Why were three people on wharf during collapse? City officials, on-site engineer offer conflicting accounts

City officials and a marine engineer are offering conflicting accounts of why three workers were on a vulnerable stretch of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf as it was battered by powerful swells on Dec. 23. 

The visit to the wharf by a city employee and two consultants just as waves tore off a 150-foot section under repair, occurred despite early warnings from the National Weather Service, which had issued a high surf advisory the previous Friday. Two of the workers were still on the wharf deck when it collapsed into the ocean, requiring a water rescue. 

The forecast of “large westerly swells” with breaking waves of up to 32 feet led local officials to shutter the Capitola Wharf and Santa Cruz Harbor, and state officials announced that they might have to block off beaches in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. By Monday at 5 a.m., the NWS warned that Santa Cruz County could see waves eclipse 40 feet.  

Mayor Fred Keeley told Lookout that the trio was on the wharf not despite the conditions but because of them, inspecting whether the structure was safe. “They were out trying to figure out what kind of damage [the swells] were going to do, and whether we need to get everyone off the wharf,” Keeley said over the phone last week. 

Tony Elliot, the city’s parks and recreation director who oversees the wharf, didn’t say whether the work could have been postponed, offering only that it was “a normal inspection of the site to make sure the site was safe.” 

Both Keeley and Elliot said it was the city’s call to move forward with the work. Both described the work as inherently “dangerous” but that safety precautions were made.

But Brad Porter, the marine engineer with Moffatt & Nichol who was one of the three on the wharf that day, said he had scheduled the visit just days earlier, describing it as a routine inspection. He said he was unaware of any severe weather warnings when he arrived at the wharf. 

Around Dec. 19 or 20 — the same time NWS issued its initial weather warnings — Porter said he reached out to the city and Power Engineering Construction, the Alameda-based construction firm repairing the end of the wharf. Since Power Engineering had installed about half the pilings so far, Porter said it was time for an engineering inspection. He wanted to do it the following Monday. 

For a project like this, Porter said, the engineer is responsible for ensuring that the construction company’s work aligns with the approved plans. It’s sometimes good, Porter said, to not give the construction company too much advance notice of an inspection. 

Dec. 23 worked well for the city and Power Engineering, Porter said, because the contractor was planning to take off for the holidays starting the next day. Construction had already ceased days earlier, and was expected to stay dormant for at least the next week. 

Porter said the work was not necessarily urgent, but routine. He doesn’t recall ever having a discussion with city officials or Power Engineering about whether to move forward with the job that day. 

“That morning, I saw there was a flooding advisory, and I knew there may be some high waves, which is sometimes the case in winter, but I wasn’t aware there was a big swell forecasted,” Porter told Lookout on Monday.

Although Porter said sometimes inspections are scheduled to see how a structure fares in tough conditions, that wasn’t the case for the Dec. 23 visit: “It just happened to be the weather it was. We didn’t schedule it because of the weather.” 

The city, meanwhile, was well aware of the weather, though Elliot told Lookout no one expected what he called “the biggest swells the region’s seen in 30 years.” 

That morning, as the NWS forecast local waves could reach higher than 40 feet, Elliot said a team of city officials, including Wharf Supervisor Britt Hoberg and emergency operations staff, gathered to discuss how the city should react. Part of the discussion, he said, was the planned wharf inspection. The city decided to push forward but would monitor conditions. 

“We had safety plans in place and did everything we could to be ready for the storm and prep the [construction] site,” Elliot said. 

Around noon, Porter arrived for the inspection along with the city’s project manager, Norm Daly, and Grace Bowman of Power Engineering. Daly said over email that the inspection was ultimately Porter’s to conduct, and that he was only accompanying him as the city’s project lead. 

As Porter and Daly tell it, the danger seemed obvious enough, though both men say the work felt normal. The 150-foot section of the wharf that eventually collapsed was swaying even before they stepped on. 

“The wharf was definitely moving the whole time we were out there,” said Porter, who has worked for decades on wharfs throughout California and performed countless storm condition inspections. “We knew it was starting to pick up, and the movement was getting bigger. The movement I saw out there was probably some of the larger movements I have ever felt being on a wharf.” 

After about 40 minutes, Porter said he began to feel unsafe and retreated. He said the wharf was dramatically moving with the swell in a way he had not experienced in his career. 

“I had gotten the photos that I needed, and I saw what I wanted to see,” Porter said. “ It seemed like the movement was getting a little bigger so I just came back to the solid part of the wharf.” 

However, Daly and Bowman were farther out on the deck.  

“And then I saw it start to go,” Porter said. “It was moving back and forth, back and forth and then at one point it just kept going.” 

About 10 feet from where he stood, the deck snapped and the wharf collapsed into the bay. 

Contrary to initial reports, two people, not three, had to be rescued from the water  — Daly and Bowman. Daly and Porter said it took only minutes before a rescue crew arrived on jet skis. 

Asked why such heavy equipment remained on the vulnerable section of wharf, and whether that contributed to its collapse, Elliot told Lookout that the crane and the skid steer that fell into the ocean belonged to Power Engineering and that the equipment was ultimately their responsibility. He said the company could have moved the equipment of its own volition. 

Porter doesn’t believe the weight of the equipment had any effect on the wharf’s ultimate fate, saying the “crane probably weighs only 10 or 15% of what the actual deck structure weighed.” 

Power Engineering has not returned Lookout’s requests for comment.

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