Repairs Set as More Damage Found at Redondo Beach Pier

The Redondo Beach Pier was more heavily damaged by Saturday’s wind-driven waves than initially estimated, and city officials fear that another small section could be knocked out by the high waves and heavy winds expected today.

Emergency repairs to the pier will begin today, they said.

After crawling around on beams beneath the pier’s deck Tuesday, engineers determined that a 4,000-square-foot section of the Monstad Pier--the southernmost section of the Redondo Beach Pier--could collapse at any time.

Promenade Washed Away

“That section of the pier is literally being held up by the smallest amount of wood,” said Ken Montgomery, city engineer and public works director. “It just could go at any minute, by itself, without a storm.”

Thunderstorms are forecast today, with 4-foot swells and winds approaching 25 m.p.h. with higher gusts, said Janice Roth, a meteorologist with Weather Data Inc.

“We didn’t need that,” Montgomery said.

On Saturday, winds reaching 52 m.p.h. and 12-foot waves battered the Redondo Beach Pier and washed away a 155-foot fishing promenade that connected the Monstad Pier, built in 1928, with the horseshoe-shaped Fisherman’s Wharf section.

Pilings and wooden supports were damaged along the full length of the Redondo Beach Pier. Damage was estimated at $1 million to public property and $250,000 to private property.

City officials said they are not planning to readjust those figures, despite the additional damage found Tuesday.

The pier had already been weakened by an Arctic storm Jan. 17 and 18. Swelled by high tides and low barometric pressure, waves caused $17 million damage to mile-long King Harbor, which includes the Redondo Beach Pier.

Repairs were still being made and the city was still in a local state of emergency when Saturday’s storm hit. The City Council declared a second state of emergency Tuesday night to help the city apply for federal and state funds to recover its losses.

The badly weakened section discovered Tuesday is at the eastern end of the Monstad Pier between the Fish and Chips coffee shop--which lost its kitchen floor and appliances Saturday--and Tony’s Fish Market.

Beneath that section, 13 of 33 pilings were knocked out or damaged badly enough to be useless, Montgomery said. Under part of it, he said, no supports are left to hold up the deck, turning the concrete and brick walkways into unstable bridges.

Although the Monstad section has been closed to the general public since the entire pier was evacuated at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, business owners, city officials and media representatives walked the damaged area Sunday and Monday.

Emergency crews will begin today driving in new pilings--which cost $4,000 apiece--but repairs will take one to two weeks to complete, Montgomery said. If the wind and surf grow too strong this afternoon, he added, repair work will have to stop.

“We’ll have some of the work done before then,” Montgomery said, “but we don’t know if it’ll be enough to prevent what’s going to happen from happening.”

The western end of the Monstad Pier is safe enough for pedestrians, he said, and will reopen as soon as electric power is restored to businesses and pier lights, probably by the end of the week. The end of the pier can be reached by an adjacent 8-foot-wide walkway that still has adequate supports, he said.