LONG BEACH, Calif. — It was 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 9 and the unthinkable was happening all around Shawn Curtis: The boardwalk in front of his two-story beachfront apartment building was gone. The 25-foot-wide sand beach was gone. Salt water poured in from all sides. And now the building was slanting down into the ocean.
Curtis couldn’t make sense of what he saw. “The doorframe was crooked. The window was crooked, and then I saw a big wave crash,” he told NBC News on Thursday.
The surf crashed all the way up to the second floor. Neighbors across the street said they could see water cascading down onto the roof of Curtis’ home of nine years. Booming waves were loud enough to wake him and shake his apartment as though an earthquake rippled through, he said.
“We rushed for our lives, but it was clear the house was toast,” Curtis said, referring to his roommate. “It was a foregone conclusion. It was gone.”…