sourced →
In this order. Documenting and drying happen the same day; documenting comes first.
If you smell gas, get out and call the gas company from outside. Switch off power to circuits that are wet. Do not enter a red-tagged house; a yellow tag says what you may do.
Close the valve if it is a pipe. If it is the sea or the ground, there is nothing to close; move what you can above the water line and leave the rest in place for the photographs.
Every room, the water line on the walls, the floor, the garage, the contents, the outside of the house and the beach or street. Phone timestamps are fine. Nothing gets dried, moved or thrown out before it is on record.
A pin meter on walls and floors, room by room, written down with the time. If you do not have one, we bring ours; the readings date the damage.
Call your insurer the same day, say you are limiting the damage, and send the photographs. Keep the City's tag notice if there is one. Wave and flood damage is often a flood-policy question; the record matters either way.
Extraction, air movers and dehumidifiers the same day. Wet drywall and insulation that took seawater come out; the salt stays in whatever is left. Do not tear out beyond what has been photographed.
A damp floor with no rain, a salt crust on concrete, doors that bind and new cracks mean the water is under the slab. That is a moisture survey, not a guess, and it is where we start.
Yes, within what the tag allows. We document first: photographs, moisture readings and a moisture map of every floor and wall, dated, before anything is dried or torn out. Then the inside work: emergency dry-out, drainage and a sump to hold the water table under the slab, mold removal, and the envelope repairs. The seawall itself is the coastal engineer's design; we coordinate with that engineer and with the City's building official.
Not necessarily. The sand under the slab and the seawater under the slab do not need a broken wall. The signs are a damp floor with no rain, a white salt crust on concrete, doors that bind, cracks that were not there before the storms. A moisture survey answers the question in a day.
Dated photographs and video of the water line and of every wet room before drying; moisture readings; the City's tag notice; and a cause-of-loss report that says where the water came from and what it did. We write that report. Wave and flood damage is usually a flood-policy question and many homeowner policies exclude it; the documentation is what the adjuster or your attorney works from either way.
One licensed contractor answers, finds the source, makes the repair and writes the report. Not a call center that passes your job to whoever is nearby.
No photograph of the home leaves the file without written consent. We work through the estate manager, the architect or the family office when that is how the house is run.
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L3 Energy Construction LLC, CSLB #1149191, Southern California coast, Malibu to La Jolla. Water-intrusion practice since 1999 as Hydrotech Construction, including construction-defect expert witness work. Figures in the log are as reported by the linked sources; the reading of what they mean inside a house is ours. Illustrative, not a survey of any property.