Residents encouraged to flee before it's too
late.
San Clemente, California is many things to many
people. Richard Milhous Nixon’s favorite retreat. Site of
World Surf League Final’s Day. Southernmost town in Orange County.
Scene of three Andino generations. Most importantly, though, it is
the global home of the surfboard industry. Yes, the “Spanish
Village by the Sea,” as it is affectionately called, has long
housed extremely important shapers, glassers, sprayers, finishers.
Matt Biolos calls San Clemente home and so does Matt Parker. Timmy
Patterson and Cole Simler too.
Our wave sliding experience would be vastly different,
certainly, if not for the hotbed of progression that is San
Clemente, but a terror has presented, in recent days, as the
oceanfront Casa Romantica crumbled into the sea as its executive
director looked on. Amy Behrens was was enjoying a spring stroll
when she heard a low rumble then watched, helpless, as a chunk of
the property collapsed into the mighty Pacific.
It was not a singular event. The bluffs fronting this wave-rich
stretch of coast have been failing at a wildly increasing rate,
knocking out railroad tracks, horrifying wealthy denizens with
unobstructed ocean vistas as their million dollar homes teeter on
the brink of major insurance claims.
The whole town under a very real threat of disappearing.
San Clemente, though, is not alone in its dire predicament.
According to The Los Angeles
Times.
In March, a Newport Beach home overlooking the water was
demolished after a landslide. Later that month, a landslide in San
Clemente prompted evacuation of four oceanfront apartment
buildings. Laguna Niguel declared a local emergency last week after
soil movement was detected beneath the hilly contours of La Paz
Road, prompting officials to close two lanes indefinitely.
Yikes.
But what will a post-San Clemente surfboard industry look like?
Where will Biolos et. al. go? Torquay, Australia? Whale Beach?
Boca Raton, Florida?
More importantly, I suppose, is who will have them?
Most importantly, what is the cause of this sudden collapse?
Global warming?
Discuss.