Severe erosion continues in DaNang and it appears most of the preventive efforts have failed

For a lot of people, the cold season or typhoon season is a real bane on their existence. I would imagine that the people who feel the most strong about this are the people that have businesses built a bit too close to the sea that are getting the land literally ripped out from under them in the My Khe Beach area of Da Nang.

About 14 days ago a response team was called in and I admired how quickly they were working as a team to erect a temporary sea-wall made out of sandbags encased in chain-link fence. There were hundreds of guys all working in tandem and it was nice to see how quick their response was. Unfortunately for them, fighting against mother nature is a tough battle and while their efforts may have done some good it seems as though most of the crew has gone home and given up and they are just resigned to let the ocean do the damage that it is going to do and hopefully do something about it once the tides calm down and recede.

A year or two ago they had the idea to plant a bunch of mature coconut trees to help to preserve the coastline and protect against erosion and I'm actually quite impressed at how well it worked. You can see the red roots of the one in the middle as the guy in the excavator is doing something to try to prevent them getting taken more of the sand taken away and then the tree eventually buckling and falling over.

I did see a few of the trees that had fallen and it was nice to see that they are attempting to salvage them and not just let the ocean claim them. I had some experience in the past with purchasing a full-size tree for a property a friend of mine owned and it was extremely expensive so I can understand why their would be a great deal of importance placed on keeping it alive, if possible.

In the My Khe beach area of Da Nang almost all of the beachfront is roped off with police tape. There are some areas where you can still get a look at how bad the problem has become and it is at last a 2 meter drop-off from the tree-base to the sea below. The roots appear to be doing their job but this is a battle the at the relentless nature of the ocean is going to win eventually.

You can see here that the temporary seawall that the men were building 2 weeks ago kind of did its job, but at the same time it has eroded in front of and behind it so this says to me that the waves still breached it and now those are going to be pretty darn tough to remove from the sand once they decide to do so.

No one is allowed to swim in the ocean right now and I really don't think that most sane people would even try to do that. There weren't many lifeguards in sight but instead people that look like police or military that just don't let anyone get in the water except for surfers. The surfers, if they get stuck, are kind of on their own because I didn't notice anyone with boats that would be there to rescue them if they got in trouble. I'm not a seasoned surfer but I am pretty sure most of those cats know what they are doing and would say that this is basically un-surf-able anyway. There isn't any real pattern to it as it just seems to be crashing in from all directions at all times. I think it could actually be kind of fun if you were a strong enough swimmer to wait for your set. I haven't noticed many people out there even attempting it these days though.

In 2-3 more weeks this is all supposed to be over an the tide line or whatever it is called will return to much further out than it is now. I just wonder if they are going to put new restrictions on what can be built in My Khe, because while the coconut trees did do some good, it has been shown that they are not enough.