Huge waves battered the Oregon coast on Saturday, destroying cars, condos, and sending one woman to the hospital. Photo: Oregon Institute of Marine Biology
The Oregon coastline can be a scary place when the waves get big. Massive, jagged, rocky outcrops fall into the sea in many places, acting as stone buttresses for the juggernaut that an angry ocean becomes. This weekend, the coast was battered mercilessly by huge waves, destroying condos, cars, and injuring a woman on a hotel balcony.
Buoys were reading 20-feet when Portland’s National Weather Service put out a high-surf advisory. In Lincoln City, a woman staying at the ironically named Surftides Resort was taken to hospital after a wave destroyed the balcony she was standing on. According to The Oregon Coast Beach Connection, at around 8 am on Saturday morning the wave smashed the hotel, which sits ten feet above normal seasonal sand levels. A spokesman for the North Lincoln County Fire and Rescue Department said the balcony was nearly demolished.
Two hours north, in Rockaway Beach, condos and cars were damaged as huge waves broke over the bluffs, breaking windows, garage doors, and smashing parked cars together. “The waves were really high this morning and this particular one busted the glass of the back deck of this beach front condo,” Rockaway Beach resident Amanda Cairns toldThe Oregon Coast Beach Connection. “It went through the lower level of the home and the water picked up everything in the garage and pushed it right through the garage door … the waves washed away all the building materials into the parking lot and washed a pile of construction lumber into the parked cars. It smashed the cars together as well.”
Larger than average waves are still expected through Monday, but they’re forecasted to die down. A resident of Yachats posted this video to Facebook. “Wild high Surf out there today,” she wrote. “A little too high.”
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