Video taking off 63x its usual first day

Naples' century-old seawalls start springing leaks in Long Beach

Lauren Pozen's report from the Alamitos Peninsula adds red tags, 10,000 sandbags and ID checkpoints to the story of Tropical Storm Rachel's surf.

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CBS LA Story of October 12, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 163,682 views a day, 64 times a normal first day on this channel (2,578).

Long Beach residents brace for more powerful surf, possible flooding from Tropical Storm Rachel

The boardwalk on the Alamitos Peninsula was already broken. Lauren Pozen's live report for CBS LA, from 65th Street, shows city and fire department crews watching the high tide as big waves slam into what is left of the barrier. A partial mandatory evacuation order covers the blocks between 64th and 66th Place.

The damage count has grown. Pozen reports eight buildings red-tagged and one yellow-tagged after flooding, and more than 10,000 sandbags handed out. She also explains the limits on how many bags residents can take and the security checkpoints where they have to show ID. Some of the wave footage carries an on-screen credit to Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn.

Then the report moves to Naples, the canal neighborhood next door, where seawalls about a century old are failing. Ben Fisher, president of the Naples Improvement Association, describes "little waterfalls coming through the seawall, flooding out into the sidewalks." Resident John Herando puts it more simply: "Mother Nature don't play." His answer is to "cooperate and support each other as a community."

The report drew about 160,000 views in its first 23 hours. A regular CBS LA report usually gets a few thousand on its first day. The comment section filled up much faster than usual too. Many viewers question whether a handful of sandbags per home can hold back the ocean. Others ask why walls that old were never replaced.

Alys Martinez's report on officials bracing for Rachel's peak also started unusually fast, and the channel as a whole ran at nearly four times its usual daily pace. FOX 11 Los Angeles had a similarly busy day covering the same coast.

Zach Boetto's follow-up from Long Beach puts the strain in context: this is the third powerful storm to hit the coastline in five weeks.

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