Wedge gridlock prompts concern

As thousands descended upon Newport Beach’s coast last weekend, public safety personnel found themselves unprepared for the gridlock and how it could affect their response to emergencies, city officials said Friday.

High surf, warm weather and media hype about the waves lured many to the city’s beach fronts last weekend, many of them to the tip of the peninsula.

“We were simply overwhelmed by the huge numbers of people coming into these areas, and it was far worse than anything we envisioned or were prepared for,” City Manager Homer Bludau explained to one resident in an e-mail.

City officials and residents alike reported that it sometimes took more than an hour to get to the end of the peninsula from Newport Boulevard, or vice versa.

“What would’ve happened if my house would’ve caught fire?” said Sam Aiello, police and traffic liaison for the Balboa Peninsula Point Assn., representing about 450 homeowners near the end of the peninsula. “What would’ve happened if someone needed medical help?”

Aiello said he is looking forward to some of those answers coming to light Monday, when public safety officials, Bludau and City Councilman Mike Henn discuss how traffic could be eased during the next visitor-heavy event.

“This issue is much more complicated than most people think,” Henn said. “You can’t just put up a road block and turn people around. Though it might be complicated, it ought to be solvable.”

Of the thousands who turned out, hundreds were ticketed.

Blaine Nelson, who lives in Peninsula Point on East Balboa Boulevard, received a parking ticket that mentioned a resident complaint.

“It’s not a resident complaint. I didn’t complain. Why would I complain about my own house?” Nelson said. “They were taking advantage of the situation, it seemed like.”

Police issued about 300 parking tickets on the point last weekend, 276 of them on Friday and Saturday. Some of those went to residents who had parked their cars in the alley and blocked their own garages because every parking space was taken.

The tickets carried fines ranging from $38 to $69, Sgt. Evan Sailor said, meaning the city generated anywhere from $11,000 to $20,000 in citations in one weekend.

City officials are working with police to void any parking tickets issued to residents or their caretakers from last weekend.

“To me, that’s a perfectly appropriate thing to do,” Henn said. “These residents were really inordinately put upon by all this traffic.”

Nelson said he’s lived in his Balboa Boulevard home for seven years and had never been ticketed for parking in his alley until last weekend.

“What we were looking to do was to take control of a situation which had gotten out of hand due to the large crowds and extremely heavy traffic, related mostly to the surf and weather conditions,” Sailor said. “Our goal is to provide a safe environment in which everyone in the city can enjoy . . . providing that will be done in a fair and impartial manner.”