Southern California cities prepare ahead of possible Hurricane Polo landfall

California’s iconic coastal cities are bracing for another damaging hurricane this weekend as Hurricane Polo approaches, forcing at least one of them to declare an emergency.

Long Beach and Newport Beach are attempting to rebuild sand barriers eroded by Hurricane Marie earlier this month before they’re hammered even more.

The Long Beach City Council ratified City Manager Tom Modica’s emergency declaration Tuesday, allowing city crews more flexibility to fortify the city’s beautiful beaches.

But some are unsure they’ll be able to rebuild them in time for Hurricane Polo.

“Everything is not built back up again, so it’s a little nerve-wracking for sure,” Long Beach resident Charley Snyder told NBC4.

Long Beach Councilmember Kristina Duggan emphasized the enormous impact that Hurricane Marie had on the city earlier this month, noting the cyclone was far from “a normal coastal storm.”

“What we saw during Hurricane Marie, that was not a normal coastal storm,” Duggan said. “In two days, portions of the Peninsula beach, it dropped by more than eight feet in height.”

“That’s massive,” she added.

She noted that it left “tens of millions of dollars in city infrastructure at risk and tens of millions of dollars more of private property under threat.”

The city has mere hours to prepare for another devastating hurricane with projected four- to six-foot waves.

Modica suggested he wouldn’t be surprised to see “downed power lines, downed trees, life and safety issues, as well as property damage.”

About 33 miles to the southeast, Orange County’s Newport Beach is dealing with a similar crisis.

“They’re working on shoring up our berm in advance of the potential that two hurricane swells could cause us more issues than Hurricane Marie did,” Newport Beach city councilmember Erik Weigand told CBS News in front of ongoing beach sand reinforcement operations.

“Hurricane Marie left us with a lot less sand than we started with, and so our guys are shoring up our defenses and making sure this parking lot doesn’t flood and that the residents and businesses behind the beach here, they don’t flood.”

Several decimated homes with red tags could be seen in Newport Beach after Hurricane Marie.

The city needed to gather 200,000 cubic yards of sand from the nearby Santa Ana River as part of an emergency permit to reinforce its shores, the Orange County Register reported.

Polo is considered an “extremely dangerous” storm, and forecasters say the system would turn sharply to the northwest before moving west-northwest over the next several days.

Polo was about 165 miles (266 kilometers) south of Zihuatanejo and 320 miles (515 kilometers) southeast of Manzanillo, the center reported. It was moving slowly north with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 kph). That put it at Category 4 strength, after earlier being a Category 5 storm.

“This is one of the strongest storms ever in the (Pacific) Basin,” said Kristen L. Corbosiero, professor at the University at Albany’s Department of Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences.

A direct California strike currently appears unlikely, but so-called “spaghetti models” show a handful of potential tracks carrying Polo or its remnants toward the Golden State, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas over the next seven to 10 days.

Southern California could be the first part of the US to feel Polo’s wrath, even if the hurricane itself stays safely out at sea. 

Coastal residents are worried the coming storm could really bring life-changing damage to the region.

“There is so much damage that happened before,” Long Beach resident Charley Snyder told NBC4, “and to think there is so much that has been done and we haven’t really been able to bounce back.”

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