Thumbnail photo: Crescent City Harbor and Pacific Power staff assess damage done to H Dock from a series of tsunami surges spawned by an 8.8 earthquake near the Kamchatka Peninsula. | Photo by Heather Polen. Crescent City Harbormaster Mike Rademaker said a series of tsunami surges that swept into the inner boat basin may have caused “closer to $1 million” in damage on Wednesday. H Dock bore the brunt of the energy, Rademaker said, but the concrete structure of the docks are “mostly still in good shape.” “The metal connecting plates are sheared all over,” he said via text message just after noon on Wednesday, “and the 1.5 inch electric cabling will have to be completely replaced.” Spawned by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that occurred off the east coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on Tuesday afternoon, surges began funneling into the harbor at about 12:50 a.m. Wednesday. Staff were assessing the damage as the surges continued throughout the morning and into the afternoon. At about 10:30 a.m., Rademaker said a surge had come through that was almost as bad as the one that lifted H Dock along its pilings and eventually submerged it at about 2:40 a.m. Citizens Dock took some hits as well, Rademaker said. The 70-plus year-old structure is vulnerable due to its wooden pilings. A ladder was swept out to sea and the support for a crane was damaged as well. Rademaker said he had been speaking with John Driscoll, representative for U.S. Congressman Jared Huffman, about being eligible for funding through FEMA to help repair the damage, but that doesn’t look like an option. This is due to the lack of widespread damage beyond Del Norte County, according to Rademaker. “We will have to take a similar approach that the city used to repair Pebble Beach [Drive], focusing on state funding sources,” he said. Rademaker said CalOES will conduct aerial flights to compare the Harbor District’s current conditions with “pre-tsunami baseline conditions.” As of about 1:05 p.m. Wednesday, coastal Del Norte County remains under a Tsunami Advisory. Strong currents will continue in the harbor “as we go to bed tonight,” said Ryan Aylward, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Eureka office. The National Tsunami Warning Center has lifted the advisory for points further south, but people could still experience strong currents, he said. As far as the inundation of dry land, even in Crescent City that threat has passed, Aylward told Redwood Voice Community News. “The actual beaches for Del Norte County still could have rapid movement of the ocean basically lifting up 2 feet and coming back down 2 feet,” he said. “It doesn’t just move 2 feet, it’s the water level lifting up and down every 20 minutes. There’s rapid movement of the tide essentially. You don’t want to be down near the water. It’s not worth it.” The largest surge to hit Crescent City was 4 feet at about 1:39 a.m., said Ryan Aylward, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Eureka office. Two-foot surges were still hitting Crescent City more than 11 hours later, he said. According to Aylward, two things make the Crescent City Harbor a magnet for tsunamis. One is the ocean symmetry. A ridge stretches “straight out in the middle of the Pacific,” he said, and tsunami waves tend to travel along ridges, which brings it to the North Coast. The ideal place for that wave to hit is in Del Norte County, Aylward said. The second reason has to do with how the Crescent City Harbor is structured, the NWS meteorologist said. “It just happens to resonate with tsunami waves that typically occur every 20 minutes,” he said. “The waves go up and down, the resonance hits right and you get larger waves in that harbor.” Rademaker said that the first surges came into the harbor at about 12:50 a.m. measuring about 1.2 feet. At that point most of the sport fishing vessels and roughly half the commercial boats had left the port, he said. In addition to lifting up and submerging H Dock, the largest surges resulted in a 10- to 15-second electrical fire, Rademaker said. While staff is still assessing the damage, he said a transformer on the dock will probably have to be replaced. Rademaker also spoke to the Crescent City Harbor District’s insurance situation. About a month ago, in an effort to save money, the Board of Commissioners decided not to renew property insurance that covered damage to the docks in the inner boat basin from fire and collision. CCHD would have paid an annual premium of $181,500 and would have had a deductible of $250,000. According to Rademaker, there would be no benefit unless there’s more than $400,000 worth of damage and even then it’s limited to fire and collision. “There was only one underwriter who was willing to put a policy in place. We looked across the entire market as exhaustively as we could with Redwood Leavitt Insurance,” he said. “The only underwriter was excluding tsunami and excluding wave action and wind damage and excluding all of the other highest risk categories.” Rademaker said the Board of Commissioners felt it was more important to have the money available to do maintenance. Power and water service to most dock areas have been shut off except for power to the emergency pumps as surges continue to come into the harbor, according to Rademaker. He pointed out that the inner boat basin includes 30-inch diameter steel piles encased in high-density polyethylene sleeves and were driven 21 to 37 feet into the bedrock. H Dock, with its closely spaced pilings, was specifically designed to disrupt and dissipate tsunami energy before it reaches the inner boat basin. Steve Huber, owner of Crescent City Fishing Charters, said the new harbor “really held up good” despite the problems with H Dock. But most of the big boats went to the ocean to wait out the tsunami. “No one’s going out fishing today in Crescent City,” he said. “We’re not going to go out until Friday.”