Good Samaritan Pulls Dangerous Screw-Covered Board From Long Beach Waters

A man is being hailed as a good Samaritan after he was filmed cleaning dangerous debris up at Long Beach, California. The moment was captured by Threads user @alefrodriguesskt, who filmed a man running into the surf to pull something out of the sand.

As the object came loose with every wave, it was clear that there was something dangerous buried just beneath the sand. Finally, the entire thing came loose, and the man pulled a large piece of plywood out of the surf.

But it wasn’t the wood itself that appeared dangerous, since it was outfitted with several very long screws that were sticking up where a beachgoer could’ve easily stepped on them, getting impaled. 

“What is happening in the waters of Long Beach,” @alefrodriguesskt wrote, prompting plenty of people to respond with their theories on how recent storms likely pulled that board and many others into the water as homes collapsed into the sea this month.

The Board Seemed to be Construction-Related

 

 

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While there’s no way to know for sure, it does appear that the board was part of some construction materials that were used to batten down the hatches as people in the region braced for the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel. 

“I bet someone used this to try to protect their house and Mother Nature took it anyway,” one person wrote.

“Pieces of wood from the boardwalk that got torn to pieces during the high tide this weekend are floating to shore,” another person guessed. “That piece of wood had been put on the boardwalk as reinforcements and [was] torn to pieces by the waves. Now it is floating up on shore near the pier.”

“Came off the boardwalk shoring on the peninsula,” yet another person added. “Likely a lot more of this unfortunately.”

The Region Experienced a Lot of Damage

On Oct. 14, Fox Weather reported that eight buildings, which represented 13 different residential addresses, were red-tagged as a result of the damage caused by the tropical storm. Red tags on properties mean that they aren’t safe to enter and must be evacuated immediately. One of the red-tagged homes was only recently purchased, and cost the homeowner around $5 million just two months ago.

Long Beach is expected to receive around 415,000 additional cubic yards of sand thanks to the Alamitos Bay dredging project, which is supposed to widen and stabilize the shoreline along the vulnerable stretch of the coast. Hopefully that “beach-ready” sand can also help limit hazards left behind by the storm, like the construction material that appears to have already begun washing up on the area’s beaches.