High Tide Time : Coastal Residents Aren’t Worried Thanks to a Stormless Forecast

San Diego’s coastal residents are taking high-tide warnings with a grain or two of salt, a coastal tour of the potential trouble spots showed Monday. Plenty of people were out on the beaches, not to view the damage but to enjoy the balmy weather and better-than-average surf.

Although 7.4-foot tides lapped dangerously close to residences and restaurants on Monday, few of the beachfront residents were headed for sandbags and shovels at the prediction of 7.7-foot tides today and 7.8-foot tides on New Year’s Eve.

In Del Mar, a youthful crew of workers filled sandbags for Poseidon Restaurant owner Tom Ranglas on Monday to bolster a row of boulders protecting the eatery’s exposed outdoor dining area.

Del Mar lifeguard Jim Lischer reported that a dozen homeowners at the northern reaches of the city’s strand had boarded up the oceanfront windows of their expensive houses in anticipation of a repeat of the ocean’s damage of earlier years. Lischer said that a bulldozer will be brought in, if needed, to bolster any breeches in the sand berms protecting most of the beach real estate, including the city lifeguard tower.

National Weather Service meteorologist Don Atkin said that the weather accompanying the high tides of the next few days will not add to beach dwellers’ woes. Light winds and 3- to 5-foot surf are expected through the end of the week, with no major storms or storm surf that could boost the high tides over man-made barricades.

Tides along Southern California beaches should get no boosts from winter storms over the Pacific, Atkin said, because most of the storm surf is heading for the northern California coastline.

Imperial Beach City Manager Sherman Stenberg said the county’s southernmost beach city is prepared for the worst but not expecting it to happen.

“We have offered sandbags to residents at cost (26 cents per bag) with few takers,” he said. “We will have pumps and crews on standby during the high-tide period in case there is any lowland flooding.”

The tides of the next few days will be the highest in many years because of the gravity pull of the moon at its nearest point to the earth combined with the nearly direct alignment of Earth, moon and sun. The solar-lunar positions also bring the lowest of low tides worldwide, exposing many tide pools that normally remain submerged.

San Diego city park crews were working Monday on Ocean Beach beaches, piling up mounds of sand to form a protective barrier between the ocean and beachfront real estate. Other San Diego lowlying areas in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach had less impressive bulwarks. High tides usually bring ankle-deep flooding to the beach communities when storm drains back up and overflow.

Cardiff’s beachfront Restaurant Row, now protected with a barrier of boulders, added a few sandbags for insurance. La Jolla’s Marine Room, regularly on the hit list during severe winter storms, is gambling on its sturdy foundations and reinforced windows to repel the high water--one of the drawing cards at the low-lying restaurant because waves often splash foam and spray high on dining room windows, giving patrons the sensation of being underwater.

Gus Kriege, a county lifeguard, predicted damage from the high tides at county beaches, including lifeguard headquarters at Solana Beach.

“The waves have caused some bluff collapse here,” Kriege pointed out, “and we may lose some concrete in the higher tides.”

Kriege said he was more concerned with the lack of protection for the vulnerable county beach park staircases, the only direct access from coastal bluffs to miles of beach along the North County coastline. Several of the access stairs in Encinitas, Leucadia and Solana Beach were washed out in the March, 1983, storms, and, he warned, are likely to be damaged again by the high tides because they have not been protected with sand berms or sand bags.

“We feel sort of neglected,” he commented.

Kriege expects the county beaches to be busy during the extreme tide days because of school vacations, the good surfing conditions and the predicted sunny and warm weather.

At state beach park regional headquarters in Carlsbad, a spokeswoman said that the official in charge of the state’s coastline parks in San Diego County was on vacation. No one else was available who knew what protective measures, if any, had been taken, she said.

County disaster preparedness officials say they have received plenty of queries about the high tides--mostly from the news media--but have had few requests for supplies.

“We have a warehouse full of sandbags, 80,000 of them,” said Steve Danon, operations officer at the county disaster preparedness headquarters.

Although county employees have a four-day holiday starting Thursday, Danon said, emergency crews will be ready to scramble to any coastal emergencies.