At least nine Long Beach homes have been red-tagged as unsafe after Tropical Storm Rachel hammered the Southern California coast this weekend — the third hurricane swell in six weeks to batter a shoreline the state has failed to protect while pouring billions into green energy mandates and a high-speed rail project that still goes nowhere.
The pattern is plain: predictable El Niño weather is doing what El Niño always does, and California's coastal infrastructure can't take it. Long Beach has already burned through more than $1 million from its emergency reserves, according to the Long Beach Post. Newport Beach declared a local emergency and shut down its piers. Residents displaced by red-tagged buildings can't even retrieve their belongings. And the season is just getting started.
The remnants of Rachel — which weakened from tropical storm status as it pushed north — still packed enough punch to destroy a Long Beach boardwalk and send waves crashing through beachside streets. The damage didn't come out of nowhere. Long Beach Fire Department spokesperson Melanie Miller said the collapse began when Hurricane Marie hit in early September, followed by Hurricane Polo, then Rachel. "It's been continuous damage since then."
Miller said the city deployed 3,000-pound sandbags. "But you can only do so much during low tide; there are limited windows of opportunity. And the dynamics are working against you."
Paris Porter, an aspiring sailor for Team USA in the 2028 Olympics, lost the Long Beach home she rented with her husband RJ. "You know that house you constantly see half-crumbled in the news, drone shots, and viral posts of the Long Beach Peninsula? Well, that was our home," she wrote. "To see three storms undo a place that brought so much peace is devastating, especially knowing how deeply it impacts our neighbors who lost so much more."
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said the city was taking the situation "very seriously" and that it highlighted "an importance to be incredibly serious in our region and in our state around climate resilience and coastal resiliency." The Guardian emphasized that framing, noting NOAA models show a high chance of a historic El Niño and tying the destruction to climate patterns expected to drive temperature spikes and rising global food prices. The New York Post focused on the human cost to residents like Porter, who now face eight months in temporary housing.
Neither outlet asked the question that matters: where has the money gone? California has committed tens of billions to renewable energy mandates, EV transitions, and a bullet train between Merced and Bakersfield that still hasn't carried a single passenger — all while the homes sitting on its actual coast fall into the Pacific. Three storms in six weeks isn't unprecedented. It's El Niño. The state's own researchers have forecast this for months. Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach told the Associated Press the last month of Pacific storm activity has been "berserk," with the last five Pacific hurricanes all reaching major status.
Las Vegas tied its all-time October daily rainfall record at 1.08 inches. The weather is coming. The seawalls aren't.
The same government that says it can re-engineer your car, your furnace, and your power grid can't keep the ocean from taking your house. That's not a climate problem. That's a priorities problem.
