Santa Barbara Mayor says ‘scraping and digging’ ahead after ocean surge impacts Thursday

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Unlike typical high tide events, or even those during a rain storm, the unique hit with the astronomical high tide today and a perfectly angled and powerful ocean surge, blasted the Central Coast.

By 9 a.m. there were alerts in many communities.

The waves were hitting hard. The over flow was, in some cases, more impactful than expected.

Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse took a close up look at many areas and made personal inspections. He said, "we knew it was going to be big. We knew it was probably going to  take out our sand berm which is has. The preparations we made the early part of this year have helped tremendously."

Rowse said department heads are on the phone with each other and mobilizing staff members.

He said many businesses were able to stay open.
"This was more of a big clean up than an actual destructive event like it was last time so  we will be doing some scraping and digging."