Debby ravages shores of south Siesta

Dr. Weiqi “Frank” Lin trudged through the sand south of Turtle Beach Friday, June 29 and stopped in front of a wrecked sea wall. He shook his head in amazement while looking at a swimming pool on Blind Pass Lane filled with displaced sand. Workers, who were removing the sand with hoses connected to a construction vehicle, said the damage could be more than $15,000.

Lin, who has a Ph.D. in oceanography and has been an engineer with Sarasota County Coastal Resources for nine years, said Tropical Storm Debby eroded nearly half of the sand placed during a 2008 nourishment project, which cost the county $10 million. He was on Turtle Beach to assess damage from the storm, which pummeled Sarasota beaches from June 23 until it made landfall near Tallahassee four days later.

“It was really weird,” he told the Pelican Press while conducting the field research. “The wind damage was minimal — some signs and fences were blown over — but the beach and dune erosion is the worst I’ve seen.”

The tropical storm moved about four miles per hour in its trek through the Gulf of Mexico and shed swirling bands of wind that were 10 times that fast, according to Lin. Those storm fragments, which were plentiful because of Debby’s slow pace, caused the surf on Siesta Key beaches to froth as far as 100 feet up to vegetation, taking the sand along the way out to the Gulf as it subsided.

Sarasota County Rescue Chief Scott Montgomery said June 28 crews cleaning up debris left from Debby were also documenting erosion evidence, which Lin confirmed after his assessment.

Sarasota County Coastal Resources Manager Laird Wreford said erosion losses ranged from anywhere between 20 and 60 feet along the Gulf Coast, but the award-winning sands of Siesta Key Public Beach remained.

“The main public beach is such a wide beach,” he said.

“ ... it didn’t really experience any loss of sand.”

Turtle Beach was already slated for an $11 million sand renourishment project starting in 2015, according to the Sarasota County 2013 fiscal year preliminary budget. But, after Sarasota County commissioners June 23 declared a local state of emergency and Gov. Rick Scott did the same for Florida, the project is eligible for state and Federal Emergency Management Agency funding, Wreford said.

Sarasota County staff from various departments Monday, July 2, met with state, FEMA and U.S. Corps of Army Engineers officials to begin talks about Debby’s damage and financial obligations. Lin presented his pre-disaster report, which he assembled before the start of hurricane season, and the one he collected after the storm.

There is more complex erosion analysis to come, Lin said. He has used pictures and anecdotal evidence to quantify Debby’s effects but will eventually move on to an echo sounder, which uses radar to measure ocean depths. A more thorough inspection may yield positive news.

“What remains to be seen is all the sand that may have been captured by near shore sandbars; that sand can be swept back onto the shoreline,” Wreford explained. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed for that.”