Newport Beach declares emergency ahead of storm

Emergency ahead of a strong storm moving in this week and king tides next week. Mario Ramirez is live at the Balboa Pier with a look at how things are going there. Mario. Yeah, that's right. We've been watching the, you know, waves building here with that beach hazard statement in place and this impressive sand berm. So I've got Derek here. He's actually very familiar with the coast. He goes fishing, surfing. You just described this sand berm as a band-aid on a bullet hole. I thought that was actually fitting. Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly better than nothing. I mean, the flooding over here has been pretty extensive. I saw some videos, and maybe two weeks ago, the water was actually making it up over this berm and flooding the parking lot still. So, I mean, it's definitely better than nothing, but I think at some point there's going to have to be some sort of sand replacement or, I mean, some other strategy if they want to keep this peninsula from flooding consistently. Yeah, I know they're working on bringing more sand here. We've got some video from back in October 9th, earlier this month, I believe just 11 days ago, when this area was flooding. You were actually out here. Tell me what that was like for you. Yeah, I was driving down the peninsula here. I didn't know what was going on with the flooding. I was just coming down here to go surf, and all of a sudden I saw water pouring into the road from the street. And I was very confused because I'd just never seen anything like that before. And there was like a foot, basically a foot of water in parts of the road coming almost all the way down the peninsula here. I've never seen anything like it. Yeah, and that's a good point because a lot of people will come to the coast when there are these, like, you know, swells and beach hazard statements. And they might not know that there's coastal flooding going on. And like you said, you just came in and all that was happening. So probably best to avoid it if you can. But what about Long Beach? I know that area, the boardwalk has been getting slammed. We've also been covering that. They're starting a project today. They're bringing in all this sand from the Alamitos Bay area, but it continues to get washed away. But you're seeing this up and down the coast as a local surfer? Yeah, so, I mean, it's happening here. Newport Beach, Long Beach is having it, Laguna Beach as well. I think I've seen some videos from San Diego where the beaches are a lot smaller than they typically are. So, yeah, I think it's kind of happening everywhere in Southern California right now. Yeah, I know the project in Long Beach is supposed to take months. It could take months. So thanks for talking to us, Derek. Appreciate it. It's always good to get the perspective of somebody who's very familiar with the coast. He says he comes out here very often. Earlier we talked to Danny and Ryan. They come out here fishing. They said that they've started to catch some of the most unusual fish that they normally don't, like skipjack tuna, which Bob was mentioning earlier. They say it makes for excellent sushi. So a lot of that activity picking up, too, Bob and Jen. Yeah, they mentioned Yellowfin, too. Yeah, they did. Yeah, marlin? All right, Mario, thank you.