Sunset Beach Awash in a 7-Foot-2 Tide

Sgt. Miguel Chavez of the California Highway Patrol stared at the water flowing down Pacific Coast Highway Tuesday and pointed to what he said was sea life in the northbound lane.

“See that spot there,” he said. “There were some fish coming out of the drain. It looked like a little school swimming down the highway.”

One northbound lane of the highway was closed between Warner Avenue and Anderson Street in Sunset Beach for three hours Tuesday as a 7-foot-2-inch tide overflowed the banks at Huntington Harbour and sent water spilling onto a mile stretch of the road.

The lane will also be closed today between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. when the high tide is scheduled to reach 7 feet. Drivers who want to avoid the bottleneck were advised to use the San Diego Freeway.

Chavez said the flood on the highway reached a depth of 10 inches at most but quickly subsided.

“We are just keeping the flooding from becoming a problem,” Chavez said. “It’s just a nuisance right now.”

CHP Officer John Chilcote said the tide left about three inches of water on the second northbound lane, but the flooding is expected to be less today.

Harbor patrols in Orange County reported few problems in other coastal areas. “There was no surf,” said Don Stewart of the Newport Beach Marine Department. “The water was flat, and there wasn’t much of a problem with flooding along the beaches.”

In Seal Beach, Lifeguard Lt. Dan Dorsey said, “We’ve had the phone ringing off the wall, with a few reporters and lots of citizens asking if the town is going to wash away. But nothing is really going on.”

Even in Sunset Beach, Lt. Larry Richey of the Sheriff’s Department said, the water “never really got to the houses. It washed up the culverts and spilled back over the highway.”

But several homeowners on Bayview Drive in Sunset Beach said that after the tide subsided they found that their garages and basements had been flooded. The street lies next to a channel that flows from Huntington Harbour.

Bob Brunelle, who has lived on the street for 15 years, said that like his neighbors, he has come to expect the flooding by the high tides but still doesn’t like it.

Bruce Hicks, an eight-year resident of Bayview Drive, criticized the county for not providing residents with water pumps.

“It’s not the responsibility of the people to pump out the water, it’s the county’s. We pay our taxes. All they do is shrug,” Hicks said.

But Rod Speer, executive assistant to county Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, said, “You are dealing with the ocean here. When you try to pump the water out, the water will just come back again. The county had to wait till the tide went down. But we have been pumping in areas where people have been calling in.”

Homeowner Bob Dowis, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years, said his garage was flooded with about four inches of water.

Stepping gingerly in the water in his knee-high wader boots, Dowis said he is accustomed to the floods and to the repair bills.

“Every year the water flows up underneath my house, and I always lose money from it,” Dowis said.

Times staff writer Nancy Wride contributed to this story.