A temporary storm wall erected on the Crescent Beach waterfront – in anticipation of a serious windstorm that never materialized – has been removed.
The wall of precast concrete highway barriers – adjacent to Beecher Street and Adams Lane – was removed section by section by City of Surrey crews on Monday.
It had been there since March 13, installed in the aftermath of the 90-km/h winds that whipped the White Rock and South Surrey coastline March 11 – and in anticipation of a storm later that evening that was being forecast to reach winds of up to 105 km/h.
“The peak tide would have been at 10 p.m. that night, and our crews completed the wall just before that,” said City of Surrey operations manager Rob Costanzo.
“Murphy’s Law – the wind died down.”
The wall – the first attempt of its kind at Crescent Beach – was only planned as a temporary measure to back up the existing dike, Costanzo said.
The dike had received a pounding from crashing waves during the previous storm, sending rocks over the top and onto the pathway and sending water into front gardens, he added.
Time would have been of the essence had the forecast storm materialized, Costanzo said.
“We really did this ad-lib – sand bags would have been very labour intensive and would have taken hours, and we would not have been able to place them in time.”
Once the structure was built, Costanzo said, it was decided to leave it in place for a week.
“There weren’t any forecasts of any significance, but we thought we’d keep it there, just in case,” Costanzo added.
He said that while some residents had contacted the city to find out how long the wall would be in place, response from residents and businesses was generally favourable – even though the barriers had impeded the view of the beach for the space of a week.
“There was no negative feedback when we were out building it – residents were quite supportive, and the community was very grateful,” he said, noting fire department personnel had gone door-to-door to inform residents when the wall was constructed.
Total cost of trucking the blocks in and out of Crescent Beach was around $18,000 – relatively small, Costanzo said, in comparison with $3 million budgeted each year to deal with ‘significant weather events.’
He acknowledged the city was being very cautious in preparing for the anticipated storm, saying “we learned quite a bit from the exercise.”
Costanzo noted the city already owned the barriers, donated by the provincial government following construction of Highway 15, and said the blocks will now be stored much closer to Crescent Beach for a more “timely” and less-expensive response.
“We’re also looking at alternative structures, which are prefabricated and much lighter, and which can withstand crashing waves,” he said. “That’s a whole different problem than we’d encounter along a riverbank, where rising water levels would be the concern.”