San Clemente puts its sand deficit at 2 to 4 million cubic yards, and on October 1 it sent Measure M, a 1% sales tax for sand and fire protection, to November's ballot. In September high tides and waves overtopped the beachfront rail tracks and stopped Metrolink, Amtrak and freight service; ahead of the October 26 to 28 tides Metrolink suspended Orange County Line service between Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo and Oceanside for October 26 to 30. A thinner beach puts the sea closer to every slab, wall and planter behind it.
Every high tide now reaches under the slab. Concrete is porous; seawater pushes up through cracks, joints and the slab edge, leaves a salt crust on the surface, and climbs the bottom plates of the walls. The room feels damp with no rain and no leak.
A saturated bluff 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 →
The sand is the City's: the deficit, Measure M and the replenishment it would fund are public work on public timelines. The rail corridor is Metrolink's and the railroad's. The State's El Niño emergency of September 21 means emergency coastal permits for seawall repair are decided within 24 hours; that wall is the coastal engineer's design. Our part is the house: documentation, drying, drainage, moisture under the slab and mold.
San Clemente puts its sand deficit at 2 to 4 million cubic yards and sends Measure M, a 1% sales tax for sand and fire protection, to November's ballot. Newport Beach brings its replenishment forward: about 100,000 cubic yards of Santa Ana River sand to West Newport later this month.
Voice of OCMetrolink suspended Orange County Line service between Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo and Oceanside for Oct 26–30, ahead of the king tides on the beachfront tracks at San Clemente; trains run only between Los Angeles Union Station and Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo, with no replacement buses. In September high tides and waves overtopped the same tracks and stopped Metrolink, Amtrak and freight service.
NBC Los Angeles, Oct 22 · MyNewsLA, Oct 22The 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.
It fixes the beach. The seawater that reached the slab, the walls and the framing has already done its work, and the groundwater under the beachfront will keep following the tide whatever the beach looks like. The house needs its own answer: a moisture survey, drainage and a sump if the slab is taking water from below, and removal of what cannot be dried.
Have the house surveyed now so the baseline is on record, then close the paths the survey finds: slab penetrations, the slab edge, the garage threshold, a sump where the water table is reaching the slab. Sandbags and the street are the City's; the house is what we can change in the weeks between now and November 24.
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.
Other coasts: Capistrano Beach · Long Beach Peninsula · Newport Beach · Malibu · Laguna Beach · Orange County coast · Water intrusion testing · home
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.