Laguna Beach lost a chunk of one of its weird and wonderful surf lookouts this week, when a massive section of bluff collapsed at Agate into the ocean.
The rockslide happened Tuesday afternoon below the stairway viewpoint at Agate Street Beach, a fickle but beloved local surf spot tucked between Pearl and Bluebird. No injuries were reported, but the city closed the stairs while a geologist evaluates the remaining cliff.
See footage from the coastal erosion, fueled by this season’s Super El Niño, below.
Resident Ben Young told Patch he was standing on the lower landing when he noticed something was wrong.
“I looked over on the point of the rocks and there was a four-inch wide crack going all the way down to the ocean,” Young said.
Moments later, he added, “the entire thing collapsed into the ocean.”
Related: Watch 20-Foot Backwash Waves Destroy Southern California Beach (Video)
Local resident Shuvo Rafi, who lives near the crumbling access point, expressed the helpless reality facing coastal communities.
“Mother nature is mother nature I guess, right? There’s nothing you can do about it,” Rafi noted, adding that he hasn’t even seen the actual sand at Agate Street in over a month due to the persistently high water levels. “I’m just lucky that I’m not on the water.”
The timing wasn’t random. Southern California has spent weeks getting hammered by elevated surf, unusually high tides and repeated hurricane swells. Hurricane Polo added another round this week, while the National Weather Service warned Orange County of tides approaching seven feet and additional coastal erosion.
Agate has taken hits before. In 2015, high surf damaged the same beach-access staircase badly enough that a section fell into the ocean. This time, however, the collapse comes amid a broader erosion crisis.
Earlier in September, Laguna Beach declared a local emergency after Hurricane Marie stripped extraordinary amounts of sand from city beaches, damaged Aliso Beach infrastructure and left six oceanfront homes yellow-tagged. “Most of us have never seen this much sand leave our beaches at once,” City Manager Dave Kiff said.
And winter hasn’t even arrived.
NOAA says the current El Niño is strengthening, with more than a 90% chance of becoming “very strong” this fall and winter and a 75% chance it reaches historic strength. El Niño can also raise coastal water levels, while coastally trapped Kelvin waves can push additional water against California.
For surfers, that could mean more swell. For fragile bluffs like Agate Street, it could mean something much uglier. For everyone else, the stairs remain closed—and part of Laguna’s coastline is sitting at the bottom of the cliff.
And there’s more to come.
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