The Pacifica Municipal Pier was shut down and taped off Thursday after city workers noticed cracks running through the landmark structure and concrete chunks falling into the ocean.
It’s just one of many coastal California structures that have recently crumbled under pressure from a rising and relentless ocean.
Officials from the small, beach city south of San Francisco said the pier was closed due to “cracking, separation, and displacement of the concrete walkway and structural elements.”
It will stay closed while structural engineers asses its safety.
Photos taken by city employees show a wide crack that runs from top to bottom and across the structure as well. Other photos show a large horizontal crack under the foundation of a small restaurant on the pier, the Chit Chat Cafe.
The cafe was also shut down.
This is not the first time the 53-year-old pier has shown signs of stress. In 2021, part of it was shut down after handrails along the edge collapsed. And in 2023, after a series of storms pummeled the Central California coast, damaging parts of the pier, the structure was partially closed for more than year.
Those same storms caused extensive damage in Aptos and Capitola, 70 miles south, where piers and waterfront infrastructure were swept away or damaged.
In 2024, a 150- to 180- foot section of the Santa Cruz wharf was ripped off by powerful waves.
At least 10 of the state’s dozens of coastal public piers were closed for part or all of 2024 due to structural damage sustained in winter storms since 2022. At least five others have longer-term upgrades planned to address structural issues.
“These things are costly to maintain,” said Zach Plopper, senior environmental director at Surfrider. “They are a part of our California coastal culture in many ways, but we’re going to need to reckon with, one, the state that they’re in, and two, the continuous and worsening threats they’re going to experience,”
He said most of the piers were constructed in the early 1900s, and they weren’t built to withstand decades of rough seas, storms and rising sea level.
“With this incoming El Niño, which is forecasted to be significant, and this marine heat wave we’re in the midst of, we’re kind of in uncharted waters as far as what this winter could bring in terms of storms and swells to the California coast, and we’re likely going to see a lot more damage,” he said. “Not just piers, but roads and other coastal infrastructure up and down the state.”
There was no storm in Pacifica earlier this week, so no single event could be blamed for the destruction.
However, a 2025 report from an outside engineering firm, GHD, found that several sections of the pier were in “poor” or “serious” condition, and they recommended closure before anticipated storms or events that could “subject the piles to high winds, swells and large waves.”
The firm found several areas of the pier where concrete was missing and rebar was exposed and corroding.
“The pier has continued to experience high winds and large waves in a harsh marine environment,” the engineers wrote in the report, noting that continuous exposure to seawater or marine spray was “detrimental” to the structure.
A 2023 city report estimated it would cost $19 million to repair.
That same year, a state law was enacted to require local governments along the California coast to plan for sea level rise in the coming decades.
Sea level has risen some 8 inches, on average, along the coast in the past 150 years, Plopper said, and researchers anticipate another foot in the next 25 years.
“We’re going to see profound shifts on our coastline, none that we have ever experienced before, and building static structures on the coast just doesn’t work all that well,” he said. “We’re going to have to make some really hard decisions.”
