This year was an incredibly busy news year; January 2021 alone may have been the busiest month in recent history.

Consider, just in the first 31 days of 2021, more Long Beach residents died of COVID-19 than in any month during the pandemic, hospitals turned away ambulances and funeral homes were scrambling to provide cremation and burial services. Also in January, the operator of the Queen Mary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Community Hospital finally opened its doors after its closure more than two years prior and the U.S. Capitol was stormed by pro-Trump rioters—an insurrection with repercussions for the entire country.

The news continued in the months that followed, with the city opening an emergency shelter for migrant kids, President Joe Biden visiting the city, and ships stacked up along the shoreline as Americans continued to shop for goods online.

Here’s our list of the Top 10 stories of 2021.

1. COVID-19: The pandemic in 2021 continued to shroud every aspect of life, even after cases and deaths began to decrease in the spring. The city launched a massive vaccination effort, enacted protections for workers and renters, and continued to enforce health orders, and now vaccine mandates. Businesses still operate with restrictions, and with the highly mutated omicron variant discovered late this year and spreading rapidly, the virus will likely continue to be part of daily life well into 2022.

READ MORE: COVID-19 remained the top story of 2021

This Jan. 12, 2021, photo shows National Guard members assisting with processing COVID-19 deaths and placing them into temporary storage at the LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner Office in Los Angeles. LA County Dept. of Medical Examiner-Coroner via AP. File.

2. CARGO BACKLOG: The cargo backlog that began in 2020 escalated into 2021, largely a result of pandemic-fueled online shopping, coupled with an imbalance of supply and demand. This national story cascaded into daily life of residents, from increased truck traffic to worsened air quality.

The port is on track to process more than 9 million cargo units by the end of 2021, the most of any year in its 110-year history.

The ports announced a number of remedies to the congestion, including expanding overnight hours for truckers to move containers out, a new queuing process and the threat of a fee for companies that left goods lingering on the docks too long. The Biden Administration also announced plans in November to identify and pay for possible upgrades to U.S. ports within the following 90 days.

Meanwhile the Port of Long Beach celebrated the completion of its $1.5 billion Middle Harbor project, which allows up to three container ships to be accommodated at the same time with 14 electric ship-to-shore gantry cranes along a 4,200-foot-long concrete wharf.

Several cargo ships line up outside the breakwater as they wait for their turn to enter the ports on Oct. 15, 2021. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

3. QUEEN MARY: 2021 was not a good year for the city’s most famous asset, with the ship’s operator, Urban Commons, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January. That development set off a series of court actions, financial disclosures and lawsuits, as well as an auction for the company’s assets in which no viable companies bid for the lease to operate the Queen Mary.

The court proceedings shed light on the company’s finances and stewardship of the Queen Mary, including its handling of $23 million in bonds the city issued in 2016 to make emergency repairs to the aging vessel. The city was at fault, too. City Auditor Laura Doud said in November that the city failed to properly oversee bond funds, leading to excessive subcontractor markups, unnecessary projects and overpayment for some work.

The city, however, has now assumed full control of the ship for the first time in 40 years, and what will become of the shuttered ship remains unknown. The city in July was presented with a number of options, from scrapping the Queen Mary to dry-docking it, with costs ranging from about $105 million to $500 million.

Meanwhile the mayor has remained committed to preserving the Queen Mary, and city leaders have floated a plan to turn operation of the vessel to the Harbor Commission, which oversees the Port of Long Beach. The City Council and Harbor Commission are still in negotiations over who will manage the ship in the foreseeable future.

The Queen Mary remained closed for all of 2021, a result initially of the pandemic, and later safety concerns. It is not clear when the ship will reopen.

The historic Queen Mary on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021. Photo by Brandon Richardson.

4. COMMUNITY HOSPITAL: After months of delays, the new operators of Community Hospital announced in January that the East Long Beach facility would admit patients for the first time in nearly three years. The news came at the height of hospitalizations during the pandemic when beds were scarce throughout the county.

The emergency department at Community opened in May, another significant milestone for operators Molina, Wu, Network. In addition to its 20 ER beds, Community Hospital was approved to operate 40 medical/surgical beds, 11 intensive-care unit beds and 28 behavioral health beds.

But the achievement would be short-lived. Just six months later, the operators announced that mounting financial strain and low census numbers necessitated phasing out its acute care services in favor of increased wellness and mental health offerings. The move, the operators said, would allow it and the city to avoid paying tens of millions of dollars for seismic repairs at the property, a burden that prompted the previous operator, MemorialCare, to abandon the facility in 2018.

In late November the hospital closed to all new patients and the remaining patients were discharged by early December.

Negotiations are still ongoing between the city and MWN over what kind of outpatient services will be offered at the more than 100-year-old hospital.

Two employees from UtiliQuest stand in front of Community Hospital Long Beach. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

5. REDISTRICTING: Every 10 years, the city and other municipal jurisdictions must redraw political boundaries due to population fluctuations based on the Census—and this time around, the always-contentious process was compressed into about two months thanks to delays in collecting data during the pandemic.

For the first time, redistricting was entrusted to a 13-member citizens commission, which began holding deliberations with Census data in October after Census data was released in late September.

On Nov. 18, the commission unanimously approved the final map, which drew two current sitting councilmembers—Stacy Mungo Flanigan in the 5th and Cindy Allen in the 2nd—out of their districts. A coalition of Latino groups also threatened to sue to block the map, alleging it diluted Latino residents’ voting power.

Statewide, an independent commission also redrew political lines for Assembly, Senate and congressional districts, with big changes afoot for Long Beach.

In related news, longtime Congressman Alan Lowenthal announced he would not seek a sixth term, and the following day Mayor Robert Garcia announced he would run for the newly-drawn 42nd District instead of seeking a third term as mayor.

The final City Council map approved by the Long Beach Independent Redistricting Commission on Thursday Nov. 18, 2021.

6. MIGRANT CENTER: An international crisis at the Mexican border became a local story last spring when the city offered use of its convention center to house up to 1,000 unaccompanied minors at a time as the kids waited to be reunited with family or sponsors in the U.S.

The number of children coming across the border began to increase significantly during the pandemic, with the federal government running out of space in its permanent shelters. Emergency shelters were first established in San Diego and Texas, with Long Beach voting on a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services in early April that would pay the city $35 million for use of the facility over roughly three months.

Some groups were opposed to the move, saying the city should not be assisting the government in keeping kids in “cages”—particularly after reports of deplorable conditions in other facilities. Advocates and mental health experts said that while some shelters were safe and provided adequate care, others were endangering children’s health and safety.

The emergency shelter in Long Beach housed far fewer than 1,000 kids at any one time, and the center was shuttered a week early, in late July, ahead of conventions restarting in the city.

The sleeping area set up inside Exhibit Hall B of the Long Beach Convention Center for migrant children. Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG

7. RISE IN SHOOTINGS: After crime reached historic lows in recent years, gun violence in Long Beach has started to rebound. In 2020, Long Beach saw the highest number of shootings in at least the last five years, and 2021 soon topped that.

By the end of October 2021, 384 incidents of gunfire had been reported to the Long Beach Police Department, more than the 381 in all of 2020.

High-profile incidents like a shooting that wounded three people at The Pike also grabbed people’s attention. But less affluent neighborhoods like those in West Long Beach, North Long Beach and the outskirts of the Downtown core have borne the brunt of the violence, according to data compiled by the Long Beach Post.

Police officials and experts have pointed to a number of possible explanations for the rise in shooting, ranging from mental-health effects of job loss and isolation because of the pandemic, to the proliferation of untraceable ghost guns, and reforms to bail and sentencing rules that led to more people being released from jail more quickly.

Although shootings spiked, overall crime in Long Beach remained relatively flat this year, at least as of the end of November. The city has also avoided any major spike in homicides, something that’s afflicted many major cities across the country.

A woman rushes a police line at the end of a two-hour standoff with a shooting suspect on Thursday, July 1, 2021. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

8. RISE IN HOUSING COSTS: The average cost of buying a home in Long Beach swelled 21% since the start of the pandemic, with average rent increasing between 7% and 10% over the last two years and as much as 46% over the last five years.

Economists said the primary driver of this was low supply and high demand for housing, coupled with historically low interest rates meant to spur the economy in the midst of the pandemic.

In hopes of encouraging more affordable housing development, the city in November approved an “inclusionary housing” policy that will charge developers if they do not include affordable units within projects, among other new rules.

Gov. Gavin Newsom also signed two controversial housing bills into law in September that could affect neighborhoods currently reserved for single-family housing, but the effect they will have on Long Beach will likely be less severe than what some opponents have claimed.

The Oceanaire apartments on the 100 block of Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

9. JAN. 6 UPRISING: This major national story spilled into every community in the country; local Congressman Alan Lowenthal, who was holed up in an undisclosed location, described it as a “mob scene,” akin to a coup attempt by people who had no regard for the country or the Constitution.

The unprecedented violence in Washington, D.C., began when thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered near the Capitol building and White House to assert, falsely, that Trump had been cheated out of a victory in the November election.

Two Long Beach men were later arrested in connection with the attack, and are facing federal charges of entering the U.S. Capitol. Alexis and Bryan Bustos were among 700 people who have since been charged with various crimes.

Trump supporters gesture to U.S. Capitol Police in the hallway outside of the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. AP photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta.

10. PRESIDENTIAL VISIT: President Joe Biden spoke at Long Beach City College on Sept. 13 to rally support for Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faced a recall election the following day, largely over his pandemic response. Biden’s visit was the first time since 2009 a sitting president came to the city, and for two days security was tight and traffic was impacted.

“We need science,” the president told the crowd of about 1,500 invited supporters. “We need courage. We need Gov. Gavin Newsom.”

Biden spoke as hundreds of protesters gathered on the streets outside LBCC, shouting expletives, yelling in bullhorns and honking horns.

Newsom that week became the second governor in U.S. history to defeat a recall aimed at kicking him out of office early.

President Joe Biden waves as he boards Air Force One at the Long Beach Airport on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. Photo by Stephen Carr.