clif wrote:Whomever applied for a building permit on the ocean side of that street needs their head examined, but the agency that issued the building permit is even worse!
Kinda harsh, given that the buildings were build 55-60 years ago, when the ocean would have been possibly 100ft further out.
I base this on the fact we NOW know;of the coastline of California retreated at average rates of 2 to 6 feet (0.6 to 1.8 m) annually
http://www.dbw.ca.gov/PDF/Reports/Beach ... Bluffs.pdf
Almost all of what we know now comes from academic studies done after the buildings were built.
Much more all along that coast is at risk, these are just the most visible to the media talking heads.
This situation in California is analogous to the problem Florida has with sea level rise,
In both cases far too much has been built before the effects of the earths eco-systems were fully understood.
Beach Erosion is about as far from a new phenomenon as anything ever discovered. Claiming 100 feet was an adequate buffer for the life of the buildings is one thing, but people tend to think of buildings or property as a permanent feature of the environment. These structures were very literally built on sinking sand, something people have known was a bad idea from ancient times forward.
I am curious what geological forces deposited all this soft sand in high piles before sea levels rose to the current height? 125,000 ybp the ocean was some 7 meters higher than today, so they had to have either been deposited during the last ice age, or Earthquakes must have lifted this area up above sea level at some point.
The other thing to keep in mind with this being a San Fransisco suburb there is a high earthquake risk, and sand cliffs tend to crumble excessively when shaken.