If you’re interested in the power of the ocean, the devastation it can cause, and how surfers can band together and make a positive impact in the community you’ll like this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjHiwR6LRlc&feature=youtu.be
~Brian
Sucks about all that damage Mako, I’m truly sorry, we had flood damage too but not to that extent. Same thing happened with my boat, I strapped it to my trailer and wrapped the anchor around a tree. It landed in my neighbors yard with a tight anchor line, would have definitely lost it.
I don’t want to get into it but there needs to be a happy medium, you don’t have to tell me I was there for the whole thing. I agree the beach fill did work but only for the first or second row of houses. Ship Bottom was an older fill and built differently than the one in Brant Beach and is much more user freindly. They had a much bigger wider and natural dune to begin with. Dunes that were not enchroached on near me (Beach Haven Crest) did a pretty good job, the flooding did most of the damage. Like I said there are people who have sued Long Beach Township to build on the dunes. In the Outer Banks I believe if your beach front is damaged over 50% it’s condemned and you can’t rebuild, it’s nothing I would ever wish on someone it’s awful. It’s a tough situation and there are no easy solutions when you live on the coastline.
There was no “recreational element” built into any of these beaches, isn’t that why people go to the beach lol? To make it worse there were a number of neck and shoulder injuries during the summer (swimmers no surfers) immediately south of the fill area where the sand moves north to south. I have a few friends and others I know come down to my beach because their kids were getting smashed in the shore pound, many older people like my parents can’t even make it up and over that dune so what’s the point. My friend has worked on many of these projects and has spoken and lectured many times to homeowners about a better more practical design. The dredging companies don’t want to hear it or the government who can fuck up anything they get their hands on. It’s all about how much money they can make and how quickly they can do it. If they can come up with a better profile that protects the beach and is more user freindly Im all for it.
This was a storm like we have never seen before. I have a home in Lavallette on the bay and consider myself lucky that I only got 15" of water in my home. That 15" caused over $80,000 worth of damage. I m left with just a shell of a house and I have always said that we are only borrowing this land. I m a big fan of a proper dune system. The towns that had proper dunes suffered much less damage than those towns that had insufficient or no dunes. It’s time we stop worrying about someone’s view and start concerning ourselves with protecting everyones’s property. Contrary to a previous post about dunes not stopping flooding, the ocean breached the dunes in many places and reached the bay. A strong dune system may have prevented much of the damage. I won’t be getting any funds from FEMA because Iam not a full time resident, but I pay my taxes like they do. My insurance claim won’t be taken care of until the full time residents are taken care of, but I pay my insurance bill just like they do. I can see taking care of the full time residents first to get them back into their homes, but just treat me in a fair manner. Although I m not a full time resident, I do work out of this home 12 months of the year, and I don’t get any of the benifit. I went out of round when my claims adjuster told me that i was the 20th home that he visited, but you won’t get your claim until the full time residents are taken care of. My reaction to this was that most of the full timers sold their houses in North Jersey at a good profit and are sitting on a much larger sum of money than I ever will. I m not looking for a hand out or to cut the line, just treat me like # 20. I will rebuild my home and hopefully it will withstand the next storm much better.
Thanks for posting the video Brian. I still ahve Family around the Atlantic City area They didn't get hurt to much a few trees down and no power for a few days. AC and Brigantine had damage in Oct went to my old stomping grounds of LBI and Beach Haven. They were not hit as hard as further north but it was not pretty. It will take years to get things even close to normal. I Knew the people there and the love and pride they have in "The Shore" One way to look at this is we now have an opertunity to do it better to rehab the dunes and bays. to bring back more of the natural processes that made The NJ beaches so beautiful in the first place. I'm proud to say I learned to surf in NJ
Many towns along the central and northern NJ coastline will never be the same. Things are forever changed. Lives are forever changed. It’s no longer in the headlines, but the need remains… and anyone who chooses to, can still help.
And at the same time it’s important to acknowledge and thank those who have helped, and those who continue to do. Because for every high profile effort to raise money and organize aide efforts, there are countless humble, nameless, faceless unsung heros who walk among us. The guy who sits in the cubicle next to you at work from 9-5 might be the guy who puts on his dust mask and crawls under his neighbor’s house to get his heat working… or drives all night a hundred miles to drop off collected supplies to a community he’s never been to before, for people he doesn’t know… or pull over on the way home from work to help drag an elderly man’s mouldy couch out to the curb for collection.
After the storm, the “artificial” beaches made from pumped sand built by the army corp of engineers were gone. Millions of cubic yards of sand piled up at taxpayer expense lay 3, 5, 10 feet deep in the streets of towns and in first floors of homes. The steep, artificial dropoff at the water line that created unrideable shorepound was gone, too. A more natural beach replaced it, complete with sandbars not seen for nearly two decades. Standing at the top of the beach, looking out at the ocean one would see a beautiful beach and surf zone in it’s natural state. But if you turned around, and looked at the devestation, you were reminded of just how indifferent nature can be to the human element.
The dredge companies that build those ‘‘artificial beaches’’ are lined up to get billions of $$$s right now. It’s time to demand a bit more common sense in coastal management. Building or re-building right on the edge is a high-risk proposition that should not be subsidized by others through taxpayer bailouts of insurance or dredge projects.
If they re-build a little smarter and stay away from the high-tide line you’ll get more natural beaches, better surf breaks, and less risk to be shouldered by the rest of us.
Good video Brian, saw that one a few weeks ago. It’s still a complete mess but it’s great to see so many people helping each other, true heros.
Good post NJ. The newest beach replenishment on LBI wiped out all the surf this summer, totally unridable and very dangerous shore pound. Mike is right, I have a freind who worked for the Army corps of engineers for years, he was so sick of the way they do business and what they did to the coast he swithched over to the FAA. Massively bloated projects approved through exaggerated data, he described it as a self fulfilling prophecy, they basically create their own projects and funding. I believe there are only 2 dredging compamies on the east coast in cohoots with them. The profile they created by me was so impractical people didn’t even want to go up and over the massive dune. The dredging co. only gets paid to do the fill to the high tide line and doesn’t fill in a gradual slope that would be a sandbar so it just turns into shore pound.
There was so much money spent on these projects and it’s all gone lol, some real nice bars has formed like NJ said. Now all the people are clamoring for more and demanding it be done. My who buddy did the original surveys mentioned the major problem was encroachment of houses built on existing dune systems. People have sued the townships to build there and now these assholes want their houses rebuilt and another fill.
The overwhelming majority of damage on LBI was flooding, all that water forced into the bay stacking up through both inlets with no where to go. These people don’t understand that you can have a freaking 100 foot high dune and it wont do shit about the flooding.
Nice peek inside how the Corps and the dredge lobby do their ‘‘work’’. Surfers understand how the coastline functions a little better than most of the policy-makers. And if those policy-makers have their way, you’ll have a giant berm designed to ‘‘protect’’ buildings rather than a surfable beach. You guys need to make your voices heard! The K Street lobbyists for the dredge companies sure make their voice$ known!
Here is a shot of the force of Sandy’s wind…This is a picture of one of my shingles impailed in the siding of the brand new house next door to me. As for my house I lost 1/3rd of my shingles and the 1st level of the house was flooded with chest deep water. Its a mess and we are still in limbo with the insurance situation.
As for the dredging…I’m a big fan. Every time they pump more sand on the beaches of my town the surf improves. The waves are better in my town than they ever were prior to the first big dredging and dune projects of the early 90s. Each time they pump the surf gets better and better.
Here’s what chest deep water does to a room filled with surfboards standing on end on uprite racks…makes for plenty of ding repairs. By the way there are 12 boards in that heap…there was another heap of boards in the next room.
Home Sweet Home at “Low Tide”. My boat actually floated up off its trailer and set itself down almost perfectly back on the trailer. Very lucky it didn’t float away. The shed I shape and glass in floated off its foundation but my fence kept it in the yard.
Regarding the things written about the dunes and dredging on Long Beach Island: I admit the dredging killed many of my favorite breaks up there in the short term. Please keep in mind that if not for that dredging most of Long Beach Island would look like what you see down in Beach Haven and Holgate. The island may have even been cut in half…in more than one place. If you have not done so please take a ride down to Holgate or head north to Lavallette and look at what the ocean did to the homes when it got over the first dune line…you will get an idea of what Ship Bottom on up to 20th street in Barnegat Light. It would have been total devistation. That beach fill project paid for itself several times over.
Every town is a little different, and was effected differently. In some places, a 100 seawall wouldn’t have stopped the flooding, because it came in from the bay or the river on the opposite side. In some places it was fast moving currents of water… in others there was almost no current at all. In some areas the wind exacerbated the flooding, in others it mitigated it. So there’s no magic bullet strategy to help prevent the kind of utter catastrophy that this once in a lifetime storm of epic proportions brought down on us.
Regarding the pumping of sand… don’t get me wrong. I’m not against beach replenishmnet. We live here now… that mistake has already been made, and it’s just not feasable to go back. Development only ever happens one way around here… open space becomes developed. It never goes the other way.
But we need to recognize that pumping sand alone is not an adequate solution to the problem… Just like hard structures alone was not an adequate solution. Jetties and seawalls alone don’t work, just like pumping sand alone doesn’t work. It needs to be a combination of the two in order to effectively address the issue of shoreline stabilization and the protection of property and infrastructure in a more sustainable and economically sound manner. What hasn’t been done, at least around here, is a combination of hard strutures… specifically jetties and artificial reefs… and strategic sand pumping. Each location has to be studied… longshore current strength and direction, wind and wave patterns, nearshore and offshore bathymetry, ect… all taken into account, and then an artificial reef/jetty system has to be engineered so that (like surfboards) the different elements of the system interact with each other in such a way as to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. A system that in many ways mirrors what we see in nature… reefs of different sizes, shapes and orientations… points and bays… smaller, shallower inside reefs… bigger deeper reefs on the outside. There’s no reason, IMHO, that a better solution has not been achieved by now… a solution that includes shoreline protection, recreation, resource preservation, and even the improvement of habitat for wildlife. Imagine the spearfishing opportunities! If they can build a rock and concrete seawall 12 feet high, and almost 6 miles long, they can build reef systems. If they can build highways that criss-cross the entire country, they can engineer effective shoreline protection. Not that it would stop a Superstorm Sandy, but at least it would be an improvement over what we do now, be more sustainable, and be at least as effective.
I’m not suggesting the ACOE’s be put out of work… only change the work they do. The current efforts are only marginally effective, and very short term. The technology exists now to do things better… to be more cost effective, and at least create a longER term solution. That’s all I’m advocating for. I believe the insurance industry is AT LEAST as corrupt and unfair as the beach replenishment industry, if not more… but that’s a whole other topic. I agree… you shouldn’t have to pay for “my” beach (your words, not mine… I consider it “everyone’s” beach), and I shouldn’t have to pay for the social costs of cigarette smoking, obesity, alcoholism, birth defects, corrupt bankers and loan agents… it’s not fair. But it is what it is…
As for risk… well… we don’t tell people not to live in Tornado Alley, in mudslide zones, on fault lines, in tsunami risk areas, in flood basins of rivers… or in hurricane territory. Good or bad, right or wrong… we just don’t do that in this country. As far as NJ being a target for Hurricanes? There are other risker places to be… there was never a Superstorm Sandy before, and likely won’t be for perhaps generations, if ever. I’d say it’s a calculated risk that people have taken, and some lost it all. I’ve said it before… nothing could have stopped it. It was an unprecidented event. How do you factor that into your home purchase? You don’t. You can’t.
I’m sorry… I look around and see my friends, their families, my students in my school… I see the pain. I see them as victims. I just can’t bring myself to take the, “well, you shouldn’t have built here to begin with” attitude.
Well, development did ‘‘go the other way’’ during Sandy, as it will in other storms if sited in the riskiest location possible. If someone wants to rebuild and assume the risk, so be it. But don’t socialize that risk by expecting to be covered by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program. Don’t expect dredgers to replace ‘‘your’’ beach with federal taxpayer dollars. It’s time for some common sense when it comes to developing the edge of the coast.
The NFIP will be over $30B in debt when this is done. It needs less exposure, not more. If proposed reforms were in place, it would save us billions in future claims. The status quo may not last much longer. Your insurance is higher because these higher risk properties are in your pool.
Your idea of a combination approach is admirable, but it doesn’t stand a chance because the dredge lobby likes the repetitive nature of their work. The product they put on your beach almost always erodes faster than natural beach sand, so they can come back in a few years and get more tax dollars to play with. The Corps is set to get the equivalent of an entire year’s operating budget ($5,350,000,000!!) in the current package, which when passed through to the dredge companies will give them plenty of cash to continue their lobbying efforts.
The risk is obvious, and much higher, in some places (edge of coast, deep in floodplains of rivers, edge or base of cliff). The NFIP was conceived to share the reasonable risk and discourage extreme risk wrt water. It’s not working and needs fixing.
If someone wants to build on the edge, let them do it on their own nickel.
I agree it’s a national problem, here in Florida we are no strangers to all of this. Aid is needed for Sandy victims now, but the re-building process should be smarter.
NJ, Actually we do move people out of flood plans. Whole towns have been moved out of areas that have a history of flooding along the Mississippi River. In some mountainous areas that are prone mud slides and unstable earth people that have had houses condemned are not allow to rebuild. I know in one case in Utah the city and county are being sued for allowing development in a know area that is very unstable. apx 30% of the homes are now condemned and the rest can not sell since you can no longer get home owners insurance for that area.
It may be a more effective use of money to buy out some of the beach front homeowners. bulldoze down the homes and allow the dunes to rebuild. The dunes will be the best defence from wave damage. Flooding is another problem Older homes that were not built to current code will have to be raised up and meet minimum height requirements for flood plan areas. I noticed this when I was on Brigantine Island this past Oct. Most of the damage there was from back flooding from the bay. The premium for flood insurance are going to skyrocket in those locations anyway.
As places to live go there are few places in this country more safe from natural disasters than New Jersey. Quick everyone evacuate Florida and the Gulf coast…sheesh, if its not hurricanes its tornados down there.
If you want to get into government spending on beach replenishment and disaster recovery it is money well spent. Better to see that money spent here than give to East Uzbekistan. Speaking of which, I haven’t seen a single relief truck from France, Greece, Egypt or any of the other shitpile countries we give foreign aid to. What’s up with that?
artz… I understand what you’re saying, and see that those cases you mentioned are another level of risk entirely. You’re talking about grave, eminent risk… situations where catastrophies have happened in the past, and are certain to happen again, and in the forseable future. This was not the case with Sandy. Sandy was a different animal completely… the compounded, exponential effects of a number of factors, from storm track, to bombing low, to jet stream position, to lunar phase, to timing of high tide… and probably a few other factors I’m not aware of. An unbelievelable concidence of events with unbelieveable consequences. We should be sure to acknowledge the difference in this discussion.
Actually, mako, you’re in a hot spot for coastal flooding due to several factors. The better you manage that risk exposure as they rebuild the less it will cost everyone in the long term. Building big sandcastles isn’t going to solve all the problems, but lots of money will be spent to convince you that it will.
A few years ago they pumped a bunch of WWII unexploded ordinance onto Surf City beaches taken from a site offshore. The pumping company used the wrong sized screens so they could pump it faster, whooops. You figure being the gvt they would know the site they used was a dumping site. Kids finding live fuses on the beach, that was doozey.
Just some random thoughts.
The ACOE doesn’t have the best track record in coastal projects. Look at Santa Cruz harbor and the “million dollar wave”, for example. Build a pair of jetties to protect a harbor entrance. Fail at the engineering of said structures and wind up having to dredge continuously to keep the entrance open and free of sandbars.
Folks who build homes along the shore cannot expect the ocean to cater to their wishes. I have seen more than a few multi million dollar homes get rearranged by storms. A few houses in my town have been moved away from the water more than once since the houses were built. All of these structures are less than 40 years old.
As far as the situation in NJ and NY goes, I think priority should be given to rebuilding houses that are a family’s primary residence. Vacation homes are not a necessity and the loss of one is not a hardship in my eyes.
There was one part of that Sandy video that I was not happy to see. For personal reasons.