Delmarva's brush with Hurricane Jose shows coastal vulnerability

Gus Svolis has owned and operated the Gus & Gus Place restaurant on Rehoboth Beach’s boardwalk for 62 years.

In that time, he’s gained a healthy respect for Mother Nature and all that can go wrong when only a 4- or 5-foot sand dune and a 20-foot boardwalk stand between his business and the ocean.

A day after the Delmarva Peninsula endured punishing waves and a storm surge from Hurricane José — even as the system was hundreds of miles offshore — Svolis thought about what he would have done had the surge reached his restaurant like it has many times before.

“In 1991, we had the worst one,” said the 88-year-old. “It ripped up the boardwalk and did a lot of damage to my place. We’re scared that could happen again. I never want to see that happen again, but we are always prepared now.”

While Svolis says the dunes help a lot during storms, he isn’t convinced they will always hold back the water.

“That’s a real concern to me and the other business owners on the boardwalk,” he said. “So we are always prepared for the worst.”

On Tuesday, one of the dunes put in place along Delmarva beaches was breached, causing flooding along Route 1 south of Dewey Beach. While it wasn’t in a populated area, it closed down the roadway for hours. And it made many wonder what will happen when, not if, another major storm hits.

Jose's impact in Maryland

In Ocean City, Public Works Director Hal Adkins said the resort suffered little damage from its brush with José,

“Very little. Not to disappoint, but we had very little to no impact with regard to erosion. We had a minor ‘washover’ on the south end of town at the Inlet that was reaching toward the Sunset Venue, but it barely got there,” he said. “We did some maneuvering by creating some swales —basically trenches — to channel the water away from the lot.”

Adkins did acknowledge that José caused some problems for residents.

“We also, as we normally do in a storm of that sort, ended up with a lot of back-bay flooding on bayside streets and that happened this time around,” he said. Ocean City, especially the lower end of town, is very low in elevation. The difference between the elevations between our roads and downtown isn’t much different from our high tides. 

“Whether we’re having a nor’easter or on the fringes of a Category 1 hurricane, it’s not uncommon for us to have flooding in our downtown areas. It’s commonplace. Picture overfilling your bathtub, it passively overflows onto the floor. When the tidal influence is strong enough in our bay, it’s unable to go back out the inlet like it normally would. It’s basically a large bathtub that overflows onto the bayside streets. It’s an unfortunate nuisance that happens two, three or four times a year depending on weather patterns.

Angela Baldwin, park manager at Assateague State Park said rangers are still assessing any possible damage from José.

“We haven’t been able to do a full assessment yet because the tide is still so high,” she said. “We have at least two more days of higher-than-normal tide. It’s definitely safe to say that we’re going to have some damage to our dunes, though. Basically we’re still in a wait-and-see mode, because we’re still seeing the effects of José and we’re waiting to see what might come next.”

More:Emergency Services official warns of threat to Va. Shore from storms Jose, Maria

Along Route 1

During the morning Tuesday, swells combined with a high storm tide — the combined height of a daily astronomical tide and a storm surge — to break through the protective dune. 

The primary coastal artery closed at about 8 a.m. between Dewey and Bethany beaches. By noon, southbound lanes and one northbound lane reopened.

More:Hurricane Jose: More flooding expected at Ocean City, Delaware beaches Tuesday evening

Overnight, two lines of dune ridges were created to prevent overwash getting through from high tide.

Tony Pratt, administrator for shoreline and waterway management for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said Tuesday’s storm produced more powerful waves than expected.

“They came in at a higher velocity and moved up faster across the beach and the dunes,” he said. “It’s not what we expect. It reminds us how powerful storms can be.”

Pratt said after the breach south of Dewey was repaired, crews worked throughout the day Wednesday to find low spots in the dunes from Rehoboth Beach to Bethany Beach and used available sand to fill them in.

“We closed the breach yesterday at low tide and the dune held at high tide last night and again this morning,” Pratt said. “At low tide today, we looked at the integrity of the system in place and determined that there are two or three areas of concern that we will try to reinforce over the next couple of days.”

Pratt said DNREC officials will now keep an eye on Hurricane Maria, which despite being downgraded from a Category 5 storm to a Category 2, managed to knock out all power in Puerto Rico Wednesday.

There is still a chance Maria could make landfall on the mainland U.S.

So far, nine deaths from the storm have been confirmed — two on the French island of Guadaloupe, which was hit hard.

Earlier, the small island of Dominica was slammed and seven people had been confirmed dead there. 

According to the National Hurricane Center, Maria is expected to continue on a northwest track, moving along the northeast coast of the Dominican Republic on Thursday before skirting the southern Bahamas early Friday.

It is then predicted to swing to the north into the open Atlantic and move between the U.S. East Coast and Bermuda. Longer-term forecasts are less certain — Hurricane Irma swung to the west coast of Florida having been predicted to hit the East Coast.

Cynthia Tomback has lived in Magnolia for 2 1/2 years and went to Rehoboth Beach Wednesday to get a look at the big waves. She said what she saw wasn’t the norm. 

“I come to the beach about once a week in the summer. A normal day at the beach is pretty docile and there aren’t too many big waves here,” she said. “Right now, there are a lot of big waves and the guys are going out to surf. I guess it’s exciting because you don’t usually get these big waves the storm is bringing in.”

Tomback said when she was at Rehoboth Beach two years ago in October, it was a different picture.

She said the storm that came through produced waves that got so big, they went all the way up to the boardwalk and the dunes got washed away, as well as some of the boardwalk.

“The storm was really bad, forcing businesses to close,” she said. “It was intense. It was a big event. I had never seen actual waves coming up so close to buildings here. It was a little frightening.” 

Before coming to Delaware, Tomback lived in Staten Island, New York. She lived through Superstorm Sandy and saw houses at the end of her road ripped away by wind and waves. The worst, she said, was the loss of lives.

“It was a tragic event,” she said. “Waves are very devastating and people really don’t know the power they possess. Mother Nature can do amazing things that can be devastating.”

Bob Vance and his wife Bee live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and have been coming to Delaware beaches for seven decades. They come four to five times a year, mostly in September when the crowds have thinned out.

Bob said the difference between Tuesday and Wednesday was like night and day. Having seen (Hurricane) Joaquin come through in October 2015, he said Tuesday’s storm was nothing. 

But he shuddered to think what a nor’easter might have done to the dunes.

“Years ago in Ocean City, buildings were knocked down because of the waves,” he said. “It’s been bad here a number of times. We’ve seen the beach reconstructed on a number of occasions here.”

Travis Michels, a Rehoboth Beach lifeguard, said Tuesday’s winds and waves were an inconvenience but said they should never be underestimated.

He said the water came all the way up and past the dune fence Tuesday afternoon. He said it started to move one of the Beach Patrol’s sheds, which was immediately taken off the beach. 

“It’s no joke. The ocean is going to do what it wants to do and we’re here to see what it does and react to that,” Michels said. “Even when the storm passed a couple of hundred miles off the coast, it still had a major impact with the winds, and we’re still dealing with those winds today.” 

Michels said beach erosion shortens the beaches and makes the job of a lifeguard a little bit more difficult because it changes what is going on out in the water. 

“We train for this all year, so we are ready to go,” he said. “This is our last week for the beach patrol. At least we are here while this storm is cruising through to make sure people do stay safe.”

Michels said they were put on alert when they heard about the dune breaking. 

“Route 1 does flood quite a bit when big storms come through,” he said. “With the dune breaking all the way through, that’s not something that normally happens. That’s more common with a nor’easter that we’d see in the winter time. At the end of the summer and the start of the fall, a storm having this impact is a big deal for us.”

Future fix

In May, Sen. Tom Carper announced the Delaware coast from Fenwick Island to Bethany Beach would be undergoing emergency beach nourishment at no cost to the state after a series of storms hit the Delaware beaches in 2015.

BACKGROUND:Three Delaware beach towns approved for emergency nourishment

“If you go back to late 2015, we had a storm, Joaquin, and it came through here and did some damage, and then it was a one-two punch,” Carper said then. “Jonas came after that, and it just about did us in. All the work that the Army Corps had done to build up the beach and the dunes to protect us was pretty much wiped out.”

Beach replenishment is a process of pumping sand up from the ocean floor and back under the feet of tourists and locals, building up dunes to protect from when storms hit the coastline. The dunes and widened beach serve as a barrier between the coastal towns and tourism industry from the powerful waves that surge in passing storms. 

Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach received a round of $11.2 million beach nourishment this past winter, while Ocean City last underwent replenishment in 2013. The Maryland town is scheduled to undergo another round during the fall of 2017, costing $4.6 million. 

Before that, the most recent beach nourishment at the southern Delaware beaches came in 2013 after Superstorm Sandy hit the coast in October 2012.

Pratt said contract bids were accepted recently for the upcoming beach replenishment project, but it was too soon to know what company came in with the low bid. 

The 2017 project is expected to cost between $15 and $22 million. 

“The project will consist of replenishing dunes, crossovers, and planting grass,” Pratt said. “The Army Corps of Engineers is ready to repair damage caused by severe storms and is looking for work to begin in late fall.”

Reach Jerry Smith at jsmith17@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JerrySmithTNJ.