Crowds Gathers in Laguna Beach for Tsunami That Wasn't

People arrived at the shoreline in Laguna Beach Friday morning to get a glimpse of the high surf expected after the magnitude 8.9 earthquake that struck Japan.

Robert Moore, a volunteer with the Laguna Beach Police Department, stood at Main Beach, shooing the occasional passerby off the boardwalk.

A tsunami was projected to be coming, he told them, and the beach was closed.

"Everyone's been cooperative," he said. "There's been no surge so far."

He could have been talking about a surge of water or a surge of people. At Main Beach, only a smattering of residents were seated on benches and standing on the grass, waiting to see the 2-foot swells that were predicted to arrive around 8:45, caused by a magnitude-8.9 earthquake off the coast of Japan.

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Police called residents in Laguna Beach around 5 a.m. to warn of the possibility of a tsunami and to say that beaches would be closed. At the shore line, fences, fliers and signs had been erected to keep people off of the sand.

Calls from worried residents started coming in to the Laguna Beach Police Department late last night and have continued this morning.

"We were all ready for something, and nothing has happened," said Lt. Jason Kravetz. "It's been absolutely quiet." He said the department had received about 85 calls by 10 this morning.

San Juan Capistrano resident Bill Allen was taking it easy on Main Beach just a few feet away from Moore. He said that the police had asked him to leave, but he was staying put.

"I've got a lawyer," he said, shrugging. "I'm a structural engineer, and I've been doing this for 34 years, and I've never seen a tsunami before."

Still, he didn't expect to see much. He predicted that this morning would turn out "uneventful," given that Main Beach is a south-facing beach, and the tsunami waves would be coming from the North—not to mention originating from thousands of miles away.

The bystanders were more numerous along the trails heading up from the beach past the Laguna Hotel to Heisler Park. They clustered at benches and look-out points, clutching phones, cameras and dog leashes.

Laguna Beach resident Maria Beltran said she walked in the area most days, but today had paused to stand with the crowd and look for big waves.

"I thought maybe I'd see it, but it looks so calm here," she said, noting that the tsunami had to travel from Japan and past Hawaii before hitting Laguna Beach. "By the time they get here, they can't be that big. I thought it would be cool to see, though. I've never seen so many people with cameras, waiting."

Around 8:45, when the first wave was supposed to have hit, Lesleigh Claiborne of Dana Point was holding out hope for a tsunami sighting. She said she remembered the last time there was a tsunami warning in South County, triggered by a Chilean earthquake in 2010.

"We saw one in Dana Point that sucked all the water out of the harbor," she said.

Irvine resident Bob Harwell stood with Laguna Beach's Angie McCormick, looking from a guard rail down at a rocky cove below. Harwell pointed out that the tide line had increased slightly over the last few minutes.

"That's the highest one we've seen," he said, pointing at a swell that pushed the kelp on the beach up by perhaps a foot. "So maybe this is it—or that was it."

Dedre Sines of Laguna Beach said that the call from police woke her up around 5 a.m.. She'd been glued to the TV ever since.

'"It was hard watching the news, seeing all the destruction in Japan," she said. "An 8.9 for five minutes. Ouch."

She said she and her husband were going to go out to stock up on emergency supplies later today. After all, what happened there could happen here, she said.

A few minutes later, at around 9:05 a.m. her husband showed up after taking a run. He looked out at the water and made a pronouncement: "It's a no show."