Death toll rises after bluff
collapse at Southern California beach
Fox News,
by
Bradford Betz
&
Brie Stimson
Original Article
Posted By: MissMolly,
8/3/2019 4:30:05 AM
Two more deaths were reported early Saturday after a bluff overlooking a popular beach collapsed Friday afternoon in Southern California, authorities said.
One woman had been pronounced dead at the scene at Grandview Beach in Encinitas, north of San Diego, but then city officials disclosed in a Twitter message shortly after midnight that two of the three injured people transported to local hospitals had also died.
Authorities did not identify the victims except to say that they were all adults, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
earlybird 8/3/2019 9:50:21 AM (No. 141589)
Sandstone bluffs, cliffs, whatever, tend to erode. As the article states, this is a natural occurrence. I notice a large stairway built adjacent to the collapse. Structures like that do not help. One of the things we knew, when we lived above Sunset Cliffs on Point Loma (San Diego) was that you don’t park your beach blanket at the foot of the cliffs. Seems like a nice sheltered place, but not a good idea. These cliffs don’t go very often, but they can and do go...
3 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
HotRod 8/3/2019 10:00:11 AM (No. 141599)
FTA: ''The suburbs north of San Diego have contended with rising water levels in the Pacific Ocean, pressuring bluffs along the coast.''
You know they just had to get GW/climate change as the factor!
7 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
earlybird 8/3/2019 10:05:20 AM (No. 141601)
Re #1, these cliffs are sedimentary rock. A video showed that this family had literally set up camp right at the base of the cliff. A very bad idea.
2 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Strike3 8/3/2019 10:05:21 AM (No. 141602)
That's a beautiful, scenic stretch of beach but there's more than sharks to worry about.
2 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
earlybird 8/3/2019 10:50:04 AM (No. 141642)
Here is geologist Patrick Abbott’s take on this collapse. Interesting video. Common sense guy.
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/on-air/as-seen-on/Patrick-Abbott-Explains-the-Cliff-Collapse-in-Leucadia_San-Diego-515213492.html
2 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
DVC 8/3/2019 11:05:48 AM (No. 141653)
I have not been to that particular beach, so not sure about it, but at several other beaches below bluffs in the San Diego area, the bluffs are really just very hard, compacted dirt more than any real kind or rock, or at least a rock so soft and poorly adhered to itself that it isn't a lot different than really hard, dry dirt. I have watched the gliders at the top, and done a good bit of boogie boarding and body surfing below at
Torrey Pines, where there are 300 foot high cliffs, pretty much "strong dirt" really.
When it rains, the water soaks down into this stuff, and softens it. In civil engineering, each type of earth is said to have an "angle of repose", meaning the natural angle of a slope at which it is naturally stable over the long term. These steep cliffs are far steeper than the angle of repose, so they may be stable for some time, weeks, even years, but they are NOT stable for the long term. Rains and earthquakes shake them, soften them and weaken them, and they just fall down eventually.
The cleanup that they are doing removes the rubble/dirt and re-establishes an angle of the cliff which is steeper than the angle of repose, so they are setting up for the next collapse.
Ocean verges are always changing, regardless of their character. Beaches erode or build up in storms, cliffs collapse and wash away. Normal erosion processes. Just stay out of their way.
3 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
kono 8/3/2019 12:47:14 PM (No. 141747)
How embarrassing for Fox to put a link ostensibly for this cliff collapse that links, instead, to a similar collapse on the island of Zakynthos, halfway around the world. They'd have been better off showing pics of some other California beach notorious for bluffs slumping and collapsing (like Devil's Slide south of Pacifica).
Stock photo sets can be a godsend, as long as their relevance to the story is properly noted.
2 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
earlybird 8/3/2019 12:52:29 PM (No. 141751)
Re #6, former San Diegan here. We know those cliffs. All along the southern California coast… Have a look/listen to the geologist talking about this very incident - linked in #5...
4 people like this.
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