Crescent City — one of California’s northernmost towns and Del Norte County’s lone city — took a close-to-$1 million hit to its harbor after tsunami waves battered the North Coast earlier this week.
Harbormaster Mike Rademaker told SFGATE in a call that initial estimates put the damage from rough seas triggered by the 8.8-magnitude quake off Russia’s coast at $100,000. Now, Rademaker said, “It’s probably getting closer to $1 million.”
Although tsunami warnings were issued for the entire West Coast and Hawaii late Tuesday night into Wednesday, most areas saw minimal impact. Crescent City was the exception. It recorded the highest tsunami waves in the continental U.S. — up to 4 feet — with powerful surges arriving just before dawn, lifting docks off their pilings and slamming the harbor.
Rademaker said the city is “probably bearing the largest brunt of … the entire United States impact.”
Crescent City isn’t just prone to tsunamis — it’s a bull’s-eye. According to a 2008 Cal Poly Humboldt study, the town has “suffered more impacts from historic tsunamis than any other community on the west coast of the United States,” with 31 events recorded since 1933. Offshore topography funnels wave energy straight into the harbor. One 2006 event, triggered over 3,500 miles away, tore through the small-boat basin with currents like a “river in flood,” the researchers wrote.
Crescent City Harbor District’s H Dock was built to take a hit, engineered with closely spaced pilings designed to disrupt and dissipate tsunami energy before it reaches the inner harbor. During Wednesday’s surge, it did just that. The dock’s decking lifted off its pilings and jammed in place before the structure failed completely, according to a Harbor District news release Wednesday.
The collapse caused visible sparking due to damaged wires. Harbor officials said H Dock “appears to have functioned as intended,” sacrificing itself to protect the rest of the harbor infrastructure.
“The story is still that H dock served its purpose of being a sacrificial structure to preserve the boats from being damaged,” Rademaker said. “... That’s a huge win and a huge validation of the engineering design.”
But now, with H Dock out of commission, the harbor is exposed. Rademaker said the city is now working to secure the funds to rebuild the harbor.
“We won’t be eligible for FEMA funding because that requires more of a widespread disaster,” Rademaker told SFGATE. Instead, he said, the cost will likely fall to local and state sources.
Amid assessing the damage and the pressure of keeping the harbor running while the city recovers, Rademaker told SFGATE he’s been in “turbo mode.” Now, the exhaustion is setting in. “I got a half hour of sleep the first night, and maybe, maybe four hours last night.”
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