At 3:30am on the morning of March 11, Reyna Ruiz was awakened by a knock on her door. It was her neighbor, warning her that a tsunami was headed toward Santa Cruz. Ruiz is the director of the Beach Flats Community Center, which serves a neighborhood of 1,068 residents, 82 percent of them Spanish-speakers and 40 percent monolingual, according to 2000 census figures. All over Beach Flats, people had begun getting phone calls from family members beginning at 1am. “By 5:30,” Ruiz said, “everyone had left.”
Articles by Tessa Stuart
Bee, Whiz
Amazing factoids from the hive.
Santa Cruz Catches A Buzz
I’m wearing a white full-body canvas suit with a net veil zipped to it, arm-length leather gloves and a mesh pith helmet the same shape as the ones British colonists wore in tropical climates. That last item feels particularly appropriate, since I’m with a group similarly outfitted and getting ready to descend on some potentially hostile colonies.
Santa Cruz Fundraiser Unfazed by ‘Three Cups’ Probe
According to a 60 Minutes investigation, author and philanthropist Greg Mortenson fabricated or exaggerated the stories in his books Three Cups of Tea and Stones to Schools and has misused the funds of the Central Asia Foundation, the charity he founded and for which two Santa Cruz benefits raised nearly $30,000.
Response Disaster
Nearly a month after the March 11 tsunami warning, there is still confusion about what caused the stark difference in information circulating in the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking communities.
Singer Songwriters Anonymous
She was kidnapped by an incense-burning hippie; hauled here from Los Angeles in the back of a Volkswagen van. At least that is how Jessica Sada, the last to take the stage of the Singer Songwriter Showcase, was introduced by the emcee. She fell in love with Santa Cruz and out of the love with the hippie, and here she was late on a rainy Tuesday night, performing her Aquabats-inspired songs to the small crowd gathered in the low light of Britannia Arms in Aptos.
Gov. Brown’s Options
It looks like a familiar set-up. In a YouTube video titled “Governor Jerry Brown Checks in with The People of California,” the screen flashes an animated version of the official state seal before cutting to the governor seated at his desk. As California’s chief executive starts enumerating the Golden State’s many problems, the viewer half-expects him to stop mid-sentence, lean over the desk and announce, “And LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!”
Pollution In The Harbor
The number of liveaboards in the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor complicates the cleanup effort, says Laura Kasa, the executive director of Save Our Shores. “Everything that they owned was on these boats that went down, so there may have been cleaners, whatever they used to clean their boat—any of those toxins are going to be leeched out.”
Watching The Tsunami
On the afternoon of a day that saw 30 boats sink in the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor by early official counts, damage from a tsunami surge that left an estimated $15 million of wreckage in its wake, Howard Thevenin watched stoically from the side of the harbor and recounted some history.
Safeguarding The Waves
Surfing and non-surfing Santa Cruzans alike can now rest easy knowing that the 7-mile stretch of cliff between Natural Bridges and Opal Cliffs, home to legendary Steamer Lane, the Hook and the grom-friendly waves at Cowells, are protected. Kind of. Santa Cruz was officially declared a World Surf Reserve in an announcement made Feb. 24 by the Davenport-based Save the Waves Coalition, which is responsible for bestowing the largely ceremonial honor.
