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There’s a race playing out right now on Long Beach’s Peninsula, and the stakes are high.

A dozen families in the coastal neighborhood lost their homes last week to the pounding waves brought on by Tropical Storm Rachel. Many of them are still processing that loss, said the area’s City Council member, Kristina Duggan. Nevertheless, the clock is ticking before the next storm arrives, she said, and the city must prepare now.

During a press conference Friday, Duggan, Mayor Rex Richardson and city officials outlined the scramble to shore up the Peninsula’s defenses. A historic El Niño season means another generationally strong storm could begin building soon. And more rounds of exceptionally high tides — one piece of the puzzle that made Rachel so devastating — are expected around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

That leaves precious little time to rebuild the shoreline that protected the Peninsula for decades.

That protection first fell in September when Hurricane Marie stripped away tons of sand, exposing the wooden bulkhead underneath the neighborhood’s coastal boardwalk. Rachel then blasted through what was left.

A portion of the boardwalk and its bulkhead are destroyed and no longer protect homes along the Peninsula in Long Beach on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

With beachside homes now more exposed than ever, Long Beach has jump-started repair plans.

It’s spending “upwards of $3.6 million” to repair the boardwalk, said Stephen Figueira, a civil engineer with the city. Crews are working day and night, whenever it’s safe during low tide. It’s complicated by the fact that they can’t safely work on the sections of boardwalk that suffered the most damage between 64th and 66th places. Homes there are still at risk of collapse and must be assessed and shored up first to keep workers safe.

But even a refortified bulkhead won’t be enough. The boardwalk was never meant to hold back the ocean, Long Beach City Manager Tom Modica said. The city is already trucking sand up the beach to protect it, and it’s sped up a dredging project to clear sediment from the Alamitos Bay channel and pump it onto the beach. Crews work 24 hours when possible, Modica said. They hope to have much of the work done by the end of November — as long as it’s not delayed by more bad weather.

The city had estimated the dredging would add more than 500 feet of new beach along the Peninsula’s most vulnerable areas, but with so much sand stripped away lately, it’s now likely to be less. That project, which the city was already planning before any storm damage, is expected to cost $11.4 million.

Long Beach is also tapping emergency funds to start designing a low-profile rock wall that could help protect the boardwalk. But how the rest of that $6 million project could be funded remains unknown. City officials were optimistic about securing help — and reimbursements for emergency costs — from the state and federal government. (You can watch the city explain all the funding details here.)

There was also another message at Friday’s press conference: The Peninsula may have suffered the worst damage, but it is certainly not the only part of Long Beach at risk.

During Rachel, high tides overtook beach bike paths and parking lots, even inundating Junipero Beach, Councilmember Cindy Allen said. During heavy rains, other areas will flood too.

“I want to be clear. This is just the beginning of El Niño season,” Allen said, “so I want to encourage everyone to stay aware, stay vigilant throughout the fall and the winter storm season.”

We have a host of resources for you to prepare at LBPost.com/elnino. And city officials suggested visiting longbeach.gov/emergency to sign up for emergency alerts and learn about upcoming sandbag giveaways.

Quick sips of the latest news

  • Yet another port record: This has happened a lot lately, but the Port of Long Beach just set a new pace for cargo. It moved nearly 1 million container units in September, making it the busiest month in the port’s 115-year history. Putting that in context, it was 25% more cargo than in September 2025. You can read the port’s official take on it here.
  • Vote! The deadline to return your ballot for this election is Nov. 3. You won’t see many Long Beach-specific races on it. Nearly all of them (mayor, City Council, LBUSD school board) were decided in the June primary. We’ll have a guide coming soon on the lone Long Beach City College trustee seat in contention. For those complicated statewide propositions, we recommend CalMatters’ guide. Our partner LAist has great guides for the regional races.
  • The agenda for the Long Beach City Council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 15 — and any other upcoming meetings — can be found here.
  • ICYMI: We published a deeply reported investigation into a local affordable housing provider accused of a massive fraud scam. It also raises serious questions about city oversight in cases like this.
  • In case it’s on your mind, you can sign up for emergency alerts from the city of Long Beach at longbeach.gov/alertlb

Jeremiah Dobruck is executive editor of the Long Beach Post where he oversees all day-to-day newsroom operations. In his time working as a journalist in Long Beach, he’s won numerous awards for his investigative reporting and editing. Before coming to the Post in 2018, he wrote for publications including the Press-Telegram, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. Reach him at [email protected] or @jeremiahdobruck on Twitter.