By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
A two-day storm that carried winds of 70 mph and dumped inches of rain on the central Oregon coast combined with some of the highest tides of the year to flood rivers and threaten homes Wednesday.
The state issued emergency permits to three homeowners at Wakonda Beach just south of Waldport to allow a contractor to create a bank of riprap to prevent more of the cliff from washing away.
On Sunday, waves pushed by a strong winter storm and monthly “King tides” washed out at least 15 feet of a steep, sand cliff separating the houses – mostly vacation rentals – and the ocean. It also damaged their septic systems.
“It all combined in a perfect storm — a storm surge and a King tide,” said Jay Sennewald, ocean shores coordinator for Oregon State Parks and Recreation.
The storm dropped more than 3 inches of rain in Yachats between Sunday night and early Wednesday. In the first 12 days of January it has rained 8 inches.
Those rains helped push the Alsea River two feet above flood stage early Wednesday, flooding some low-lying homes and property between Taylor’s Landing and the upriver communities of Tidewater and Little Albany. A reprieve from the rain was allowing the river to slowly recede Wednesday afternoon.
There was minor flooding of the Yachats River, but it affected mostly low-lying pastures and no structures.
The surging ocean Sunday wiped out wooden steps on the south side of the Yachats River bay that lead to the beach, and swept away similar steps at the north end of the popular 804 Trail. Both are maintained by state parks.
To the south, the Siuslaw River went over its banks east of Florence on Wednesday, closing Highway 126 near the community of Cushman. To the north, a six-mile stretch of the Siletz Highway nine miles east of U.S. Highway 101 was closed Wednesday because of flooding from the Siletz River.
State highway crews were also working on sinkholes in Highway 101 north of Newport between Moolack Beach and Otter Rock, which have been snarling traffic since Monday.
The windstorm that accompanied the rain late Monday and all day Tuesday knocked down trees along Oregon Highway 34 east of Waldport, and along a four-mile stretch of Yachats River Road.
Gusts reached 74 mph Tuesday evening in Yachats.
Adam Altson of Yachats, who closely tracks rain and wind, said there were “numerous gusts above 50 mph” from midnight Monday to midnight Tuesday, and that the average wind speed for Tuesday was 26.6 mph, the second highest he has ever measured.
“My weather station is configured to record data in 10-minute increments and every single increment Tuesday had a gust of 32 mph or higher,” Altson said. “That shatters my previous record of 24 mph.”
Central Lincoln Peoples Utility District said at the height of outages Wednesday morning, the storm had knocked out service to 3,300 of its 40,100 meters in Lincoln, Lane, Douglas and Coos counties. Customers in coastal Lane County were hit the hardest, said Chris Chandler, spokeswoman for the utility.
Emergency permits for riprap
Sennewald issued emergency riprap permits Tuesday and Wednesday for the Wakonda Beach homes threatened by the erosion. He was documenting the erosion Wednesday, talking with homeowners while trucks hauled in boulders and a contractor lifted them into place.
Sennewald said massive waves during high tide Sunday just washed away the sandy cliff.
He said state parks had also issued riprap permits to six homeowners on Salishan Spit at Gleneden Beach where riprap had washed away. Later Wednesday Sennewald responded to another massive beach landslide – 500 feet long and 130 feet high — just south of Gleneden Beach.
“We’re still getting reports and will be for a few days,” he said. “You can’t tell when or where they happen, you just have to react.”
Jon Lynch, a Newport Realtor, was in the process of handling the sale of one of the three Wakonda Beach homes and stopped by Wednesday to inspect the damage.
Lynch, who has been selling property on the coast for 40 years, said it was probably the worst erosion he’d seen since the early 1980s.
“This storm was just so powerful,” he said, made more damaging by the last King tide of the winter. It typically costs at least $25,000 to riprap a standard property along the beach, Lynch said, and repairing or replacing a septic system could be even more problematic.
Along the Alsea River, dozens of homes were either threatened by or slightly flooded by water starting four miles east of Waldport and going another 6-8 miles east.
Lincoln County’s Don Lindly Park was inundated. Nearby, water covered some of the lowest-lying property at Happy Landing and Taylor’s Landing.
In the Westwood Village subdivision farther east, high water from a slough adjacent to the river closed a portion of East Bain Drive, but didn’t appear to have gone into any homes.
Several boat docks were swept away downstream, ending up in Alsea Bay.
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