Santa Cruz Wharf collapse: What we know

Two people were rescued and a third swam to safety after the Santa Cruz Wharf partially collapsed and fell into the ocean Monday.

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[LanceSummer]

“Self rescued” Dude just swam back, crazy. Glad all are ok

[Nerval-kgsm]

I don't think the English language needs the term "self-rescued." If you can handle the situation on your own, you never needed to be rescued. How about 'made it to the shore themselves'?

[dikjones-tbxy]

Driving cars onto the pier probably not a good idea 🤔

[cabracove]

So they took so long renovating the wharf, the winter storms came. That was clever. It's ALWAYS like this here in December.

[mattsmith]

Maybe our tax dollars should have been spent on infrastructure rather then filling newsomes pockets.

[DogTog]

If teens were present and it wasn't captured on smartphone video, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

[Imsierrabound]

Any engineer worth their salt would tell you that the sea-life attached to the pilings like muscles, should have been removed from the pilings as they significantly add drag and increase loading on the pilings from waves.

[FogRain]

A weak structure falling apart can be mistaken for stronger weather.

[california]

The boardwalk is so old that the city should have updated the boardwalk for people safety. 🙏 PRAYERS

[kamuelalee]

Over the past many years, Santa Cruz has turned into a dump. This just confirms the degradation.

[blessingliberty-lrnt]

I was there in January 2020. I thought it was so beautiful, I wanted to move there. You could tell it needed a few updates, but horrendous storms bombarded them since 2019. So, sorry for your loss. 😢

[jeffreyburnette]

Going into a third year of damage ; brilliant.

[sunnyormsby]

Occam's razor: the pier was structurally unsound, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE, these reporters are idiots.

[conner_b_griften]

(00:00) "What can you tell us about the incident"
This is some fine work. Right to the facts. No commercial TV fake hype or schtick. Bravo. 👍

[EricUnderwood-vx]

Very happy to hear all 3 are okay!
Nothing new in California y'all...big storms and High surf have been breaking piers since man had been building them.
Santa Cruz doesn't get big surf as often as Southern California...

[crush]

kind of makes you emotional to see a part of your childhood floating away
but as a surfer, the ocean is a beautiful worthy resting place

[StevenEgleston-fm]

The largest wharf in America was let go, comparable to the worse of homeless encampments. It’s Very sad for the amount payed for leadership. You don’t need to be an engineer to know that it needs to be fixed. I Realized that almost 10 years ago. The entire thing would rock as cars drove on it and the logs were so old anyone with any real life experience would know that it’s time to replace them. Your failures, and this is the result of being such

[brycedyck]

"It was swaying and cracking, but we didn't think anything about it!" Kudos to the US education system. Well done😂

[rickluttrell]

Every city that has a wharf is responsible for ensuring that wharf is safe, otherwise it is required to be closed to the public. Clearly this is an abject failure of the city officials to do their job. We the public are simply lucky this was not a much larger catastrophe resulting in many deaths.

[FrankWood-lift]

Gradually then suddenly. Like so many things in life