OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Back in 2016, a fire broke out at Ruby's Diner on the Seal Beach pier in Orange County. It took three years and $8 million to rebuild the pier.
CBS 8 spoke to a civil engineer who worked on that reconstruction project to find out what it is going to take to repair the Oceanside pier.
The Seal Beach pier fire occurred under strangely similar circumstances to the Oceanside pier fire. In both incidents, a shut-down Ruby’s restaurant was destroyed.
The cause of the fire at the Seal Beach pier was electrical.
“The fire was an electrical circuit somewhere within the old structure. And basically that burned down, and then it was able to find its way underneath into some of the other supporting members,” said Stephen Mutch, a civil engineer with Anser Advisory, who worked to rebuild the Seal Beach pier.
Mutch said engineers in Oceanside will begin the rebuilding process by evaluating the pilings under the pier.
“They'll look at how deep the burn went into the wood, and how much good wood is remaining. If the tops of the piles are too badly damaged, then they're probably going to have to be replaced because they won't support future load,” Mutch.
In the Seal Beach fire, about 30 pier pilings had to be replaced.
Decking on top of the Oceanside pier will have to be replaced, and Mutch said that can take time.
“That's a hardwood. And those are very dense, very weather resistant materials. They typically come out of the South American forests. It's difficult to procure. I know in our project we waited about six months after we ordered the material for it to be delivered,” said Mutch.
That same hardwood decking makes the fire difficult to put out.
“If you've ever been on a pier, you notice that the spacing in between the wood planking on the surface is typically somewhere around a quarter to a half-inch opening. So, if there's something on fire underneath there, it's impossible to basically just stand on top and hose it down, you're not going to get all of it. You’re just going to get a very, very small portion to get to get through the crack,” said Mutch. “That was one of the issues with the Seal Beach pier. It smoldered for quite a while. It took them two or three days to actually get the whole thing completely out.”
Seal Beach was able to keep the front of its pier open to the public during three years of reconstruction, but the restaurant was never rebuilt.
“Patience is the biggest thing I could promote. This is going to be a long process. It's going to take a couple of years to get things back to where it used to be,” said Mutch.
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