The end of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf is fenced off Dec. 24, a day after large surf tore off an area under repair. (Tom Gigliotti)

It’s not clear how soon CalOES could ratify Santa Cruz’s emergency declaration. Wildfires raging in Southern California this week affect the office’s capacity to quickly process the request. Meredith Albert, emergency manager for the City of Santa Cruz, said she hopes the proclamation will be ratified in “the next week or two,” but stressed that it is unknown.

For now, the City of Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz Port District, and the County of Santa Cruz are responding, incurring costs and hoping for future reimbursement.

“In the meantime, the city does the right thing and gets into our working budget and takes care of what needs to be taken care of,” Albert said. “But with the scope and frequency and severity of disasters it makes it hard to sustain daily operations.”

The Santa Cruz Port District sustained about $25 million in damages to its harbor infrastructure, Port Director Holland MacLaurie said Thursday. At least 12 boats sank and at least one person who lived on their boat lost their vessel, MacLaurie wrote in an email. Several others who were temporarily displaced have now been permitted to return.

The estimated cost to rebuild the section of wharf that ripped off Dec. 23 is at least $20 million, city leaders said this week. Separately, there are more than $1 million in costs for a structural assessment completed before reopening the wharf, debris removal, and support for wharf businesses that were closed Dec. 23 to Jan. 3, said Santa Cruz City Manager Matt Huffaker.

“The 20 businesses that operate on the wharf lost about $700,000 in sales during the closure period,” Huffaker said Wednesday. “At the city council’s next meeting on Jan. 14, we’re bringing a package of economic relief” to support those businesses, Huffaker said.

The package includes rent relief to businesses and aid to income-qualifying wharf employees who lost wages during the closure, he said. The aim is to expand the support offered by the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County that provided $500 gift cards to about 150 wharf employees.

“We will also be discussing other long-term relief efforts,” Huffaker said.

Debris from the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf washed up on Seabright State Beach and on beaches at least 10 miles from the wharf. (Nik Altenberg — Santa Cruz Local)

The cost just to clean up debris from the wharf could balloon to $1 million, because the debris field is “constantly in flux,” Albert said. “On day one, we had a half-mile debris field, and here we are two weeks out, and it’s a 12-mile debris field.” It is not yet clear exactly how much it will cost to respond to this disaster, she said.

Huffaker said that a longer term approach could help. 

“We need to look long term and realize that the infrastructure we have in place today is vulnerable to a changing climate, to the increasing strength and frequency of storms,” Huffaker said. “We’ve reached an inflection point when it comes to preserving this critical infrastructure for future generations, and that may require some trade offs.”

MacLaurie said it was “discouraging” that this large swell was almost as destructive as the tsunami that hit the harbor in 2011.

“Essentially the entire harbor was rebuilt after the tsunami, and here we are about 10 to 12 years later and we’re kind of dealing with the same impacts,” MaLaurie said. “With the intensity and frequency of these storms, we’re currently in the process of having to evaluate what may be next and what is the most responsible and logical way to rebuild so that we’re not in the same position during the next event.”

Read more

• Santa Cruz wharf renovation plan approved – Jan. 10, 2024
• Legal threat delays wharf plan in Santa Cruz – Nov. 17, 2020
• Could a tsunami in Santa Cruz County reach your home? – Dec. 6. 2024
• 5-year West Cliff plan takes shape with road shift at Lighthouse Field – Nov. 20, 2024

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