Evacuation warnings, power outages as Santa Cruz County braces for more rain, wind and swells

Santa Cruz County was cleaning up Friday from the massive ocean swells that damaged businesses and flooded streets a day earlier, while preparing for a fresh round of huge waves overnight and into the weekend. 

The National Weather Service said the next round of rain would begin Friday afternoon, in time for the evening commute. The storm is expected to bring 1 to 2 inches in low-lying parts of the county and 2 to 4 inches in the Santa Cruz Mountains, along with winds as high as 40 mph Friday evening and a 15-20% chance of isolated thunderstorms. 

The downpour, coupled with high tides, is forecast to trigger another round of large swells that could bring waves as high as 30 feet rolling onto shore across much of the Central Coast early Saturday morning.

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation warnings for the Rio Del Mar area of Aptos and Pajaro Dunes in the Watsonville area starting at 10 p.m. Friday. More than 4,700 PG&E customers were without power late Friday afternoon, the utility said, including about 3,800 in the city of Santa Cruz.

“Residents in these zones should be prepared to leave should an evacuation order be issued,” the law enforcement agency said in a press release. “If residents feel unsafe, they should make arrangements to stay elsewhere now.

In Capitola, the Esplanade remained blocked off Friday after several businesses suffered flooding and damage from Thursday’s rough surf. Police said Capitola Village will be closed to the public starting at 1 a.m. Saturday “until it is deemed safe,” in preparation for the next round of ocean swells.

“We’ve got one more night of just more panic,” Sand Bar employee Joshua Evenson said Friday as the restaurant’s staff worked to board up the windows and clear the back deck.

The restaurant had to repair its floors from damage sustained in the January storms. On Thursday, those floors were once again buckling under 6 inches of water, Evenson said. He expected repairs could last one to three weeks, depending on what happens with the weather Saturday. “We’ve got one more day of biting our nails and then, if we survive tomorrow, I think we’re in the clear.” 

At nearby Zelda’s On The Beach, which reopened in April after suffering extensive damage in last winter’s storms, kitchen manager Joshua Whitby said the restaurant had done all it could to prepare for this week’s swells. Staff boarded up the ocean-facing back wall and moved tables and chairs away from the front of the deck. Unlike in January, the restaurant emerged from Thursday’s big wave event relatively unscathed – it lost a railing but suffered no interior damage. Whitby was hoping for a similar fate come Saturday.

”If it’s the same thing that comes through, it’ll hold,” he said of the restaurant’s storm preparations. “If it’s going to be worse, it will do what it’s going to do. I can’t really do much of anything more.” Whitby said he had ordered storm doors, but they were expected to take six weeks to arrive.

At the Capitola Venetian Hotel, Don Kriege, CJ Russell and several family members were working to clean up from Thursday’s swell and prepare for a long night ahead. 

Unit 6½ at the hotel has been in the family since the 1970s, Kriege said. While their property wasn’t directly hit by this week’s surge, a wave sent a log crashing into an adjoining unit that was still awaiting permits to finish repairs from last winter’s deluge, knocking out a piece of sheetrock between the two and sending a flood of sand and water into the family’s unit.

The family members were busy Friday afternoon clearing out more than a foot of sand that had accumulated on their floor of their property, barricading doors and windows, bracing their interior wall with plywood and nervously awaiting a contractor who was supposed to come and close up neighboring units. “If they don’t do that, we may be back here shoveling sand out of our unit again,” Russell said, “because you’re not going to hold back the ocean with a piece of plywood, right?”

The Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf reopened to the public Friday morning after suffering damage from Thursday’s ocean swells. The end of the wharf, including the Dolphin Restaurant, a public bathroom and sea lion viewing holes will be closed and fenced off for repairs. 

In the Rio Del Mar neighborhood of Aptos, sections of Aptos Beach Drive and Rio Del Mar Boulevard in Rio Del Mar remain closed due to flooding.

California State Parks closed the platform parking lot and facilities at Rio Del Mar State Beach, as well as the campground, parking lot and lower day-use parking areas of Seacliff State Beach through Jan. 2.

The village was hit hard during last January’s storms, which shuttered waterfront businesses and destroyed a section of the wharf. On Wednesday, the city’s public works department used a bulldozer to create sand berms in front of Zelda’s on the Beach and its Esplanade neighbors, but the barrier had mostly washed away by Thursday morning.

Residents should heed alerts from local agencies; check evacuation zones here and monitor road closures here.

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