Fire pits out, tsunami signs in

Newport Avenue looking east. Photo: Jim Grant

Is it me or does this thing about the City putting up tsunami signs ring a wrong tune in these budget cutting times?

On one hand, OB and the rest of San Diego beaches are threatened with losing our fire pits, yet at the same time, the City goes around and puts up these warning signs.

Whew! I am sooo relieved.  I never would have known which way to run, ride or skate if OB was faced with a tsunami.

While local pundits (Dave and Lane) think OBceans would grab a cool one to watch the action or head for the tides themselves with their boards, the City advises you – depending on how you interpret the sign’s arrow – to either grab the nearest helicopter and aim straight for the clouds – or more likely, head up Newport Avenue along with everybody else and seek higher ground.

I’ve lived and surfed at this beach off and on since I was 13.  Never had a tsunami and except for the occasional and predicted flooding from high tides and rain, OB has escaped major damage over the years from nature – EXCEPT of course the El Nino storm of 1982 – when the pier and its parking lot were heavily damaged.  (One of the results of that storm was the appearance of the long-lost stairs that had been buried by the sands of tides.)

We can joke and smirk about these signs.  But do you think it’s a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, or when department heads submitted their proposed cuts to Mayor Sanders a while back, the line item that included placing tsunami signs up at various beaches was blurred on his draft copy, and it stayed in … or what?

How many signs did the City put up?  How many hours were spent in engineering and design to figure out which sign went where and which arrow pointed the correct escape route? Then there was the manufacture and painting of the signs, their transport and then their placement.

I know, these are small details of life.  But so are fire pits.  I was just wondering whether the money spent on these signs would have saved us some of the pits (or library hours or city employees or ….).

Tagged as: budget, fire pits